League debates new anti-tanking measures
- Thread starter Tetsujin
- Start date
Yeah, but they won't take effect for a bit and won't impact this year's draft.
Some of these ideas (especially the idea of no "top-X" pick more than one year in a row) have been floated here and seem reasonable to me.
From the article:
I generally agree with these goals. If you want to "rebuild", trade away or waive the players you don't want to play. "Tanking" is not OK. Rebuilding and tanking are completely different. Don't try to game the system in uncompetitive ways.
Padrino
All-Star
It's really tricky to balance anti-tanking measures with serving genuine need in the basement of the league, because not all drafts are created equal. There's a big difference between drafting Victor Wembanyama, Cooper Flagg, or even Cade Cunningham with the number 1 overall pick and, say, Zaccharie Risacher. I'm not at all supportive of a measure that would prevent teams from selecting in the top-four two years in a row. If you've got a top-four draft pick in a year in which the most vaunted prospects are Risacher, Alex Sarr, Reed Sheppard, and Stephon Castle, you're not going to be thrilled to be kept out of the draft that could potentially net you Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper. I don't know that flattening the lottery odds has done much to help, because as this Tweet notes, it's a flawed system that delivers Wemby, Castle, and Harper to the Spurs, while a terrible team like the Wizards has largely been shut out of the best prospects across the last half-decade as they've put themselves on the path to a proper rebuild.
It's really tricky to balance anti-tanking measures with serving genuine need in the basement of the league, because objective measures can and will be abused to game the system. For some reason, we're stuck on using objective measures to determine draft order.
Subjective measures (specifically, a front office ranking-by-vote to determine draft order for each draft) can both serve genuine need and eliminate tanking. This would serve genuine need because front offices know which teams are good and which teams aren't, and they are incentivized to make sure that the best players go to the worst teams, because the opposite makes it harder for their own team to win. And it would eliminate tanking because there's no objective measure to be gamed. Again front offices, unlike W/L algorithms, know which teams are missing their best players; they know which teams are going to improve next year as young players develop; they know which teams can sign big free agents in the offseason and which teams are not going to be in the running for them; they can look one, two, and five years down the road and say "We have to give an advantage to somebody, but who do we give it to?" The answer is obviously the teams that need it most. Not OKC this year (with their unprotected Clippers pick), not the Spurs the year Robinson went down, etc.
But, we're all stuck on the idea that actual wins and losses have to mean something in draft order, so we've had well over a decade of bad suggestions that aren't going to work and never simultaneously tackle both goals of serving the needs of the genuinely bad teams in the league and eliminating tanking.
I've been screaming this to the sky for over ten years, but ain't nobody hearing it.
Padrino
All-Star
I've seen this proposal offered by you, as well as a couple talking head types in the past, but it doesn't appear to be a particularly common solution to the problem of tanking. I wonder why, because I'm a huge fan of such a proposal. I think it very smartly gets around a lot of the issues that the current system creates, and I also think it serves the NBA's larger project to be a year-round league, in which the off-season possesses its own momentum and intrigue. When utilizing objective measures, the Draft Lottery itself is not especially interesting. It's just ping pong balls in a glorified bingo caller machine. And no matter how transparent the league tries to be, there is still a significant contingent of fans who are convinced that the system is rigged.
But if each front office had to vote for top-14 draft position, and if those votes were public-facing, I think it makes the Draft Lottery itself more interesting (though it would probably need a different name). It removes a lot of the potential for conspiracy theory, because any "collusion" would have specific front office names attached to those votes. And it would lend a fun spirit of sportsmanship to the proceedings, as front offices from around the league try to lift up the teams on the bottom, as opposed to the league simply surrendering to the unnecessarily complex math of its present lottery system. It would also give fans something to consider as their favorite team's front office readies its vote. And the arguments The Vote™ would undeniably spur would draw more attention to the basement-dwellers of the league and their roster situations.
If you wanted to weigh in on who deserves the most votes, you'd have to do the legwork and examine those rosters. Which teams truly need the help that a blue chip prospect would potentially provide? And which teams simply suffered injury setbacks, or were attempting to "game" The Vote™ by sitting starters at the end of the season? Right now, the general NBA fan is not incentivized to care at all about the basement-dwellers. I think a voting system as opposed to a draft lottery gets a lot more NBA fans involved in what's going on in the bottom-half of the league.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
I hate the idea of the owners voting for draft order. Owners are billionaires that have NBA franchises as hobby projects. You're inevitably going to have draft order determined by billionaire interpersonal/business dynamics. Why would you want this? The league isn't about the owners, they're supposed to be the wallet, not the focus of attention.
