But...you used Bing.

The Kings really need to Lose both remaining games.
With just about every team, except for the Clippers and Jazz who are battling for the 4th seed, have nothing to play for in the final 2 games, so every team may go into tank mode, even the playoff teams.
A T-wolves or Dallas win yesterday would had helped a lot.
Now, we must take it upon ourselves and make sure to Lose the last two games, to assure we keep our pick!
With the Fakers latest win and Phx pretty much locked into the 2nd worst record, perhaps a game might erupt.
Looking at the standings, the Lakers have one more win than the Suns. If the Suns beat the Kings, they could end up tied with the Lakers for the second spot. The spot would then be decided by a coin flip. If they lose, they have the second spot all to themselves.With the Fakers latest win and Phx pretty much locked into the 2nd worst record, perhaps a game might erupt.
Surely the NBA can figure out some way to prevent tanking while rewarding the teams that are at the greatest disadvantage? Tanking just sucks. But so does life for suckee teams that don't tank but never get a high draft pick because of it. I think the lottery and the ping pong balls were designed to add some element of chance so as to prevent tanking. And maybe it works to some extent. It just isn't enough at this point.
How about have each lotto team sends a representative to a die roll. You roll a standard 6 sided die with -3 to + 3. Each team has their draft number raised or lowered by that amount, tie break now becomes record (coin flip on a dual tie).
Or...
Take a wheel with a spinner, put it into 14 zones. Spin the spinner once. That number is your pool number - say it comes up 7. You put the teams into groups of 7s. - 1-7, 8-14, 15 & 16.
Spin the wheel again, that # is the lotto winner. All the teams in that zone after the winner get moved up, then you go back to the order of finish.
In this scenario the worst team could get moved all the way to the last pick in the lotto with the wrong spin combo, so there's really no incentive to tank thanks to double randomization.
Or...
just have the GMs ro-sham-bo for it.
Better idea: make it like that U.K. reality show Eden, where they canceled the show, without telling the contestants.I mean make it a comedic reality show.
How many teams get screwed in playoff seeding because the teams they are fighting with play teams that have given up? I'm guessing that is beginning to be as big if not worse a problem for the integrity of the league than the handful of truly bottom feeding teams.
Better idea: make it like that U.K. reality show Eden, where they canceled the show, without telling the contestants.
A lot of these potential "solutions" or "fixes" won't work because you aren't fixing the problem. Teams have an incentive to lose. These solutions being thrown around here just make it harder for losing teams to land the top pick, but the odds still increase the more they lose. You need to give these teams an incentive to WIN! Below is how you could change that incentive...
Once a team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, they are able to start accruing "lottery points." They get these points by WINNING games. The team that has the most points by the end of the year will have the #1 pick (or #1 spot in the lottery).
The worst teams will be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs first which means they will have more games to accrue points. For instance, the first team eliminated from playoff contention may have been eliminated after 62 games which means they could get potentially 20 lottery points (since there would be 20 games left for them to play). Another team could get eliminated with 12 games left in the season meaning they could get a max of 12 lottery points. However, the team that got eliminated with 12 games left might win at a higher percentage than the team that was eliminated with 20 games remaining. Maybe the first team wins only 25% of their games and the second teams wins 33% but since the first team had 20 games (versus 12 games), they got 5 points while the second team got 4 points.
Thus this system still gives an advantage to the worse teams, but it would force all of the teams out of the playoffs to play their best ball to the very last game. Could you imagine having a toilet bowl game where the team that wins gets the #1 pick? That would be fun/intense/exciting to watch.
Surely the NBA can figure out some way to prevent tanking while rewarding the teams that are at the greatest disadvantage? Tanking just sucks. But so does life for suckee teams that don't tank but never get a high draft pick because of it. I think the lottery and the ping pong balls were designed to add some element of chance so as to prevent tanking. And maybe it works to some extent. It just isn't enough at this point.
No denying that you'd still get some people doing some iffy things with their lineups before they are mathematically eliminated, but this would result in more competitive games. Isn't that the overall goal here?There's a problem with this solution too though:
Once a team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, they are able to start accruing "lottery points."
You're still encouraging teams to tank -- you're just inverting it and encouraging them to tank faster to get themselves more chances to earn points. If a team is eliminated from the playoffs on March 15th because they have only 8 wins, they now have a month to try and win games and guarantee themselves a higher pick. If you know you're not making the playoffs anyway, you can still game the system by tanking games in January and February and "resting" all your NBA players who will then miraculously recover at the end of the year for a late lottery charge. Maybe it makes the last month of the season more competitive for teams vying for playoff spots and eliminates some of the randomness of teams moving up in the playoff seeding simply because they play a slate of tankers, but it doesn't remove the incentive to lose for better draft odds. Maybe it would be an improvement, maybe not. It would certainly be different. You would probably get the curious phenomenon of bad teams becoming buyers at the trade deadline just so they can position themselves for that late surge.
Was it really? I thought they changed after Patrick Ewing. There was a reddit thread the other day about sports and theI think they should go back to the original format where all lottery teams have the same chance and you can fall anywhere from 1-14 -- even if you have the worst record. Is that fair? No. But neither is the current system which incentivizes teams to lose in order to gain. The reason the old system was changed was because Orlando won back-to-back #1 picks and did so the 2nd year when they were 41-41.
Now this is interesting. Especially if the first round of playoffs are best of 3 series between teams 5-12, and you give the players a huge playoff bonus for qualifying and advancing to the next round.24 teams make the playoffs. 6 teams have an even up lottery for 1-6 picks. No weighting.
An idea was floated a few years ago I liked when compared to the lottery. An NBA Draft Wheel. Every team would know exactly where it was picking for the next 30 years. You were guaranteed a top 6 pick every 5 years and at least top 12 every 4 years. Done. No more tanking. No more pick protections.
Could it suck? Sure. Certainty is a lot better than continuous bad luck some teams have with the lottery. Tanking would be eliminated. I think it could have merit. Not sure where the idea went since first being "leaked". No doubt to gauge interest.