Race to the Bottom thread

Mike said:
The current system has not helped teams like Charlotte and ourselves to field competitive teams over the last two decades. Both have consistently been in the draft lottery. Both arebuilt time and time again to no avail. So to play devil’s advocate, what have we to lose?

Charlotte have four winning seasons and three playoff off appearances since they came back into the league in around 2004/5. We have two winning seasons and play off appearances post-Adelman.

I’m not saying I’d be an advocate of scrapping the draft, but it’s not like the system has been kind to us.
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That is down to pee-poor decisions on the part of our front offices, not due to the system. It gave us every opportunity to ascend.
 
Dime Dropper said:
That is down to pee-poor decisions on the part of our front offices, not due to the system. It gave us every opportunity to ascend.
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The legendary HOF talent was right there for us to draft. We didn't. Not a fault of the system, but our own eval.

I still think the lottery system is quite awful, but it at least gives a team like the Kings a CHANCE to grab that talent. The NBA rookie FA, would not
 
midtowner said:
Cooper Flag is a generational talent totally worth tanking for. Dallas got lucky. The Kings did themselves no favors by not blowing it up before last season.
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i'm not for "scrapping the draft" - however

it does open one interesting possibility

and that is that if teams have to "outbid" other teams for generational talent, they are going to have to be pretty sure they are correct in their talent assessment, before committing big money.

as someone said earlier, what if the kings (or someone who outbid them) gave bagley a 4/160 contract out of college, at age 19?

one thing that a "no draft" system would HAVE to mandate is a hard cap (same for all teams), otherwise the "haves" could always outbid the "have nots".

with a "same for all teams" cap, you'd have to carefully consider how much you would have to offer.

and the "bottom half" teams, would have the advantage that the "good" teams would have (likely) more salary already committed to "good" players, so, "bad" teams should have more money to offer.

then we see if the best players would choose the best teams (only) and i don't think they would (if the good teams could only offer "less" money)

and before someone (again) says, "players have more ways to earn big money in a bigger market", well, as i said before, sportico does not indicate that:

once again:

www.sportico.com

Highest-Paid Athletes in the World: Full List

Cristiano Ronaldo was the highest-paid athlete in the world in 2025, earning $260 million.
www.sportico.com www.sportico.com

and, of course the players (and agents) would never go for it.
 
Mike said:
Perhaps, but manipulating player availability is a current issue in the league where teams aren’t exactly transparent. For example, the Jazz and Pacers have been fined for breaches of player participation policy. So this needs addressing whether they change the existing system or keep it the same.

End of the day something needs to change because there’s less than thirty games left and at least half a dozen teams could throw the towel in because there’s nothing left to play for. The competitor in me would say pride, but realistically we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot if we went 14-12 to close out the season. Same goes for other teams in our situation. It really is a bad look for the league having almost a third of its teams with eyes on the top draft pick.
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Right. And before the last “fix” they had three or four but the last fix made it worse not better.
 
Tetsujin said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2023836426958500052
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This is also why the Montréal Canadiens are inscribed on the Stanley Cup 24 times but only twice since the 80s and zero times over the last 30+ years.

Exactly half of these cup runs came before the first NHL draft was held in 1963, though they remained dominant into the 70s.

For a small amount of perspective, the last time they hoisted the cup was 1993. In 1994, the NY Rangers won their first cup in 54 years. Fans used to taunt them with "1940" for years until they finally won. The winningest franchise in cup history is now over 3/5 of the way there themselves.
 
Joshyjosh31 said:
We know how silver fixes unnecessary problems we’re having a tournament

How are bad teams supposed to get better Jesus get this idiot out of here

Most of these don’t make sense if odds freeze at the deadline why the **** wouldn’t you just start the tank in October then play after the deadline
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Yes, that's exactly how teams would tank.

I'm no longer stunned that they are considering every possibility that I already know won't work while never considering the one that I know will. I am Old Man, Screaming At Clouds. Oh well.
 
The Spurs getting Wemby, Castle, and Harper in the top 4 of three consecutive drafts gonna be the “getting on the last lifeboat off the titanic” of the new “no consecutive top 4 picks!” Draft paradigm.
 
Joshyjosh31 said:
Well it’s silver.. what way do you think would work?
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I am a strong proponent of a game-theoretical approach where (in a simple description) each NBA front office ranks the teams in the order they think teams should pick, and those rankings are combined/averaged to get the final draft order. Teams will be motivated to direct the top picks to the teams with the bleakest future outlooks, and won't be fooled by tanking, because they will take rosters/contracts/ability to sign FAs into consideration. It takes the objective "team record" measure completely out of it, which then gives teams no real incentive to tank. That's the basic gist of what I think would work well. Lots of details to iron out, but from a general point of view the approach should be solid.
 
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