In short, yuck
In short, yuck
Pretty fun idea. So if this were in play this year, the top 5 would probably be some order of:
Sac
Wash
BKN
CHA
Utah
With Dallas, OKC, SA being at the end of the lottery. Which I think virtually everyone would agree with
KainLear
Starter
Without something as extreme as relegation, which would threaten revenue sharing and likely eliminate tanking, I’d want to see the NBA add small, progressive incentives tied to success. Right now, the system mostly rewards losing through draft picks.
Every year, teams like The Beam Team grind their way into the 6–8 seed, show real growth, and then stall out in the playoffs. The league should reward that progress. Minor draft bonuses, cap flexibility, or roster exceptions for making the playoffs or improving year over year would give those teams something to build on.
It would discourage tanking and reward teams that actually compete, even potentially incentivize star players to stay with their team and rise up above with them if they restructure the salary and all those silly aprons.
Every year, teams like The Beam Team grind their way into the 6–8 seed, show real growth, and then stall out in the playoffs. The league should reward that progress. Minor draft bonuses, cap flexibility, or roster exceptions for making the playoffs or improving year over year would give those teams something to build on.
It would discourage tanking and reward teams that actually compete, even potentially incentivize star players to stay with their team and rise up above with them if they restructure the salary and all those silly aprons.
Padrino
All-Star
Front offices, not owners.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
Well, now you have a harder problem of figuring out a way to firewall team execs from their owners. Good luck with that one.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
The salary cap seems like the right mechanism for incentivizing. It doesn't solve for the incentive to try and grab an obvious GOAT candidate, like LeBron or Wembanyama, but maybe those guys don't happen often enough that it's too much of a problem.
Padrino
All-Star
Well, in that case, you might as well ignore every attempt at achieving competitive balance, since the league's Board of Governors is... made up of the 30 team owners.
You're imagining that, in the event NBA front offices vote to determine the draft order for the 14 picks that go to the non-playoff teams, the owners are going to collude to keep top draft picks from going to the teams who need them most... for what incentive, precisely?
That would have to involve every owner then. If one owner wants a particular player and works to undermine this, the other 28 teams aren't going to go along with a scheme like this to benefit that owner. There's no benefit to them to do it.
No system is perfect. The current one is better than previous ones that further incentivized tanking but still isn't "great".
No but other teams could go along with it to up the odds of landing that player themselves in a trade. A mini lottery of sorts.
I personally think load management is worse for the league than tanking. If the Lakers roll into Portland, those fans are going to want to see Luka and Lebron and they are going to feel like they got screwed if they paid a lot of money to see those guys, only to get Austin Reaves instead. If the Jazz roll into town and Markannen plays 25 instead of 35min, fans don't really care as much.
Padrino
All-Star
Again, might as well never work to improve an existing system that is already flawed if every edge case is going to frighten you away from progress. Nobody had to artificially attempt to keep the Milwaukee Bucks down so that Giannis would want out; we're already there, with the Bucks doing a fine job botching their own efforts to build a sustainable contender in the lesser conference. As @Warhawk noted above, you're going to need a significant number of votes in order to achieve this level of cronyism in a system like the one @Capt. Factorial has suggested, and there just isn't enough incentive for front offices/ownership groups to try and rig things their way prior to votes being cast.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
The league is reasonably successful at competitive balance (recently); the “voting” proposal is about getting rid of tanking.
For any incentive. I am convinced it would often be for non-basketball reasons. You give arbitrary power, and people will engage in arbitrage. (these are billionaires after all; they are familiar with the concept of arbitrage.)
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I think you're underestimating how far people will go and how creative they can get when it's their job to figure out how to take advantage of the system. The amount of situations and variables they can plan and account for is way beyond what we could conceivably come up with in a short conversation on a forum.
You wouldn't need a significant number of votes. Just a few votes could send a team falling down the draft order enough to be out of range of any obvious franchise players. That could easily be done by a few GMs calling each other and giving each other the wink wink. I personally think that is much more dangerous to the integrity of the league than bad teams playing bad players to stay bad for a chance at a crack at a good player.
What incentive would the Thunder have to incentivize the Rockets to get a better draft pick than the Clippers or Kings? Why would the Pistons vote for the Magic to get a better pick than the Wiz or Pacers? The teams at the top don't want the other good teams to get a decent pick. That challenges their position in the rankings over time.
I'm obviously not saying, in theory, that something like this isn't technically feasible. But the Thunder (for instance) will get a lot more $$$ from a deep playoff run and potential championship than some owner slipping them a couple of million for a vote. They WANT the championship - their egos feed off competition and winning (look at the methods reportedly used to draw in players by paying them outside their contracts). If they can help keep the other good teams around them mediocre, then they will do that. They aren't going to slit the throat of the goose that is laying THEM the golden egg.
Also, make it an automatic disqualification for the PO, or forfeit draft picks, or impose severe financial penalties if such activity is found. There are ways to enforce it if you really want to.
