Race to the Bottom thread

Capt. Factorial said:
The Athletic has a story on a league conference call from Thursday (some of this is probably filtering through social media already)


A few salient points:


Nothing changing this year, but Silver wants to completely upend things for next year. The only incentive being to win games *sounds* like the league is favoring getting away from giving the best picks to the worst teams. This would be a disaster for us. Small market franchises with no real free agency draw are going to end up dead in the water if they can't refresh with high draft talent. Anybody remember 2007-2022?


Yeah, thanks Spurs or Pistons! I guess that's "Tank for me, but not for thee!"


We need to get the Front Office Vote proposal in front of people, quick, or they're going to ruin things.
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Maybe the league would rather help middling teams instead of the very worst. Maybe the worst position to be in should not be the middle? If done right, helping teams stuck in the middle get into playoff contention might be better business then helping teams that are intentionally trying to lose.
 
iowamcnabb said:
Maybe the league would rather help middling teams instead of the very worst. Maybe the worst position to be in should not be the middle? If done right, helping teams stuck in the middle get into playoff contention might be better business then helping teams that are intentionally trying to lose.
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Maybe that's what they want, but they'll create a good half-dozen teams that are stuck as absolute bottom feeders and can't get out.

"You're the worst team in the league, and you're in a small market and have no chance of attracting quality free agents. Here's the #14 pick! Again! Enjoy!"
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Maybe that's what they want, but they'll create a good half-dozen teams that are stuck as absolute bottom feeders and can't get out.

"You're the worst team in the league, and you're in a small market and have no chance of attracting quality free agents. Here's the #14 pick! Again! Enjoy!"
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That wouldn’t apply to the Kings given they are almost never among the bottom 6 teams.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Maybe that's what they want, but they'll create a good half-dozen teams that are stuck as absolute bottom feeders and can't get out.

"You're the worst team in the league, and you're in a small market and have no chance of attracting quality free agents. Here's the #14 pick! Again! Enjoy!"
Click to expand...

But many of the bottom teams are intentionally trying to lose, and they actually have good pieces that don't make them helpless.

Pacers - have Tyrese (hurt) and Zubac (sitting) in addition to Siakam. Hardly a hopeless situation.
Wizards - choosing to sit Trae, AD, and now Sarr. Hardly hopeless.
Jazz- Have Lauri, JJJ, Kessler, George, etc... Hardly hopeless.
Pelicans - Have Trey, Queen, Zion, Fears. Hardly hopeless.
Nets- Have Porter, Claxton, and young guys. Not as good as the others, but not hopeless.

Heck, even the Kings have talent - it just doesn't fit at all. But Domas, Lavine, Demar, Keegan, Monk, Hunter, etc... is hardly a lack of talent. It was just an awful team build, impacted by the Domas and Keegan injuries. With a more healthy Domas and Keegan, and better incentives to win now, this is probably a 30 win team, not the 16-18 win team we will be end of season.

All of these teams could be more competitive if they wanted to be, or were not so injured. So the idea that these bottom six teams would be in a rudderless void if they didn't get the best picks seems strange to me. I would be in favor of locking the bottom 10 teams at the ASB, and then awarding picks 1-10 to those teams, based on their records at the end of the year, with #1 going to the best team.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
It was not obvious. Nor is it pedantic because it's actually a very salient point. One rogue owner doesn't move the needle much. That's an important point. You're acting like one rogue owner can ruin things completely, when in fact one rogue owner barely changes things.

I feel like I've been addressing the point the whole time. My system doesn't require the participants to be perfect competitors. It just needs most of them to be pretty good competitors (that's a good bet) and needs to prevent large coordinated conspiracies (I don't think that's hard, because they will be obvious).
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The only point I think you are missing is if I play team X 4 times a year and team Y 2 times a year I am going to have a strong bias to send player 5* to team Y every time as a competitor.

So while I conceptually wholly agree with your approach, I do think you have not appropriately controlled yet for that significant bias in your overall design. I think that bias is significant enough that it can impact the success of the proposal.
 
Rain man said:
But many of the bottom teams are intentionally trying to lose, and they actually have good pieces that don't make them helpless.

Pacers - have Tyrese (hurt) and Zubac (sitting) in addition to Siakam. Hardly a hopeless situation.
Wizards - choosing to sit Trae, AD, and now Sarr. Hardly hopeless.
Jazz- Have Lauri, JJJ, Kessler, George, etc... Hardly hopeless.
Pelicans - Have Trey, Queen, Zion, Fears. Hardly hopeless.
Nets- Have Porter, Claxton, and young guys. Not as good as the others, but not hopeless.

