ShastaKingsFan
Hall of Famer
Now that they've been fined and called out, we'll see what picks the NBA allows the Jazz and Pacers to have
[NBA] Comments that don't warrant a thread (FEB)
- Thread starter Mr. S£im Citrus
- Start date
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
You already know the answer...1 and 2.
Padrino
All-Star
While I am more positive on Adam Silver's tenure than many around these parts, I'm not sure I'm on board with "Let's just make a tournament" the solution to every competitive balance problem in the NBA. I'm a huge proponent of reducing the season to 66 games, and even knowing that the NBA will never go for it, it's still crazy to me that they're considering adding yet more games to the slate.
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
serbiangoat
Starter
Just give the #1 to the 8th seed (which has the better record) it encourages people to make the playoffs which normally means winning half or more of your games in the West. Bad team should prove themselves before being gifted with the #1 pick.
GWD
Bench
And just how would Silver make a playoff work to determine the worst team or most needy team?
>Winning the tournament would prove that the winner was NOT the worst team and should not get the #1 pick.
>Losing the tournament in order to get the #1 pick would set up a tournament tanking situation of monumental proportions.
It doesn't make sense. Maybe there will be judges, like in figure skating or snowboarding, who will rank the teams on their judged observations. That would set off a storm of controversy.
>Winning the tournament would prove that the winner was NOT the worst team and should not get the #1 pick.
>Losing the tournament in order to get the #1 pick would set up a tournament tanking situation of monumental proportions.
It doesn't make sense. Maybe there will be judges, like in figure skating or snowboarding, who will rank the teams on their judged observations. That would set off a storm of controversy.
I feel like, if Damian Lillard is healthy enough to win the three-point contest, the Trail Blazers should be fined for every game he doesn't play the remainder of the season.
Wild Ass Guess: because Bryant was already going to be there for the Dunk Contest?
**** all y'all. I enjoyed the dunk contest.
Yeah, for some reason, they started at 5pm ET this year.
EDIT - Now that I think about it, it's probably because, even though this is the first year of NBC/Peacock's new deal with the NBA, NBC still has the Olympics, and has committed to giving the Winter Games its primetime coverage; it'll probably be back to its "usual" time next year.
EDIT - Now that I think about it, it's probably because, even though this is the first year of NBC/Peacock's new deal with the NBA, NBC still has the Olympics, and has committed to giving the Winter Games its primetime coverage; it'll probably be back to its "usual" time next year.
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
The basketball fan in me was happy to see Dame win the 3-point contest.
No matter what they do there will be teams losing on purpose to game the system. The #1 pick in the NBA is just that valuable. Solutions which award draft slots for winning some arbitrary milestone might prevent outright tanking, but could lead to a widening of the gap between good teams and bad teams which may produce a similar looking result where a third of the league is completely non-competitive for most of the season. Some ideas that other leagues have implemented to deal with this problem...
NFL: Hard cap and partially guaranteed contracts lead to much better free agent classes. This distributes elite talent more equally across the league but does make it harder for teams to keep their own drafted players and stars. No lottery -- teams draft in inverse order of record with ties broken by strength of schedule. Draft order for playoff teams is determined by how far they reach in the playoffs (Superbowl teams always pick last, the two teams which lost in the Conference Championship games pick ahead of them, etc.)
NHL: Only the top 2 picks are lottery selected so the team with the worst record picks no lower than third. Like the NBA there are 16 teams in the lottery. Teams are allowed to win the lottery (first or second pick) no more than twice in a 5 year period. Teams can move up no more than 10 spots (so if team #12 in the lottery seeding draws the first lotto spot they actually pick second and the team with the worst record stays at #1 then the second lottery spot is drawn for the remaining teams). Like the NFL, draft order for playoff teams is determined by how far they reach in the playoffs. Drafted players must turn 18 in their draft eligible year and can be no older than 20 (21 for international players). Drafted players are still eligible to play in the NCAA and amateur leagues. Players who have aged out of the draft become free agents.
MLB: The amateur player draft is limited to players from the U.S., Canada, and U.S. territories. Teams are assigned a pool of bonus money every year to spend on International free agents aged 16-25 with bonus pool size being determined by record and market size. This gives bad teams multiple chances to land elite talent. International players older than 25 are considered free agents. The Rule 5 draft probably couldn't be applied to the NBA, but because MLB has such an extensive minor league system this allows prospects who are not on a big league roster after 5 seasons to be claimed by other teams (each team can claim one player in draft order determined by record, no lottery). Also when players are waived, the team with the worst record as of that date (and so on in order of record) gets the first chance to claim them and take over their contract.
Section 101
All-Star
Max maybe home in France.
fansinceday1
Starter
Were there like a 1,000 people at the festivities last night? What happened? In LA?
I live in LA and did not realize until yesterday that it was even All Star weekend and even if I had I wouldn't have considered attending. Too expensive, too much of a hassle to get there, too many better things to do. That's the tame version. The rest of what I want to say about it is not appropriate for this board.
Hard cap, only partially guaranteed contracts, compensation for losing free agents off their rookie deal, I think would go a long way towards fixing the league.
Also maybe with how NCAA is headed doing things more like NHL and MLB where teams can draft players turning 18 and let them develop in college a season or two may be appropriate. Maybe have a 3 year clock on that.
These would solve a bunch of problems but admittedly introduce a bunch of new ones.
Yeah, those are the ideas I would try to borrow as well. Maybe in addition to having a hard cap there could be salary slots. Each team can sign one player to let's say 30% of the cap (franchise player), one player to 20% of the cap (borderline All Star), four players to 10% of the cap each (other starters and sixth man), 5 players to 2% of the cap each (role-players / bench unit), and the remaining 4 players on minimum contracts.
If you make those contracts partially guaranteed like the NFL (with a buyout penalty for teams exercising early termination that they have to pay to the player) then a team making a mistake like maxing out a player who underperforms isn't crippled for multiple seasons. This would also incentivize star players to spread out amongst the 30 teams to maximize their own value. It would mean less continuity year to year but more competitive balance. There might still be some tanking for a truly elite prospect but with good young players becoming free agents more frequently under a hard cap system, the draft would no longer be the only way a small market team can get themselves out of the basement.
I thought Rachel Nichols had a really good take on this recently:
I think she's exactly right that the problem right now is the incentive structure. The NBA draft has become the end all be all of team building. We hardly ever see a team win a championship without landing a superstar in the draft. There are maybe 6 teams every season who are actually competing for a championship, another 8-10 who are stuck in the middle trying to get there, and then everyone else really should just be losing every game. That's not going away with penalizing teams for resting players or changing how the draft order gets decided.
So instead why not eliminate the lottery entirely and work on fixing competitive balance instead? Talent distribution is the real problem that needs to be solved. Anybody worth keeping already gets an extension under this current CBA so the free agent classes are terrible. Then on top of that the apron rules have made trade deals Byzantine or borderline impossible. If the league is set up where you need a superstar to be competitive and the only way to get a superstar is either drafting them or being a marquee big market franchise, trying to "fix" tanking by tweaking the lottery rules even further without making any other changes is only going to make competitive balance worse.
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