Board 8 > NBA Discussion WCF- Western Curry Finals

(+) Yeah! (+)

TheRock1525 posted...

Tanking is essentially the US-Mexican Border of sports.

People are absolutely convinced it's a crisis based on completely isolated incidents when the larger view shows it's not a problem at all.

Tanking is its own punishment. You lose a ton of fan interest and revenue while you're horrible. I don't know how people can think it has all that much incentive, especially when you can

A. be out-tanked
B. get a top pick and still whiff
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TheRock1525 posted...

The Knicks literally didn't have their best player all season thanks to a major injury. What could they have possibly done to be better than they were? Cleveland lost the best player in the league, what could they have possibly done to be better than they were? Why can't teams be allowed to rebuild? Teams have to bottom out, almost every team at some point has to be one of the worst, if not the worst, in the league.

Theres a difference between trying and still losing and not trying at all. If you put out your best team and lose then fair enough. If you have a chance of winning a game and so rotate in all your worst players that is not trying to win. You see it all the time where a game is close and then the bad team puts their bad players in to close out a game and loses. Likewise teams who play their g-league players extensive minutes/start them instead of playing their healthy better players.

It's one thing to do those things in the last 10 or so games. It's another when teams are doing that shit in December and January

Meanwhile GS wins game 1 shocking
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TheRock1525 posted...

ShatteredElysium posted...

Statistics say there was about a 30% reduction in tanking this year going off player rotations (they used average age of teams as the year went on as the main factor). So flattening the odds out has helped somewhat

Where's this article from?

Nylon calculus. I think they said there was 148 games affected by tanking last year and 107 affected by tanking this year. I'd have to try find it again

ShatteredElysium posted...

TheRock1525 posted...

The Knicks literally didn't have their best player all season thanks to a major injury. What could they have possibly done to be better than they were? Cleveland lost the best player in the league, what could they have possibly done to be better than they were? Why can't teams be allowed to rebuild? Teams have to bottom out, almost every team at some point has to be one of the worst, if not the worst, in the league.

Theres a difference between trying and still losing and not trying at all. If you put out your best team and lose then fair enough. If you have a chance of winning a game and so rotate in all your worst players that is not trying to win. You see it all the time where a game is close and then the bad team puts their bad players in to close out a game and loses. Likewise teams who play their g-league players extensive minutes/start them instead of playing their healthy better players.

It's one thing to do those things in the last 10 or so games. It's another when teams are doing that shit in December and January

You do realize that after teams like Memphis, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, teams that were bad but not astronomically bad, will not realize that if they're out of the playoffs by midseason they may as well just call it a season and head towards the tank, right? They aren't going to wait until game 72 to go "let's play some G-Leaguers." When they see themselves at 3-4 games out of the playoffs they're gonna go "eh, fuck it. We can get in the top 4 and that's better than trying to make a playoff run." I showed three teams that played sub-.390 ball after the deadline.
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To be fair I think the Lakers were just atrocious instead of tanking.
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I don't know why you are using the Grizzlies as an example when the Grizzlies were actively trying to win as they wanted their pick to convey to Boston this year. They got lucky in the lotto but they had wanted the pick to go to the Celtics as the restrictions lessen in future years and they want to rebuild so anticipate not being good. In a few years the pick will convey unprotected

The Lakers and Pelicans have mitigating circumstances.

The Wizards are an example of a team who packed it in once they were out of the playoffs. They went from 1 game out of playoffs to like going 2 or 3 wins and 11 losses or something once they fell back.

My personal feeling is that the draft lines cut off at all star break. If you're a bottom team then, then you're in the lottery. It gives no reaosn to tank the rest of the season

part of me feels though not many teams actually tank

like take Phoniex for example. Why are you purposely tanking for someone to potentially take your job?
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Why dont we just not have a draft, and just consider players coming out of college to be free agents, and force teams to actually have competent GMs
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In the past 30 years, what #1 overall picks have even won titles with the team that drafted them? Tim Duncan, Kyrie Irving, and technically LeBron?
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Jakyl25 posted...

