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They should stop sucking. I think that’s what they’re pitching here lol

Keep drafting 4th until you can at least be the 4th worst team in the league?

They should get more cap space to make up for it.

Sucking should lead to bad things, in world soccer leagues the bottom 3 teams get relegated & lose out on millions in revenue. Not as extreme but losing out lottery odds would incentivize strategic team building & a more competitive regular season if tanking isn’t an option

Kings and Pelicans were ¹⁄₂ worst for a while this season, and they were just bad, not trying to lose.

If you are a bottom feeding team you have bigger issues than not having a star. You probably have a poorly constructed team too

Then develop the players you do have.

There are no shortages of coaches, staff, upgrades to facilities, and young players with upside or potential.

Use the g league too. Rotate guys in and out until you find some guys that are diamonds in the rough, and develop them. Play moneyball where you know the team itself isn’t a contender, but you just become really good at like one thing and make it your trademark.

Teams will genuinely suck without tanking, and under this idea 3 teams each year will be left holding the bag no matter what.

But at some point it is on the organization to develop their players and find ways to win rather than just mope and cry until you magically land a top pick to come save you.

That would be just Brooklyn of the bottom 7 or 8 teams this year.

Why should they be rewarded for being bad at what they do?

Truly bad teams can end up in hell under this proposal

when was the last major free agent to sign with the grizzlies cause I genuinely can’t remember a single one

Maybe I’m just ignorant but why do the Pelicans have a hard time? Is it ownership? I’ve never been to NO but I’ve only ever heard how incredible the food and culture is.

You’re not trying to win the title though, you’re just trying not to be totally horrible. Those teams ought to be able to get enough talent for that.

I mean how many star players do you need to be 4th worst team? These are billionaires with all the resources in the world, a top 3 pick won’t magically make you competent anyway

it’s actually a great idea.

our r/kings is having a dilema where basically every time the kings win a game everybody is split because half the sub is just happy to see the team win and another half is pissed off because it’s ruining our draft odds.

This would ironically solve it for both sides as everybody would be rooting for the team to win

I really like the nuclear idea but softer is good too

The problem is it encourages the mediocre but not awful teams to tank to be closer to fourth, which is much more obtainable than being bottom 3 for most of them. You’d see a lot of potential play-in teams desperately try to avoid it.

It would be depressing to watch a genuinely bad team stay bad forever though. I think it should just be that all teams with less than 20 or so wins at the allstar break form the lottery, and all other picks are based on record. Traded picks cannot enter the lottery and the team that won #1 the prior year cannot enter the lottery. The more years in a row you’re in the lottery, the lower your odds of getting a high pick within the lottery. This resets as soon as you don’t pick in the lottery.

If you look at ASB records over the past few years this would actually produce pretty fair lottery groupings of the 5-6 worst teams each year. And with them being set at ASB it would eliminate all post-ASB tanking which is typically the most egregious.

I love it.

It puts a similar type of pressure on the bottom of the league as relegation does in European soccer, but still keeps the good old fashioned American sports communism where truly bad teams aren’t completely screwed

I think banning teams from getting a top 3 pick more than one season in a row is a good idea. I like it better than this nuclear option.

Peep my Knicks. To my knowledge they have not received a pick over what their odds provided for since Patrick Ewing.

We picked 3rd after a 17 win season.

This…

The lottery has consistently kept the worst teams bad and rewarded teams who genuinely could have or should have been in the playoffs…

And making that worse is bad for the smaller markets. There’s no way some of these owners go for this.

When tanking exists it doesn’t mean the literal worst team is at the bottom.

The league doesn’t care about parity, they care about money. A tanking team most likely means less butts in seats and less revenue, and also bad product. Problem is if a team doesn’t ever get lucky then they are stuck being mid forever, and the fans still don’t show up. I’m slightly biased but I’m all for a draft being like the nfl, worst team gets 1st pick. Who gives a shit about a generational pick going to the worst team. I know people will tell me more reasons why it’s bad, but the league makes a fuck ton of money regardless and will always make a fuck ton of money, so let the bad times get better

I don’t we’re forgetting that the lottery is for parity. But the problem is that you need a superstar or a couple all NBA player to be a legit contender in today’s league. If you don’t land one in the lottery then you’re just headed back the following year.

