sactowndog
Hall of Famer
They all lose again tonight. They are not losing if they can do anything to avoid it. Our 3 games against Indiana (1) and Brooklyn (2) will be decisive.
Race to the Bottom thread
- Thread starter iowamcnabb
- Start date
If Christie is going to play the starters 30+ and the best players down the stretch, in earnest, they may be decisive or not because home games against mediocre competition against New Orleans and Chicago the next two will not be cake walks to lose while they would be for Indiana/Washington/Brooklyn. And it will be hard to win the tank fest with that type of coaching
Exactly how long have you been a Kings fan again? My pessimism has been honed by decades of experience with this team.
AaronPDX
Bench
As a Kings fan since the late '80s, I have EARNED the right to be miserable every year!!!!Exactly how long have you been a Kings fan again? My pessimism has been honed by decades of experience with this team.
ShastaKingsFan
Hall of Famer
I'm going to laugh my *** off if we tank to get the worst record, fall to #5, and then he stays in college and we lose out on all the top picks. All this misery and we'd still fail.
AJ Dybantsa says he 'might not leave' for the NBA after this season
In an interview with the "Deseret Voices” podcast, Dybantsa shared that he hasn’t completely shut the door on staying in college.www.deseret.com
How are you going to react if that doesn't happen and they get a top 4 player in this strong draft class?
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
We need to stay at the bottom. Keep this thread open.
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
I'm sorry, but we've earned the right to think negatively over the years. At least ever since 2007.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Haha, yeah this race is far from over.
I’ll be very happy we got lucky and beat the odds. (Assuming, of course, that player actually pans out and isn’t another Bagley or Ellison or Oden.)
But unlike others I don’t base my expectations on long shots. I expect average to below average returns and then welcome better results as an unexpected boon.
Joshyjosh31
Starter
Exactly how long have you been a Kings fan again? My pessimism has been honed by decades of experience with this team.
Since 2002… I’m not gonna go into a draft lottery that has three potential franchise players thinking we’ll get the 5th pick while having the highest odds that’s madness
Joshyjosh31
Starter
I’ll wait for it to happen till then I’ll be picturing Peterson or AJ in a kings jersey
Then you're ignoring the odds. Assuming we end the year as the worst team, our odds for the #1 pick is 14.0%. That declines for picks 2-4 to 13.4%, 12.7%, and 12.0%. Those are the same exact odds for the lowest 3 teams. We don't have the highest odds - we have the same odds as two other teams. That assumption of yours is factually incorrect. The average expected draft position for teams 1-3 are pick #4 based on odds. Anything better than that is a better-than-expected result. We actually would have the highest odds out of anyone to get pick #5 at 47.9%.
Prepare to be disappointed. If, by some miracle it does happen, hope that Peterson actually plays in the pros instead of sitting and pouting on the bench half the time like he has been in college. Frankly, while I don't follow college ball at all, based on what I've heard I'd prefer AJ.
QWERTYLICIOUS
Starter
Along with two other teams...
Not to mention that we actually have higher odds of getting the 5th pick than we do a top 3 pick.
I swear some people just go off vibes and don't even know the odds they are referring to. We essentially have a 60% chance (rounded) of getting a pick of 4 or 5 even as the worst team.
Caccia
Starter
Thanks for the clarification.
R2D2
Bench
For completeness: the odds to get pick #5 (47.9%) are so high because if you finish with the worst record you cannot fall below pick #5.
The team with the second-worst record has a 20% chance to pick 6th, while the team with the third-worst record has a combined 33% (!) chance to pick 6th or 7th.
Another way of looking at this is that if you finish with the worst record you essentially have a coin-flip chance of either picking #1-#4 or pick #5. However, #5 is your floor. There is no chance of picking lower than #5, which is a realistic scenario for teams finishing with the second- or third-worst record.
NBA teams aspire to finish with the worst record not to increase their chances of a top-3 pick (as you have rightfully pointed out), but to guarantee they cannot fall below pick #5.
True. But nobody tanks a season to get the worst record in the league in the hopes of getting pick #5.
"Yay, we were epically bad, now we get to draft after 4 teams that had better records! Awesome!!!"I was merely clarifying the odds for those that seemed to think the worst record gave you better odds at the #1 pick in the lottery draw.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
But... on average you're about as likely to find a great player at #5 as you are at #2, see my earlier postsTrue. But nobody tanks a season to get the worst record in the league in the hopes of getting pick #5.
