iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
Poku just a couple boards shy of the Trip Dub.
The Tankathon Thread (since that's apparently what this is now)
- Thread starter Tetsujin
- Start date
I will hurl if they pick ahead of us. They were garbage when I got here. The ticket situation was more desperate than I saw in Sacramento this year. Quickly drafted a big 3 that didn't work out. Then sucked again and reloaded around Dame, CJ and Aldridge, lost LA but still made a WCF run. I just can't stomach if they somehow hit a top 4.
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
The thing about the Blazers is their ownership situation is sorta in flux and they had to fire their GM for off-court stuff early in the season. Somehow being a terrible basketball team is the least of their problems.
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
if the Spurs beat the Blaze twice and lose all their remaining games we would have to go 6-0 to tie them. I assume they win 4 and knock the Lakers out of the play-in.
yep - and even Olshey was fairly awful, Pritchard was decent although I am not sure he is fairing as well in Indy. On the other hand they land a top 4 and I bet they sell the team. Not sure if that is good or bad lol.
This time of the year gets a little too cynical for me. Just let the top 8 of each conference play it already out and put the other teams out of their misery.
If they won't freeze the lotto standings at the trade deadline or on the day the first team gets mathematically eliminated and they won't consider 2-3 year record instead of a single season or some other way to help teams that are mediocre bad but not tankathon winners, then I'm somewhat inclined to agree if they refund season ticket holders. Nobody wants to see that garbage. It's definitely a reason I don't think I'd own NBA season tickets if I was footing the bill. It was bad enough trying to pawn off my unused tickets in MLS for a team that played 3 of the last 7 cup finals.
sactowndog
All-Star
that was worse than a G League Roster. Same for Portland. Both are just proving changing the odds doesn’t impact tanking. Just the spots for which people will tank for.
if you really want to solve it you do draft spots by committee.
sactowndog
All-Star
The Kings sit at 49 losses and real need to get to 50 to lock up the 7 spot. Could easily see the Kings winning their next 4 so could come down to the Clippers game
This has essentially been my position for years.
Front offices are not stupid. If front offices had a voting procedure for draft position, the team with the worst future outlook (the one other teams can most afford a star going to) would get the best pick, and the team with the best future outlook (the one other teams can least afford a star going to) would get the last pick. Plus, in the case of what appears to be blatant tanking, front offices could simply punish by giving a worse pick than they otherwise would.
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
I still think my "even odds for the first three picks" idea would work as a tank deterrent
The rules are what they are. Since they wont change overnight we should sit out as many vets as we possibly can. Getting the 5th spot pre lottery should've been a priority for a long time. Now the biggest priority for the rest of the season should be at least staying at 6th. If it means sitting out Barnes, Holiday, Donte and others then so be it. Nobody will be sorry for it during the draft when the better odds provide the best possible outcome.
Since the rules are what they are Portland, OKC and others are doing whats best for them in the long run. You cant blame them for it. We can also either do whats best for our future or get some meaningless wins by playing Barnes and others 38mins and follow the same path we have followed for so long.
Since the rules are what they are Portland, OKC and others are doing whats best for them in the long run. You cant blame them for it. We can also either do whats best for our future or get some meaningless wins by playing Barnes and others 38mins and follow the same path we have followed for so long.
I have been a fan of setting the lottery odds based on records at the All Star Break. Or given that teams have played different games at the ASB, then take everyone's record at 60 or 65 games, and use that for the lottery. That way, there is zero incentive to tank the last 15 games or so and teams can actually build momentum for the next year.