I do think we are forgetting that this draft is LOADED, which makes it extra enticing for teams to tank.

They’re being punished because it’s clear they don’t just suck, they are intentionally sabotaging the game’s competitive integrity to try to slightly increase their odds of getting a good pick. Remove the incentive for self sabotage, eventually they start trying to improve and they eventually get better.

It’s very strange. No other sport is like this.

That’s due to the being obsessed with this issue caused by like 4 teams…

An issue nobody would even notice if it wasn’t for the current lottery system making it worthwhile for teams that would otherwise be 7-9 seeds

🙄it’s because nuggets winning is a foregone conclusion bozo.

“all the talk” is an insane generalization. There are countless discussions about MVP, seeding, playoff availability of stars, OKC building a potential dynasty, all kinds of basketball talk outside of tanking and the draft. Yea its definitely a topic of discussion, but to act like no one is watching or talking about actual basketball is a self report more than anything.

And if it wasnt about this, it would be a dozen different posts about random players all time Top 5s. Or Shaqs Top5 for the billionth time. Or LeBron or MJ, they cant both be great it has to be one or the other. Or MVP.

Fuck the games, every day will revolve around one of these things. All time Top 5s or Lebron/MJ. MVP or LeBron/MJ. Tanking Or Lebron/MJ. Pick one!

Because we are heading into the crunch point of the season and the majority of the games flat out suck.

Relegation would be such a next level option for NA sports, but can never be done for obvious reasons

Anthony Slater article really broke it down. Theres guys being signed that are getting more minutes now than they did in the GLeague. Like not even real NBA level prospects out there just to secure losses through 10-Day deals

I don’t like this rule at all but yes teams can be a lot better by just trying and not trying to out lose each other. If there’s tangible difference between 29 wins and 19 wins, then that should hopefully help this nasty tanking

So your solution is teams should trade 2nd round picks so they can get middling players who won’t be part of the long term plan just to hit 25 wins?

And that will…improve league play?

Guess how many times since ²⁰¹⁴⁄₂₀₁₅ not a single team finished with lower than 25 wins?

 you can get good role players in free agency

i mean, for many teams not really? maybe if you’re willing to overpay and hamstring your salary cap situation

They’d rather teams fail at trying to win than succeed at trying to lose.

Don’t worry, bad teams are doing all they can to ensure that already

How so? In theory a team could try to tank down to 4th, but meanwhile the 3rd-worst would be trying to win, so it’d be risky for a team to get too cute before the last week or two of the season.

Until a team is guaranteed to not be bottom 3 and they desperately tank to get as low as possible. 

it works for a year or two till you have dug an extremely deep hole for a couple of teams that simply do not have the talent to compete.

People are completely losing the plot for what the draft is supposed to be.

that would absolutely work, but it would also make it really hard for the bottom 3 teams to get better by landing a superstar. the same teams would suck, and those fanbases would be entirely alienated.

It’s not easy to lose down to exactly 4th if the team in 3rd is desperately trying to win up to 4th. You could sabotage yourself and get passed.

But if they’re trying to finish 4th (ie not last), they can’t just throw out G-league lineups with 2 months left in the season. The teams at the bottom would be trying to win.

Keep the odds flattened and extend the number of picks that are decided by the lottery. Nobody will be trying to finish 4th in that scenario, there would be no incentive

Man “nuclear” is being thrown around way too much these days for my liking.

After the first three or four slots are picked by lottery, would the rest be filled in by simple reverse order? Ie, the worst team couldn’t pick lower than 4th or 5th? That might be a good way to continue helping the teams that need it most, while still minimizing the incentive to be truly awful.

I have an issue with any team tanking at all. Teams are throwing games and it makes any game where it happens totally unwatchable

Owners would never agree to this

Not possible legally