Why dont we just not have a draft, and just consider players coming out of college to be free agents, and force teams to actually have competent GMs

Because no one will want to go to a small market as a free agent
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Thats a bad reason
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Also it's outright wrong. If smaller markets can't draw free agents, the Heat don't win any titles with Wade.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

So if you're the pelicans... You really start considering trading Davis for 2 of Ball/Ingram/Kuzma + the #4 pick right?

yes

fuck the nba
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Also it's outright wrong. If smaller markets can't draw free agents, the Heat don't win any titles with Wade.

miami is a glamor market

the draft exists to mitigate the insane advantage teams like the knicks and lakers would otherwise have

miami actually qualifies the same way because people love going there

the issue is that teams like NOLA, OKC, and MEM consistently have to overpay for star free agents
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I think you'd see more basketball centric cities end up with better basketball teams.

Imagine the team the Hornets might field if they were getting top ACC talent or the Pistons with the Big 10.
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If you went the free agent route you probably have to have a stricter cap situation which then just favors large market teams. It's a tricky one.

I've seen plenty of suggestions and I think I prefer them all to the current situation but no solution is going to be perfect. I'd rather have a solution that didn't incentivize deliberately losing though. Suggestions I've seen in no particular order

1. Rookie Free Agency
2. Flat odds across the lottery
3. Lottery playoff tournament to determine order (1 game only per series)
4. A rotating schedule of when/where people pick with every team picking at each position over the entire cycle
5. Allow teams to develop kids through academies from high school (think youth teams in European sports)
6. No lottery, pure NFL style (this one obviously incentivizes losing even more and is the one I don't prefer more than the current system)

I think theres one I'm forgetting, it will come to me. They all have pros and cons

Maybe they could just have something similar to in soccer where if a team is found to have fielded a deliberately weak team then theres repercussions. It's not ideal and rarely ever gets enforced but they do it so that championships / relegations aren't decided by a team with nothing to play for fielding a weakened team thereby allowing the opposition an easy win.

ScareChan posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Why dont we just not have a draft, and just consider players coming out of college to be free agents, and force teams to actually have competent GMs

Because no one will want to go to a small market as a free agent

Not true. Paul George chose to stay in OKC rather than go to LA, and he's from there!

Teams with competent GMs and scouting departments would be on top. Besides the salary cap would prevent the big market teams from getting everyone
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Whilst true with Paul George that isn't an ideal example as he had already spent a forced year there. If he had opted for OKC over LA after spending zero time at OKC it would be another matter.

Small market teams ability to attract FAs will always come down to 4 things really. 1. The team is winning (see also: Have another star player they want to play with) 2. The player is resigning there because he likes it, 3. They offer the best financial package or 4. The FA is from the area or has some sort of tie to the area

I guess you might get a few guys who don't like big cities too. Or maybe want to be on a certain coast. But realistically most big free agents aren't opting to sign for a small market team that is bad or middle of the pack when they haven't previously spent time there.

But yeah really winning typically trumps all. Players want to go to teams that are already winners or have other star players for them to team up with

ShatteredElysium posted...

3. Lottery playoff tournament to determine order (1 game only per series)

This is actually kind of hilariously great
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ShatteredElysium posted...

6. No lottery, pure NFL style (this one obviously incentivizes losing even more and is the one I don't prefer more than the current system)

This is the only correct system and everything else is largely garbage.
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How about a draft order based on how long its been since the team made the playoffs; if the ultimate goal is parity thats the best way right? . Lotteries can break ties.
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Like seriously, imagine if we used a lottery to determine how much capspace you had or what trades you were allowed to make or coaches you could hire. "The Knicks could have $50 million in capspace but that could fall all the way to $20 million in the NBA Cap Space Lottery."
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Jakyl25 posted...

How about a draft order based on how long its been since the team made the playoffs; if the ultimate goal is parity thats the best way right? . Lotteries can break ties.

How about we stop trying to fix a problem that isn't there?

How about we stop supporting a system that a team botches building around a generational talent and gets another one while not even being a bottom 5 team?

Why do the Pelicans deserve Zion more than the Knicks?
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TheRock1525 posted...

Like seriously, imagine if we used a lottery to determine how much capspace you had or what trades you were allowed to make or coaches you could hire. "The Knicks could have $50 million in capspace but that could fall all the way to $20 million in the NBA Cap Space Lottery."

The worst teams having more cap space is an interesting idea

Youd have to make every contract year by year though
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Yeah I'm sure NBA players would love that.

"Give up your guaranteed contracts because we love dumbass lottery systems so much!"
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TheRock1525 posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

How about a draft order based on how long its been since the team made the playoffs; if the ultimate goal is parity thats the best way right? . Lotteries can break ties.