EIM86
Starter
Wouldn’t teams just tank earlier then
If we ignore the "frozen/folded envelope" conspiracy theories, the original lottery method of determining all 14 spots at random was about as absolute of a tank deterrent as you can get, it's just that there are two criteria that lottery-style systems are trying to maximize and it utterly failed at the first (and probably more important) one:
1) Give the best picks to the worst teams for competitive balance purposes
2) Don't reward teams for "faking" being worse than they actually are (i.e. tanking)
Your idea is a middle-of-the-road approach that wasn't tried, as they moved from the envelope system (failed #1 miserably, succeeded on #2) to what is effectively the current system with different initial values (does a decent job at #1, but failed and continues to fail #2, somewhat miserably). Your idea would probably work better than the current system at fixing #2, though not perfectly because there's still the element of "guaranteeing" 4th position rather than 5th/6th, etc. but that would come at a cost of being less effective at #1. The appeal is that it is simple. Super simple. To the extent that the league is willing to sacrifice a bit of goal #1 (which I think is a lot more important than #2, tanking optics be damned) to get a bit of benefit on goal #2, it could actually draw some support.
sactowndog
All-Star
as long as you have an odds based ordinal system people will play the odds.
Perhaps- but most teams don't know they are tanking that early. I don't think Portland knew they were tanking at 60 games (or the 10 or so games leading up to 60). Same with Indiana. So maybe you get Orlando, Houston, and OKC still tanking, but it would take a pretty thick skin to start actively and aggressively tanking (like running out these G league rosters and shutting guys down for the season) roughly over the halfway point of the season and writing off your season at that point.
The biggest problem is not the odds of landing top 4, it is the fact that after top 4 the order is set by worst record. Now that they have adjusted the lottery odds it is the locking in a floor for their draft pick that is encouraging teams to tank. The best idea I have seen for that is to have several mini lotteries. So first, you give everyone the odds for landing top 3 or 4, with the worst teams getting the best odds. Then, after you pick the top 4 you take the next 3 teams with the worst records. But instead of slotting them in order, you put them in a random, unweighted draw, where they all of 1/3 chance of being 5, 6, or 7. Then you go to the next three teams and do the same for 8, 9, and 10. Then you do the same for the last 4 teams, 11-14.
The beauty is that no one knows exactly what the cutoff will be for each grouping until the lottery actually happens. If no one jumps into the top 4, then the teams drawing for 5-7 will be the 5th, 6th, and 7th worst teams. But if the top 4 positions went to the teams with the 3rd, 7th, 2nd, and 11th worst records, then the draw for 5-7 would be teams 1, 4, and 5. Then the draw for 8-10 would be the teams with the 6th, 8th, and 9th worst records.
So the worst teams still get an advantage at getting a top 4 pick, and the three worst teams cannot fall below 7, but after that it is pretty hard to know what you are tanking for since so much is left up to what happens on lottery day, and teams like Indiana, Portland, and Sacramento would have pretty even odds going into lottery day.
The beauty is that no one knows exactly what the cutoff will be for each grouping until the lottery actually happens. If no one jumps into the top 4, then the teams drawing for 5-7 will be the 5th, 6th, and 7th worst teams. But if the top 4 positions went to the teams with the 3rd, 7th, 2nd, and 11th worst records, then the draw for 5-7 would be teams 1, 4, and 5. Then the draw for 8-10 would be the teams with the 6th, 8th, and 9th worst records.
So the worst teams still get an advantage at getting a top 4 pick, and the three worst teams cannot fall below 7, but after that it is pretty hard to know what you are tanking for since so much is left up to what happens on lottery day, and teams like Indiana, Portland, and Sacramento would have pretty even odds going into lottery day.
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
The Lakers have Utah, New Orleans, Denver, Phoenix, Golden State, Okc and Denver left. I could see them finishing 2-5 with the wins against OKC and Denver. What a fall.
The Kings could seal the 7th spot with a loss in either Houston game. The Rockets barely lost to the Spurs last night and Sengun/Green/Porter have been putting up pretty good numbers. I could see us dropping one of the games.
The Kings could seal the 7th spot with a loss in either Houston game. The Rockets barely lost to the Spurs last night and Sengun/Green/Porter have been putting up pretty good numbers. I could see us dropping one of the games.
EIM86
Starter
I think we are officially in tank mode now. Once the Pelicans beat the Fakers in that 20 pt 2nd half comeback. Our chances went from like 4.5 to 5.5 games back, hence why Len didn’t play in the Heat game and Queta did. I’m pretty sure we a lock for the 7th spot
silly when we could have locked in the 5 two games before. oh well. hopefully lottery is kind to us.