Heck, even the Kings have talent - it just doesn't fit at all. But Domas, Lavine, Demar, Keegan, Monk, Hunter, etc... is hardly a lack of talent. It was just an awful team build, impacted by the Domas and Keegan injuries. With a more healthy Domas and Keegan, and better incentives to win now, this is probably a 30 win team, not the 16-18 win team we will be end of season.

All of these teams could be more competitive if they wanted to be, or were not so injured. So the idea that these bottom six teams would be in a rudderless void if they didn't get the best picks seems strange to me. I would be in favor of locking the bottom 10 teams at the ASB, and then awarding picks 1-10 to those teams, based on their records at the end of the year, with #1 going to the best team.
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I think the Kings have less talent than you think as evidenced by no one want to trade for our guys when on the open market. We literally could not given them away without attaching assets.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
The Athletic has a story on a league conference call from Thursday (some of this is probably filtering through social media already)


A few salient points:


Nothing changing this year, but Silver wants to completely upend things for next year. The only incentive being to win games *sounds* like the league is favoring getting away from giving the best picks to the worst teams. This would be a disaster for us. Small market franchises with no real free agency draw are going to end up dead in the water if they can't refresh with high draft talent. Anybody remember 2007-2022?


Yeah, thanks Spurs or Pistons! I guess that's "Tank for me, but not for thee!"


We need to get the Front Office Vote proposal in front of people, quick, or they're going to ruin things.
Click to expand...
What do you propose, the league sit on their hands and do nothing?

The league has a tanking problem and has for some time. End of the day it’s about product. If a third of the league aren’t trying and/or are bad enough to earn a top pick, the next third are stuck in mediocrity, and the final third are competitive, then something needs to be done (to be clear, those fractions are a rough estimate and not exact).

To play devil’s advocate, the league shouldn’t be rewarding teams that lose on purpose and/or continue to be poorly run. If a team hasn’t managed to rebuild successfully in twenty years (eg us, Hornets, Pelicans etc), then it’s their own fault as they’ve clearly done things wrong. Perhaps if they remove the rewards or flatten the odds, it might give those poorly run teams the kick up the rear they need to sort their stuff out? Or perhaps they’ll continue to be stuck in a rut 🤷‍♂️

Does changing the draft significantly impact smaller teams?

Potentially, but there’s nothing to say that any team needs to be rebuilt through top three/five draft picks. The Warriors big three weren’t drafted in the top five. The Nuggets aren’t built around top five picks. There’s other teams that have been built on a combination of lottery picks, diamond in the rough picks (non-lottery/second round picks etc) and smart trade deals. So changing the draft doesn’t necessarily put a nail in the coffin for small market teams, it simply means they’ll need to be smart to build their teams.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Maybe that's what they want, but they'll create a good half-dozen teams that are stuck as absolute bottom feeders and can't get out.

"You're the worst team in the league, and you're in a small market and have no chance of attracting quality free agents. Here's the #14 pick! Again! Enjoy!"
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The league has always been built around a select few elite teams that typically rotate around over a number of years, with a number of mediocre team, and those stuck at the bottom.

I think we need to get out of this ‘small market’ mentality and feeling sorry for ourselves because other small market teams have rebuilt their rosters without needing multi year tank jobs. Sadly, our team hasn’t been well run in many years and that’s why we’ve never rebuilt successfully. We’ve probably been one of the worst run since the breakup of the 2002 team.
 
sactowndog said:
I think the Kings have less talent than you think as evidenced by no one want to trade for our guys when on the open market. We literally could not given them away without attaching assets.
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I think most of that is because of the contracts. If Domas made half of his salary he would have a much bigger market. Just look at Zubac and the return he got. You can't tell me that Domas on a 2/40 contract would have gotten at least the return of Zubac.

Same as Lavine. There is a useful player in there, and if he was making 3/50 or 2/35 and was motivated on a decent team, someone would give up assets. Monk on 2/12? Someone trades you something for him too. If Demar was a true expiring, you probably could offload him too.

So I don't think there is a lack of talent. I just think it is so badly mismatched and overpaid.
 
sactowndog said:
The only point I think you are missing is if I play team X 4 times a year and team Y 2 times a year I am going to have a strong bias to send player 5* to team Y every time as a competitor.

So while I conceptually wholly agree with your approach, I do think you have not appropriately controlled yet for that significant bias in your overall design. I think that bias is significant enough that it can impact the success of the proposal.
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So Eastern conference front offices bias the West teams towards the top and Western conference front offices bias the East teams towards the top and everything cancels out.