How about we stop trying to fix a problem that isn't there?

How about we stop supporting a system that a team botches building around a generational talent and gets another one while not even being a bottom 5 team?

Why do the Pelicans deserve Zion more than the Knicks?

Thats why my best suggestion is no draft at all. No one deserves any rookie by loser fiat
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Jakyl25 posted...

Thats why my best suggestion is no draft at all.

I mean if we're all on board contracting the league to 10-15 teams then sure. But you'd never see the best college or high school player signing with the Charlotte Hornets or Cleveland Cavaliers so...
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The best college or high school player doesnt really help 9 times out of 10 anyway
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And the cap mitigates those concerns anyway. Just make it a hard cap
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Are we talking best player or best prospect?

And the larger point is that we have a league with very little parity over the past nearly 40 years and taking away one of the only methods that gives some hope of parity is gonna be the end of a lot of teams anyway. So yeah if you wanna cut half the deadweight of the league, sure. No more draft.
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the knicks don't "deserve" zion either. hard to make an argument that any team "deserves" anything when they intentionally lose.

in fact you could argue the knicks need that pick the least. they're a dumpster fire of a franchise and simply because they're in manhattan, kyrie irving and kevin durant are strongly considering them. the lakers picked five straight years in the lottery and were a 38 win team before lebron decided he wanted to to there.

teams like nola and memphis need superstar draft picks way more
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Im not personally opposed to only having as many teams as there is enough elite talent to fill them. Im sure the small market teams probably feel differently <_<
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SeabassDebeste posted...

the knicks don't "deserve" zion either. hard to make an argument that any team "deserves" anything when they intentionally lose.

Yet last season the team with the worst record, the team that intentionally lost got the #1 pick.

Maybe we shouldn't try so hard to somehow jury-rig a system out of "deserved" and simply let the worst team draft first? Was that some problem in the past when teams were putting out 17-19 win teams in the 90s? Were those teams also not trying to intentionally lose?
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Yes there is always a problem when you are rewarding teams for intentionally losing. You want to get better? Hire better staff and suck less then.

Stop trying to reward teams for literally not trying. If this was European soccer the bottom 3 teams would be relegated out of the league for a year. There's no intentionally being the worst team when the repercussion is being demoted out of the league

I mean look at the teams who are consistently in the lottery and are usually in the mix for the high picks. What is consistent through most of those teams? Garbage ownership and/or management.

I'd even include my own team in that. The Magic were consistently at the bottom of the league because the GM was horrible. It's not a coincidence we got better after gutting the management and starting over.

ShatteredElysium posted...

Yes there is always a problem when you are rewarding teams for intentionally losing. You want to get better? Hire better staff and suck less then.

And what's the best route to sucking less? Talent. And what's one of the best ways to get talent? The draft.

This is such circular logic. How many needle moving moves out there can a 17 win team make that will not put them in bad situations financially and asset-wise? How long did Ernie Grunfeld get to keep his job while never "intentionally losing?" Bad GMs exist on the best teams as well as some of the worst. Joe Dumars went from Executive of the Year and consider one of the most brilliant minds in basketball to so bad in his final years in Detroit he literally never got another GM job.

I cannot fathom this logic. "Git gud but also no we won't give you all the tools to git gud". Its like telling someone they need to get better at the piano but also we're gonna chop off some of your fingers.
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The Nets went from worst team in the league to 6th seed without owning their draft picks over that time period. They are also in a position to offer a max deal this summer with a decent core around that guy too.

And the Knicks are only a 17 win team because they intentionally lost games. If they actually tried then they are a high 20 to low 30 win team. It doesn't take that much of a stretch to build on that base for 1 to 3 years and make the playoffs. If the Knicks get better next year it won't be because of their draft pick, it will be because they have an ass load of cap space.

Look at the successful teams in the NBA this year. The Sixers are the only ones who got there through tanking. The Warriors didn't get there via tanking and even if you take away KD they are still amazing. The Rockets, Trailblazers and Nuggets didn't get there via tanking. The Raptors, Celtics, Bucks didn't get there through tanking. Only the Sixers got good through years and years of tanking and even then they blew a lot of their picks during that time.

I don't really like the idea of college guys being free agents right out of college because I'm of the belief that almost no one would ever go to the super-bad teams, which would create this vicious cycle in which the rich will by-and-large remain rich and the poor will remain poor.

