Race to the Bottom thread

Because Christie's job is on the line and the players have some pride.

Look, ideally, yes, DDR plays 20 minutes a game, our G-leaguers and rooks play more minutes, and we maybe lose an extra game or two.

But Doug can't play that game. I know his record sucks this year but if he ever wants another job again actively tanking games isn't going to get him one.

You think Max and others will be happy with the team intentionally losing games? This is their careers you're talking about. They want every damn win they can get.

And with the flattened odds, chances to get the #1 pick are much more spread out than before. After the lottery we could be cursing the fact that if we had won only 2 more games (or whatever) we would have gotten the #1 pick. It's all a crapshoot.

Doug's career doesn't hinge on whether or not he is tanking. The coach doesn't just take it upon himself to tank. If a team is tanking, it's because the owner, GM and coach are all on board that it's the best thing for the franchise. No team is going to look at Doug and not want to hire him because he did what the franchise wanted to do and played the young guys more minutes. They aren't going to hire him because he's just not a good coach in general. You think the Kings or some other team are going to be interested in Doug because DDR went off for 40pts against a Jazz team led by Cody Williams? These wins aren't saving his job. What could save his job would be the young players developing, looking promising, yet still losing because they aren't seasoned enough to beat legit teams on a regular basis. That would make him look good. Merely letting DDR and Westbrook do their thing is not good coaching. Anyone can do that.

Max's career isn't hinging on anything either. Every year plenty of teams tank to get a good pick and their young guys don't flame out because they got to play more minutes instead of riding the bench for 35yo+ players that are trying to thump G League lineups at the end of the year when the team has been a bottom dweller all year.

We've already talked about the lottery odds so there's no need to rehashing that argument. If you think there's no real difference in finishing last or 4th to last, then don't complain when the Kings fall out of the top 5 because there is a zero percent chance of that happening if they finished last.
 
Doug's career doesn't hinge on whether or not he is tanking. The coach doesn't just take it upon himself to tank. If a team is tanking, it's because the owner, GM and coach are all on board that it's the best thing for the franchise. No team is going to look at Doug and not want to hire him because he did what the franchise wanted to do and played the young guys more minutes. They aren't going to hire him because he's just not a good coach in general. You think the Kings or some other team are going to be interested in Doug because DDR went off for 40pts against a Jazz team led by Cody Williams? These wins aren't saving his job. What could save his job would be the young players developing, looking promising, yet still losing because they aren't seasoned enough to beat legit teams on a regular basis. That would make him look good. Merely letting DDR and Westbrook do their thing is not good coaching. Anyone can do that.

Max's career isn't hinging on anything either. Every year plenty of teams tank to get a good pick and their young guys don't flame out because they got to play more minutes instead of riding the bench for 35yo+ players that are trying to thump G League lineups at the end of the year when the team has been a bottom dweller all year.

We've already talked about the lottery odds so there's no need to rehashing that argument. If you think there's no real difference in finishing last or 4th to last, then don't complain when the Kings fall out of the top 5 because there is a zero percent chance of that happening if they finished last.
I would point out that our GM has said publicly that he doesn't believe in tanking.
 
a
You state Westbrook is horrible, say you want the Kings to lose then get mad when they play Westbrook?

It’s called losing with your youth why are you acting like you don’t know this we should’ve brought in Cousins and sat Max too huh smh
Doug's career doesn't hinge on whether or not he is tanking. The coach doesn't just take it upon himself to tank. If a team is tanking, it's because the owner, GM and coach are all on board that it's the best thing for the franchise. No team is going to look at Doug and not want to hire him because he did what the franchise wanted to do and played the young guys more minutes. They aren't going to hire him because he's just not a good coach in general. You think the Kings or some other team are going to be interested in Doug because DDR went off for 40pts against a Jazz team led by Cody Williams? These wins aren't saving his job. What could save his job would be the young players developing, looking promising, yet still losing because they aren't seasoned enough to beat legit teams on a regular basis. That would make him look good. Merely letting DDR and Westbrook do their thing is not good coaching. Anyone can do that.

Max's career isn't hinging on anything either. Every year plenty of teams tank to get a good pick and their young guys don't flame out because they got to play more minutes instead of riding the bench for 35yo+ players that are trying to thump G League lineups at the end of the year when the team has been a bottom dweller all year.

We've already talked about the lottery odds so there's no need to rehashing that argument. If you think there's no real difference in finishing last or 4th to last, then don't complain when the Kings fall out of the top 5 because there is a zero percent chance of that happening if they finished last.

That’s how OKC coach survived the rebuild that and not playing an over the hill pg over SGA
 
a


It’s called losing with your youth why are you acting like you don’t know this we should’ve brought in Cousins and sat Max too huh smh
Just throwing Carter out there for 30 minutes doesn’t magically make him better. Real development happens through skill work with work on shooting, ballhandling, decision-making and it happens mostly outside of games.
 
I would point out that our GM has said publicly that he doesn't believe in tanking.

No self-respecting competitor does, or should.

When it comes to fans, it’s hard not to notice that the vast majority head over heels in favor of tanking are the ones that aren’t actively spending much money on the team (if any) while it’s happening.
 
No self-respecting competitor does, or should.

When it comes to fans, it’s hard not to notice that the vast majority head over heels in favor of tanking are the ones that aren’t actively spending much money on the team (if any) while it’s happening.
Baloney. Many of us are/were season ticket holders who are tired of wasting our money on incompetence.
 