I was merely clarifying the odds for those that seemed to think the worst record gave you better odds at the #1 pick in the lottery draw.
We should have the best odds! ------------------------------>
<----------------------------- The best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
<----------------------------- The best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
But we should have the best odds! -------------------------->
<------------------------- But the best odds aren't very good!
I think the argument is that finishing last is hardly a guarantee of anything if the goal is to finish in the 1-4 territory where we could draft Peterson, Dybantsa, Boozer, or Wilson. Whether we finish first, second, or third in the race to the bottom, the odds of picking 1-4 are exactly the same. And if we finish fourth the odds are only incrementally worse (adding up to 48.1% instead of 52.1%). Utah is sitting in 5th currently with +5 wins on the Kings -- it is unlikely that we finish any lower than 4th in the race to the bottom. So why are we sweating one or two wins every couple of weeks? Because of a difference of 4%?
I'm not convinced that Flemings is substantially better than Brown, Acuff, Wagler or Philon either so the notion that we don't want to fall any lower than 5 under any circumstances also strikes me as much ado about nothing. Of those 5 guards in the "just outside the top 4" category, Philon is currently projected to get picked last on a lot of mock drafts and he's the guy I would take first. These guys probably all belong in the same tier.
EDIT: And now that I've written that, I can understand for the first time why Indiana made the gamble they did. These guys are all small guards and they have Hali. For the Pacers specifically, there is a massive drop off from 1-4 to 5-9 so they just reasoned that they might as well hedge against disaster by trading those undesirable picks for a big man.
TaxMan
Starter
My first thought when I saw that headline is he's not coming out if the Kings win the lottery and decides he wants to pass on our mess, but who knows. Maybe he just loves college life.I'm going to laugh my *** off if we tank to get the worst record, fall to #5, and then he stays in college and we lose out on all the top picks. All this misery and we'd still fail.
AJ Dybantsa says he 'might not leave' for the NBA after this season
In an interview with the "Deseret Voices” podcast, Dybantsa shared that he hasn’t completely shut the door on staying in college.
TaxMan
Starter
That may end up being true, but I know I would personally be devastated if we ended up after the lottery picking 8th or 9th vs. 5th (as our worst case scenario). Having your chosen pick of the second tier guys means something.
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
I swear some people just go off vibes and don't even know the odds they are referring to. We essentially have a 60% chance (rounded) of getting a pick of 4 or 5 even as the worst team.
I don’t think that captures the pro race to the bottom thread. More like:
We need to cap our worst case at 5 —————>
<————- you can get an all star any where
5 lets us make Flemings our worst case ———>
<————-you can get an all star any where
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When people talk about odds, they never talk about finishing last being a guarantee for picking first. Yet, the counter argument is always about guarantees. It's a strawman. The only guarantee that I can make is that if the Kings finish last, they won't pick worse than 5th. You may think it doesn't matter much but if you ran the team and you had them finish 3rd to last, then you just gave yourself 1 in 3 odds of picking 6th or 7th and you're attempting to mentally justify your lower odds by saying that there are players at 6 and 7 that you would still like to have.
If I ran a different team and I ensured they finished last, I'd have better odds of picking higher than you and more often than not I would have the ability to take the player that you like before you even had a chance at them.
We already got burned by this when we had to draft Davion after the stark decline in talent that started with our pick that year. Arguing to have us potentially placed into that situation again for the mere trade off of a few pointless wins, led by players that we mostly don't care about in a totally wasted season is not a very good strategy.
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Notice how smart teams don’t stack small guards behind all star point guards. We had Fox and Hali and drafted Davion and many here still defend taking BPA at guard no matter what.
And I disagree they will all be the same but that’s the disagreement in the pro tanking thread. That said pro tankers have generally avoided the game threads not sure why anti tankers need to criticize tanking here.
This is exactly it.
Even a handful of posts above folks are misinterpreting the odds and getting all bothered about having to have the worst record to have the best chance at #1. They don’t even understand the process or odds.
Also, per Mike Vorkunov (which to me implies changing odds again or preventing good picks multiple years in a row or something):