But again, we're both on board with the basic scheme. The specific details could get hashed out and if I ultimately lost the argument I'd be much happier with "East votes on West and Vice Versa" than the current tank-a-thon. I just don't think it's a major issue because of canceling out.
 
ESP47 said:
Caleb Wilson!
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That meme isn't referencing any player in particular, just the general assumption that the Kings will screw up any decision that can be screwed up. And Caleb Wilson is about as far from Marvin Bagley as a player could be. Of the projected top 5 players (Peterson, Flemings, Dybantsa, Boozer, Wilson) he's the only one who leads his team in Defensive Rating. I would bet that Bagley has never led any of his teams in Defensive Rating, except maybe in High School.
 
hrdboild said:
That meme isn't referencing any player in particular, just the general assumption that the Kings will screw up any decision that can be screwed up. And Caleb Wilson is about as far from Marvin Bagley as a player could be. Of the projected top 5 players (Peterson, Flemings, Dybantsa, Boozer, Wilson) he's the only one who leads his team in Defensive Rating. I would bet that Bagley has never led any of his teams in Defensive Rating, except maybe in High School.
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I would take it a step further and bet that Bagley has never led any of his teams in any major defensive stat. Not even in high school.

#SaltyKingsFan
#Should'veDraftedLuka
 
iowamcnabb said:
That wouldn’t apply to the Kings given they are almost never among the bottom 6 teams.
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Somebody is going to be the worst.

I think the only thing propping Sacramento up from the bottom over most of the past 15 years was refusing to tank; thus the Kings were getting cheap wins against teams that weren't trying to win.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
The Athletic has a story on a league conference call from Thursday (some of this is probably filtering through social media already)


A few salient points:


Nothing changing this year, but Silver wants to completely upend things for next year. The only incentive being to win games *sounds* like the league is favoring getting away from giving the best picks to the worst teams. This would be a disaster for us. Small market franchises with no real free agency draw are going to end up dead in the water if they can't refresh with high draft talent. Anybody remember 2007-2022?


Yeah, thanks Spurs or Pistons! I guess that's "Tank for me, but not for thee!"


We need to get the Front Office Vote proposal in front of people, quick, or they're going to ruin things.
Click to expand...
I agree with the implications of a free agency, and the inherent righteousness of giving the best picks to the worst teams.

But given that this is the threat that the league is making, shouldn't you question your premise here?
Capt. Factorial said:
I find it deeply, deeply unlikely that 30 owners collectively would direct draft picks away from weak small-market teams and towards good large-market teams, deliberately creating an NBA underclass and stacking the already top teams with more top talent. I would not worry about this happening at all.
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Implementing this proposal implies the owners would collectively be more than happy to screw weak small-market teams, so maybe you oughta adjust your priors.

If one is properly skeptical of the owners commitment to competition, is it still palatable to give owners more decision power?
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
Somebody is going to be the worst.

I think the only thing propping Sacramento up from the bottom over most of the past 15 years was refusing to tank; thus the Kings were getting cheap wins against teams that weren't trying to win.
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Maybe for a few games at the end of the season but I don’t think that has had much of an affect on 40 some years of picking 8 or later. IMO, nearly any system would be better than rewarding intentional losing. In the betting world that’s lifetime bans and jail time. In the front office world it’s 3D chess. Get rid of it imo.
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
I agree with the implications of a free agency, and the inherent righteousness of giving the best picks to the worst teams.

But given that this is the threat that the league is making, shouldn't you question your premise here?

Implementing this proposal implies the owners would collectively be more than happy to screw weak small-market teams, so maybe you oughta adjust your priors.

If one is properly skeptical of the owners commitment to competition, is it still palatable to give owners more decision power?
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I assume that by "this proposal" you are referring to the Adam Silver, shall we say, "threat" that was the subject of the article? There is no definitive proposal - but the options known to have been mentioned are similar to things that we have previously heard, none of which address the problem in what I consider to be a useful fashion, and all of which are designed to effectively "flatten" lottery odds rather than actually remove team record from the equation in the first place.

That said, I don't think that implementing one of these proposals would mean that the NBA owners want to screw small market teams. It would just mean that NBA owners are uncreative and aren't incentivized to think deeply about the tanking problem to address the core issue (this requires a new paradigm), but rather are perfectly happy to slap a band-aid that will reduce tanking (but will unintentionally handcuff the "competitive balance" purpose of the draft) on an existing paradigm.

I'm perfectly happy with my existing priors.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
I assume that by "this proposal" you are referring to the Adam Silver, shall we say, "threat" that was the subject of the article? There is no definitive proposal - but the options known to have been mentioned are similar to things that we have previously heard, none of which address the problem in what I consider to be a useful fashion, and all of which are designed to effectively "flatten" lottery odds rather than actually remove team record from the equation in the first place.