The NBA presented three comprehensive anti-tanking concepts to its Board of Governors on Wednesday, with modifications expected to each before a formal vote in May, per ESPN sources.

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.

2) 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.

3) 18 teams in a "5 by 5" lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.
All these options are a lot more reasonable than early threats to eliminate the lottery all-together.

1 Is to just flatten the lottery odds. Which will have the side effect of bad teams staying bad for longer. Will occasionally randomly help middling play-in teams though, which I guess could be nice.

2. Is by far my favorite option. Takes away the sting of bad teams like the Kings being "competitive" in the late season, discourages teams from taking a dip into the lottery when convenient (Pacers) I only wish it were a 3 year average.

3. Wut? How would this discourage tanking?
 

Still, Silver said Wednesday that there isn't an obvious solution to the problem -- and even suggested more changes could come in future collective bargaining discussions with the National Basketball Players Association, though the current CBA runs through the end of the decade.

"There is an aspect of team-building that is called a genuine rebuild, a rebuild with integrity," Silver said. 
"The problem we're having these days is it's become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.

"There's such a subtlety to this when incentives don't match, when we're now into it with coaches' decisions on lineups and when players come in and out of the game, injuries, doctors going back and forth with each other, pain levels of players that my sense is when I say fix now, yes, we need to do something more extreme than we did with those incremental changes the last four times [we've made changes]."
 
All these options are a lot more reasonable than early threats to eliminate the lottery all-together.

1 Is to just flatten the lottery odds. Which will have the side effect of bad teams staying bad for longer. Will occasionally randomly help middling play-in teams though, which I guess could be nice.

2. Is by far my favorite option. Takes away the sting of bad teams like the Kings being "competitive" in the late season, discourages teams from taking a dip into the lottery when convenient (Pacers) I only wish it were a 3 year average.

3. Wut? How would this discourage tanking?
Typical hamfisted thinking by the NBA, taking a system that isn't addressing the problem correctly and trying to put a bandage on it.

They just can't recognize that no matter how you tweak it, a lottery can't accomplish BOTH goals of (1) eliminating tanking and (2) directing top picks towards the worst teams. At best, it turns the dial between the two. These options move the dial towards eliminating tanking, but at the cost of allowing some bad teams to stay bad. I suppose the NBA is trying to put playoff teams into the lottery to encourage teams to shoot for the playoffs, but that just makes things worse for the bad teams.

The draw-all-18 proposition is almost going back to the Frozen Envelope era. Interestingly, I don't think the NBA can consider using the current 14-ball combo system to do this sort of a lottery. The problem is that the current system is a with-replacement drawing, and if you want to draw all 18 slots, it will take a long time. A quick simulation indicates that it would take about 100 drawings to complete if the odds for teams 11-18 are even at 2%, but if they vary between say 4.5% and 0.5%, then it would take about 250 drawings to complete. With four balls per drawing you'd have to pull 1000 balls (with 250 resets) before the lottery was complete! This means you'd really have to do this without replacement. You could have a 100-ball machine, and pull out the balls of each winning team after they are picked, but that would still be tedious and would not allow for fine-tuning the odds of the lower-tier teams, every team's odds would have to be in multiples of 1%. Of course, the NBA could just do a computer simulation instead of balls, and I'm sure EVERYBODY WOULD COMPLETELY TRUST THAT.
 
Typical hamfisted thinking by the NBA, taking a system that isn't addressing the problem correctly and trying to put a bandage on it.

They just can't recognize that no matter how you tweak it, a lottery can't accomplish BOTH goals of (1) eliminating tanking and (2) directing top picks towards the worst teams. At best, it turns the dial between the two. These options move the dial towards eliminating tanking, but at the cost of allowing some bad teams to stay bad. I suppose the NBA is trying to put playoff teams into the lottery to encourage teams to shoot for the playoffs, but that just makes things worse for the bad teams.

Here's the quote from Silver from the espn.com article
"There is an aspect of team-building that is called a genuine rebuild, a rebuild with integrity," Silver said. 
"The problem we're having these days is it's become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.
I think Silver's position is the paradigm isn't wrong, but the balance is off. Maybe I'm reading into that, because that's basically my position (losing to get a top 5 pick is just obviously the right thing to do if you're trying to build a team worth paying attention to.)

What do you think about option 2? Taking the record from the last two years, and putting a floor on the level of crappiness that will be rewarded?
(I think it would dissuade teams from tanking, and encourage teams to commit to long term rebuilding)

Can anybody explain what the 5x5 option is supposed to do?
 
Just addressing this part for the moment, may get back to the rest later.

I think Silver's position is the paradigm isn't wrong, but the balance is off. Maybe I'm reading into that, because that's basically my position (losing to get a top 5 pick is just obviously the right thing to do if you're trying to build a team worth paying attention to.)
Silver is right that it's hard to distinguish the tank from the rebuild. But he also says "rebuild with integrity" which presumably means he wants to reward the one and punish the other.

What he seems not to recognize is that the current method of using a win-loss record metric (in any fashion, over any period of time) cannot distinguish between the two. Rebuilding teams lose games. Tanking teams lose games. And any time there is a metric that can be manipulated to accumulate future capital (in this case draft capital) then there is incentive to manipulate it.

The metric has got to go.

If he's actually serious about distinguishing between tanking teams and rebuilding teams and treating them differently (so that rebuilding is done "the right way") then the win/loss metric (and lotto) system has to be scrapped, and the NBA has to start from first principles and build a system with incentives that are targeted to result in the outcome they want.

All these lotto manipulations are nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.
 
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