SLAB
Hall of Famer
This team can’t do anything right ever.
chief bromden
Starter
It'd be entertaining to go through all the tank threads from the past seasons and pull out gems ala Tetsujin's "View from the Other Side" posts that I love so much. THIS draft will surely change it all!
coolhandluke
Starter
Bah.. all this hullabaloo over a draft with no franchise player level talent 
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
i think that’s just wishful thinking. We have the same record over the last 10 games as the team allegedly doing a better job at tanking. That team has been ahead of us almost the whole year in the race to the bottom. If we want to lose all of our games we have to insert a corpse into our starting 5 like Portland.
kb02
All-Star
I think the most reasonable way is to provide draft compensation for players lost to FA. Keep the current draft system, but reward teams for developing players. So like a tier one FA, who was drafted and developed by one team, would get the compensatory pick at #4. A tier two FA, would get a pick at #20. And a tier three FA would get a pick between rounds 1 and 2.
Teams that sign an FA, but then lose him later would get nothing. It has to be a draft and develop situation. So a team like Toronto would've gotten a compensatory pick, pick #4 the year that they lost Bosh, since he was a tier one FA.
This system would prevent big market teams from gaming the draft by signing elite FAs to short contracts and then letting them walk. It would reward elite development systems like SA. And it would enable small market teams to capture some value, should their stars leave.
Teams that sign an FA, but then lose him later would get nothing. It has to be a draft and develop situation. So a team like Toronto would've gotten a compensatory pick, pick #4 the year that they lost Bosh, since he was a tier one FA.
This system would prevent big market teams from gaming the draft by signing elite FAs to short contracts and then letting them walk. It would reward elite development systems like SA. And it would enable small market teams to capture some value, should their stars leave.
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
Is free agency even a big deal anymore though? Sign and force a trade seems like the new free agency.
I don't understand this sentiment. The team sat its two best players in both games. Basically our only two bona-fide star level players. In both games we won against two obviously tanking teams as well. In the first one we won because Damien Jones (Damien Jones?!??!) made an incredible play to win it. In the second, we won because our rookie PG willed us to victory. We didn't win these games on the backs of Tristan Thompson, Buddy Hield, and Cory Joseph . We won these games on the backs of guys who we should be playing. We should be trying to figure out if Jones is a legit player because we need to figure out if he should be the backup center on our team moving forward. We should see how good Mitchell can be so that we can figure out his role- is he a 6th man, a starter alongside Fox, a guy you trade, a guy who allows you to trade Fox? I've got no problem playing Mitchell and Jones. Same with Lyles- is he a guy that can help us?
Would I like to see less Holiday, Barnes, Lamb, and Len? Sure. But we've really won in spite of those guys, not because of them. Barnes was awful in Indy. Holiday was negative plus/minus in both games. Len is taking up space. So yeah, I'd love to see some of those minutes go to someone else, but who? If you sit the vets who might help you win - Fox, Sabonis, Barnes, Holiday, Harkless, Lamb, and Len - and account for the fact that Holmes and Davis are out for the season, you've got 7 guys left- two guards (DDV and Davion) one wing (Jackson), two stretch fours (Lyles and Metu) and two centers (Jones and Queta). Queta obviously should be getting the Len minutes. Throw some to Josh Jackson for sure, but he can win you garbage games with minutes too. We don't have Ramsey, King, and Woodard.
So yeah, we could absolutely play some of the vets less, but playing Barnes and Holiday over Jackson and Metu isn't winning us games. Same with Len over Queta. Sometimes you get outanked. I saw OKC desperately try to lose the other night and have players like Isiah Roby make big plays to pull out a victory over Portland they didn't want. That is essentially what Damien Jones and Davion Mitchell did. While I would have loved to lose those games as well, I'm glad that they were won by guys who we care about long term, and not CoJo and Tristan saving the day.
EIM86
Starter
Sorry- didn’t know I needed to shorten my thoughts for your viewing pleasure. If you are going to smugly claim TLDR then at least summarize the post correctly…