That said, I don't think that implementing one of these proposals would mean that the NBA owners want to screw small market teams. It would just mean that NBA owners are uncreative and aren't incentivized to think deeply about the tanking problem to address the core issue (this requires a new paradigm), but rather are perfectly happy to slap a band-aid that will reduce tanking (but will unintentionally handcuff the "competitive balance" purpose of the draft) on an existing paradigm.

I'm perfectly happy with my existing priors.
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"This proposal" means any proposal X that deprioritizes competitive balance (and by doing so screws the Kings); by flattening the lottery, instituting rookie free agency etc.

But as I understand you, you are saying (paraphrased) "we need to implement this proposal or else the owners will act collectively to destroy competitive balance." You are being logically inconsistent when you also defend your proposal with "it's inconceivably improbable that owners would act collectively to destroy competitive balance"

I don't claim that owners are sociopaths (I think it's deeply, deeply unlikely that all owners are sociopaths) I think they, on average, are highly apathetic to basketball competition; they care about other things more. I also think that those "other things" should be firewalled from the basketball competition. That's why I prefer the "rule-based" paradigm.
 
iowamcnabb said:
Maybe for a few games at the end of the season but I don’t think that has had much of an affect on 40 some years of picking 8 or later. IMO, nearly any system would be better than rewarding intentional losing. In the betting world that’s lifetime bans and jail time. In the front office world it’s 3D chess. Get rid of it imo.
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I think I just accept that the regular season's purpose is to "create content" more than it is to maximize competition.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
So Eastern conference front offices bias the West teams towards the top and Western conference front offices bias the East teams towards the top and everything cancels out.

But again, we're both on board with the basic scheme. The specific details could get hashed out and if I ultimately lost the argument I'd be much happier with "East votes on West and Vice Versa" than the current tank-a-thon. I just don't think it's a major issue because of canceling out.
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No I think Pacific division coaches bias down Pacific Division teams most, Western Conference teams more and bias up Eastern Conference teams. If you have 2 to 1 teams I’m not sure the biases cancel out completely.

And yes. We are discussing details on the agreed upon larger concept.
 
Insomniacal Fan said:
But as I understand you, you are saying (paraphrased) "we need to implement this proposal or else the owners will act collectively to destroy competitive balance." You are being logically inconsistent when you also defend your proposal with "it's inconceivably improbable that owners would act collectively to destroy competitive balance"
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No. The proposition "The owners do not appear to have been presented with an optimal option and will implement a suboptimal option out of impatience" and the proposition "The owners would deliberately sabotage the optimal option if given the opportunity" are not the same proposition.
 
sactowndog said:
No I think Pacific division coaches bias down Pacific Division teams most, Western Conference teams more and bias up Eastern Conference teams.
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I tried laying the whole thing out with emoji arrows and the website barfed on it. Oh well.

Anyway, if Pacific teams give Pacific "-2", give S'West and N'West "-1" and give Atlantic/Central/S'East "+1", that's fine because all of the other divisions do complementary things. It all cancels out. Every division gets a net "-1" (under this simple numeration). But use any numeration you want, every division comes out equal. I don't see any issue.

sactowndog said:
If you have 2 to 1 teams I’m not sure the biases cancel out completely.
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I don't understand what you mean by 2 to 1. Each division has the same number of teams in it.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
No. The proposition "The owners do not appear to have been presented with an optimal option and will implement a suboptimal option out of impatience" and the proposition "The owners would deliberately sabotage the optimal option if given the opportunity" are not the same proposition.
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Ok, even if you believe there's a meaningful distinction between laziness (apathy), avarice and malice ; laziness just becomes another motivation for owners to ignore competitive balance.

(Why did the owners vote to give the Lakers yet another top 5 pick? Oh, they're not greedy, they're just lazy)
 
Capt. Factorial said:
I tried laying the whole thing out with emoji arrows and the website barfed on it. Oh well.

Anyway, if Pacific teams give Pacific "-2", give S'West and N'West "-1" and give Atlantic/Central/S'East "+1", that's fine because all of the other divisions do complementary things. It all cancels out. Every division gets a net "-1" (under this simple numeration). But use any numeration you want, every division comes out equal. I don't see any issue.


I don't understand what you mean by 2 to 1. Each division has the same number of teams in it.
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Right but they may not have multiple bad teams. They can only fade so much without being obvious.
 
sactowndog said:
Right but they may not have multiple bad teams. They can only fade so much without being obvious.
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OK, I didn't understand what you were suggesting, but now I do.

