League pulling the ladder up behind them. Nothing shocking about that.

Getting the 2nd, 4th, and 1st pick in consecutive drafts is unbelievable especially when that 1st was Wemby. I’m also super bullish on Harper. Shit Castle is a baller too

I think the rockets got the worst player of the top 3 every single time

Kings have been unknowingly playing the incompetent long cons all along

Knowing Vivek, THIS is when he’ll tank properly now

Well if no one is tanking, the Kings will be the worst team, so this hurts them lol, just when they fully commit to a rebuild too thats the most kangz thing about this

They weren’t tanking, they’re just really incompetent, like the Pelicans.

The three teams worse than the Kings this season will likely have better records than them next season. They need three teams to be below them to avoid being screwed in the next draft. That’s not necessarily going to be easy.

If other teams weren’t actually tanking the kings would’ve ended up bottom 3

Yeah but with the new changes teams that were fake-bad like Utah aren’t going to end up in the bottom 3.

With the incentives changed, it’ll be the actual bad teams at the bottom who are getting punished

Nah, the teams below the kings were tanking. With these new rules, those same teams would not have tanked and the kings would’ve ended up as a bottom 3 team.

Now we’ll get an even worse pick and finish with 12 wins rather than 22

We’ve (Kings) have been a poverty franchise since the mid-60s. This changes nothing.

The spurs getting 1,4,2 while jumping the lottery within 5 years and the Pacers never jumping up in the lottery and the highest pick of the last 30 years being #6 Ben Mathurin surely shows tanking never worked.

And these new rules reflect that.

The Knicks are in the second most desirable market in America. No way Grizz/Jazz/Pacers gonna recruit free agents like the Knicks.

Why don’t other teams just sign great players as free agents? Are they stupid?

This coming from a Pistons fan is funny as fuck, your entire franchise is hinging on your #1 overall pick you got from tanking

And how do you propose bad teams get better

I only wish it was retroactive. But yeah, the big winner in this change is mid teams. Moving up from #14 to #6-10 may not be the boon getting a top three pick can be, but it’s still very helpful.

Pat Riley might actually be awake now

Meanwhile draft nerds who love that a third of the teams point shave at the end of the season are crying.

Pat might accidentally fall ass backwards into a decent pick finally

If you have a bad FO like the Bulls had for years then it won’t matter regardless

Which honestly is ideal. Do people want teams stuck in mediocrity like the Heat to have to choose between fighting for the play-in and scrapping the roster to look like the Process 76ers?

I think an unintended ripple effect that people aren’t considering is if more teams are trying to be good then we might see more of these teams go for free agents and make use of their cap space. Each year there are some teams with cap space we know won’t get certain free agents because they are bad. But some of them may actually consider going to a team like this year’s TrailBlazers over the Nets if the money was equal or close.

I mean taking on terrible contracts in exchange for draft picks wasn’t exactly not the problem. Nobody likes watching teams that have made themselves terrible on purpose lol

The play-in teams still get lottery picks under this new system

No owner is going to give up playoff revenue for a tiny chance at a better pick. 

It only really makes sense if the Fanduel got on the phone and told him and the owners to do this. Otherwise it’s just absurd; the league’s quality has never been dictated by Kings-Nets in March. The regular season product suffered because dudes are hurt all the time now for national TV games, and yet we don’t see any serious push to reduce the pace of play.

only 2 pieces on the OKC team are from top 10 picks. Chet and Caruso in relation to giddey being top 10.

OKC has had poor luck in regards to draft balls. Excellent luck with Shai being as good as he is.

But your point still stands and I agree, the pendulum has swung too far. There are way better ways to combat tanking than just straight punishing the worst records.

I will be curious to see if this decreases the number of meaningful games as teams just settle out towards the end of the season. I think they are aiming for the opposite, but this could create a zone where rankings are basically meaningless for 11 teams.

Cade really saved y’all

You’re not, honestly most of these flairs haven’t had to sit through a 3 year tank shit is awful

Because if you are stuck in a cycle where you can’t really get a high pick and nobody wants to join your team then how does that team ever become competitive? Might as well contrast the bottom 3 because they are now stuck. 

there’s no relegation, so the team will just sit there being shit for ages, what fun is that?

Brooklyn will 100% try to win, I don’t see them finishing bottom 3

We have a swap, we can’t finish bottom 3 unless the rockets become a top 5 worse team next season.

And then still get punished for being genuinely bad lol

That already happens in the current system though. Look at the Pacers. If they hadn’t traded their pick, they would have gone from NBA Finals to top 5 pick, and then back to contender.

The NBA board voted for this, they could have said no and redrawn it up but they chose this. Blame silver all you want but the teams said yes.

And watch your front office not intentionally gut their teams and take on shitty contracts in exchange for draft picks.

It will be interesting to see bad teams try on and off the court.

This is not a good change overall, however there are a couple positives to this

This change is horrible since it lets Silver arbitrarily punish teams if he determines they are “tanking”. Also flatenning the odds is how we got here in the first place so why would more flattening help

!remindme 1 year

People romanticizing 2 horrible teams trying slightly harder later in the season is the most pathetic shit I’ve ever seen tbh

It makes it harder for shitty teams to dig their way out

Feel like people forget it’s first and foremost an entertainment product. And it was a joke this year.

Games not gonna matter when theres no hope for the future now is there?