Also, the intent isn't to necessarily guarantee that the Kings and Wiz and Pacers and Clippers and Pelicans get the bottom 5 spots in a particular order, just that the teams that are legitimately bad (not tanking, just legitimately uncompetitive) get the best picks. The intent is to help prevent the Mavs or Grizz or Hawks or Heat from swooping in to get the pick.
Also, they can take into account that the Pacers should get their all-star back after surgery recovery and be good again, for instance. Helps prevent the Spurs little trick of getting both the Admiral and Timmy due to one year of injury.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
Even if it’s not straight cash, it’s favors, sway and soft power. It’s always a good idea to make a good impression with somebody 10 times richer than you are, even if they aren’t literally buying your vote.
NBA teams are involved in shared revenue so if the league does well, the owners make more money. If the next Lebron is available in 2027, are they going to vote to allow Sac or Utah to draft that player or are they going to vote a bigger market in so that player can help the league make more money so all the owners can get a piece of the pie?
This is just one of hundreds of plausible situations that could arise.
I can't tell you how it's going to go either way but I can tell you that your simplified version of teams allowing to the worst teams to pick higher in the draft so their teams can stay good is a very basic take on the situation that ignores all of the possibilities of collusion and shady behind the scenes tactics that will surely be happening if that system was in place.
I do think some system where you take multiple years records into account - which could include GM voting - is preferable to one down year allowing a team to stockpile. I also think that a team winning a top 4 pick three years in a row after getting a Wemby and a free Fox should not happen. Dallas situation is also ... strange.
I'm also not keen on rewarding teams that always seem to get lotto luck but blow it (Charlotte, New Orleans certainly).
Maybe opposed to the GM thing if there was a way of less arbitrarily rating the strengths and needs of each roster.
There's also the idea of ending the draft that @Mr. S£im Citrus has suggested and imposing a real hard cap. Maybe you give teams priority signing based on record but a player still has to agree to terms.
I do think there should be a balance against incentivizing the worst record and putting out an unwatchable product and a team trying. Kings interestingly seem to have done both this year?
I'm also not keen on rewarding teams that always seem to get lotto luck but blow it (Charlotte, New Orleans certainly).
Maybe opposed to the GM thing if there was a way of less arbitrarily rating the strengths and needs of each roster.
There's also the idea of ending the draft that @Mr. S£im Citrus has suggested and imposing a real hard cap. Maybe you give teams priority signing based on record but a player still has to agree to terms.
I do think there should be a balance against incentivizing the worst record and putting out an unwatchable product and a team trying. Kings interestingly seem to have done both this year?
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
Maybe a hard cap for rookie scale contracts? (A #1 pick would use up most of your rookie cap space, preventing teams from stockpiling lottery picks)
Section 101
All-Star
I don't think stock piling picks is an issue. It's the teams with their own picks that cause the tanking. In fact, trading the pick is a reason not to tank.
The "voting" proposal is about both maximizing competitive balance and minimizing tanking.
To truly get rid of tanking, you have to dissociate team record from draft position. Any algorithm that takes wins and losses into account can be gamed by tanking. But any arbitrary method of determining draft position means a hit to competitive balance, because good teams have the same chance at getting a top pick as bad teams.
Even preventing teams from getting successive high picks, which lots of folks seem to like the idea of, doesn't do a lot for either - teams can and will tank basically the same as they do now if they're eligible for a high pick (the caveat that teams might not tank in a bad draft year in order to tank in a good draft year may be true but doesn't actually change the tank situation); teams that are truly bad are prevented from getting as much competitive balance "help" as the may need.
It's difficult to use the draft to help maintain competitive balance and eliminate tanking, and I haven't seen a proposal that I think has a better shot at actually doing both than the voting proposal.
I'm not really worried about "collusion" concerns, as it could be punished severely. Since 30 teams would have equal weight in the votes, one team going rogue couldn't cause more than a one-draft-pick move, hardly enough to risk collusion penalties. Start getting five or six teams involved, and the number of people who can accidentally spill the plot grows, so the risk gets even higher. Better for teams to just work in their own self-interest, and if they all do, then the system should work perfectly.
I lean on the side of this proposal quickly creating a situation that is far worse for competitive balance than what we have now. Owners hire the front office... of course they're going to be the ones making the votes. And all sorts of deals will be cut in your proposed system whether for off the court business interests (Steve Ballmer's Aspiration double-dealing is evidence of that) or as promises linked to other trade deals or as favors to agents or family friends. Small market teams getting big stars is never going to happen again. How long will it be before we find out a team threw a playoff game in exchange for a better lottery pick? Cut a player that another team wanted in exchange for a better lottery pick? I can't even begin to dream up all of the ways this can be exploited. And who is goingto be enforcing punishment here if not the owners themselves? It'll be as blatantly biased as the NCAA Football Playoff selection process in no time.