Let's play this out and see what happens. I'll assume that there are five teams that are the "objective" worst (3 tied for worst, then two), and that no objective observer would disagree, but let's make the distribution unequal:

T1 - Fakers (Pacific)
T1- Trippers (Pacific)
T1 - Blunder (Southwest)
4 - 86ers (Atlantic)
5 - Cheat (Southeast)

I basically played this out with every team downvoting in-division by 3 slots, downvoting in-conference by 2 slots, and had to simulate 3 more teams from 6-8 to slot in in place of the downvotes. And the answer didn't change, the top three ended up 1-3-2 (but I was kinda randomizing the order since they were tied, and it went down to the second/third digit), then 4-5-6-7-8, just as expected. I think it works itself out even when bad teams get stacked in one division.
 
it feels like you are all trying to come up with THE most complicated system to solve something that seems kind of simple.

i like the idea of making a decision at the all-star break (have to schedule so all teams have played the same number of games).

there will be a round of "excitement" as teams approach the break, where a win/loss could result in "playoffs" or "lottery" (for some teams).

and i believe this question should be answered after expansion.

16 teams in each conference.

top 8 make the playoffs and bottom 8 don't (but are in the lottery draw).

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forget the play-in. but if you MUST keep the play-in, stack it in favor of the "top eight".

you COULD have the four "lottery draw" teams with the better records (in each conference) in one game play offs and the two conference "winners" - from that "bottom half" group, play against the #8 seed in each conference but in a way that a "bottom" team would have to go a LONG way to replace the #8 in each "top half" (like maybe three games are at the "top half" team's court and it's two out of three - or something equally as "long shot").

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the top 8 (in each conference) are playing for playoff seeding - THAT is where you - later - might see some "jockeying/tanking"

the 8 that don't get seeded (and that decision will be made at the break, so, if you are bottom 8 at that time, that's the group you are in, even if you win your next 15 - but winning the next 15 won't help/hurt your lottery chances - but perhaps it gives you a long shot chance to get hot and grab the #8 seed) are still playing to improve, maybe playing more young players, with still a shot to play off with the other three top "bottom" teams (in each conference) and win your way in.

hey, let's play THOSE "possible eighth seed play-in games" IN "the emirates", to make up for the fact that we will eliminate "the cup" (during the regular season).

no matter what, (even if one or two teams get lucky and play in to #8), the bottom eight (in each conference) are going to get picks 1-16, but in a blind draw, (perhaps alternating conferences with the picks) in the summer.

no incentive to tank.

simple enough?
 
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eleventy said:
it feels like you are all trying to come up with THE most complicated system to solve something that seems kind of simple.

i like the idea of making a decision at the all-star break (have to schedule so all teams have played the same number of games).

there will be a round of "excitement" as teams approach the break, where a win/loss could result in "playoffs" or "lottery" (for some teams).

and i believe this question should be answered after expansion.

16 teams in each conference.

top 8 make the playoffs and bottom 8 don't (but are in the lottery draw).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

forget the play-in. but if you MUST keep the play-in, stack it in favor of the "top eight".

you COULD have the four "lottery draw" teams with the better records (in each conference) in one game play offs and the two conference "winners" - from that "bottom half" group, play against the #8 seed in each conference but in a way that a "bottom" team would have to go a LONG way to replace the #8 in each "top half" (like maybe three games are at the "top half" team's court and it's two out of three - or something equally as "long shot").

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


the top 8 (in each conference) are playing for playoff seeding - THAT is where you - later - might see some "jockeying/tanking"

the 8 that don't get seeded (and that decision will be made at the break, so, if you are bottom 8 at that time, that's the group you are in, even if you win your next 15 - but winning the next 15 won't help/hurt your lottery chances - but perhaps it gives you a long shot chance to get hot and grab the #8 seed) are still playing to improve, maybe playing more young players, with still a shot to play off with the other three top "bottom" teams (in each conference) and win your way in.

hey, let's play THOSE "possible eighth seed play-in games" IN "the emirates", to make up for the fact that we will eliminate "the cup" (during the regular season).

no matter what, (even if one or two teams get lucky and play in to #8), the bottom eight (in each conference) are going to get picks 1-16, but in a blind draw, (perhaps alternating conferences with the picks) in the summer.

no incentive to tank.

simple enough?
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No. How is this in any realm any easier than "let the GMs vote on it" - which is objectively simple?

And even you say you still might see some tanking with your process.

Any process that results in the worst teams not getting the highest draft picks guarantees the worst small market teams will be buried in basketball purgatory.
 
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