I also believe that without the draft, teams like New Orleans or Memphis or other small-market teams would stand no chance at building talent because existing free agents would typically also go to the bigger, better teams. Small market teams will never have a chance at someone like Kevin Durant, and no draft means someone like Kevin Durant marks one of the only chances a franchise will have to alter course from bad to not bad.

No draft also means teams lose a lot of capital with which to swing deals for franchise-altering players in a trade, before that player hits free agency. Whoever's on the roster would be literally all a team could offer, and a pile of garbage is still garbage. There's no end to how badly a GM can screw up a good situation, but a GM is only as good as the pieces he has to work with, and no matter how smooth a talker you are, you aren't going to convince someone to give up someone like AD for a pile of mediocre players. And without the draft, that becomes the only option, and it's an impossible one.

The thing about professional sports in general is that there will never be complete parity. There may not always be a best single team, but there will always be tiers in general, and there will always be a bottom tier bringing up the rear just the same. You will not be able to achieve 30 good teams no matter what, there just isn't enough talent to go around for that to happen. So rather than trying to make a system work for an impossible purpose, I think they should focus on making sure that every team has their turn for a shot at glory, so to speak. Not necessarily making sure every team succeeds at that glory, but just give them a chance. If they screw it up (as the pelicans did with AD), then that's tough.

I'm open to criticism on this theory I'm going to suggest, because I haven't thought it out super well, but what if a team had some sort of waiting period after a top x selection before they could pick in that range again? For instance, the pelicans picking #1 this year means they would have to wait some number of seasons before they could pick in the top...3? 5? However many spots above the worst team that the league thinks hitting on the #1 draft pick is worth. This way, teams would be hard-locked from tanking and reaping any sort of super-meaningful benefits, while also not placing the burden of "We expect you picking #1 to literally propel you to a playoff team by himself" on the team that picked that player? They get their cornerstone, and if they still suck, they can still work on building a somewhat lesser core around him to get them out of the basement. And they can build enough of a core to attract free agents. It should prevent things like "The Process" from happening again, which is the worst case scenario that the league wants to avoid above all else.
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That's a similar system that I have suggested in the past. Responses I usually got were laughs, people ignoring it or people saying it was unnecessarily complicated.

I think if you go to that sort of system then you do away with the lottery part. You do it NFL style and then apply a penalty system. Maybe if you picked #1 this year then the highest you could pick next year is #20 then #15 then #10 then #5. You're not guaranteed those picks, if you outperform them you're picking lower but if you have back to back years of being the worst team tough shit you are picking #1 and then #20 the year after.

You could then extend it for like the top 4 picks or something. If you picked 2 then a similar thing but #16 > #11 > 6 (so 3 year penalty). For #3 it would be #12 > #7 (2 year penalty). For #4 you do just do #8 (1 year penalty). The numbers are arbitrary but you get what I mean

I'm sure like with any system teams would find a way to game it but it would be a lot harder. It would also potentially encourage recent high pickers to trade future picks for players to try improve since they would know they weren't getting a high pick.

I guess you could technically get into a ridiculous situation where like the tenth worst team gets the #1 pick if all the protections line up right. Or a playoff team gets to pick in the top 10 orsomething. But that happens now via trades anyway

Not any more complicated than the amount of shenanigans that go on now tbh, with all the protections and different exceptions and whatnot. Also yes, I should have mentioned I was bringing that theory with no lottery strings, as you suggested. Alternatively, you could also maybe keep the lottery system but impose the penalty in the form of a % hit maybe? But it would have to be a pretty severe hit or else teams will just take their chances and tank anyway. Ultimately, I'm not trying to keep teams from tanking, but I'm trying to make sure it's not always the same teams tanking and trying to keep the number that are tanking as low as possible.
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Jakyl25 posted...

How about a draft order based on how long its been since the team made the playoffs; if the ultimate goal is parity thats the best way right? . Lotteries can break ties.

Because this can incentivise tanking again. Because a team like the kings who haven't been in in like 13 years if they are on the borderline can just keep tanking to get 1st picks for multiple years
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Raptors taking a 59-51 lead into halftime
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Last series Kawhii remembered who he was, that last shot woke him up

this series is about can Giannis see who HE is? if yes, Bucks going the distance, if not get ready for Jurrasic Park to live again
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I want top give some props to Nick Nurse

I think he has been the best coach in the east, maybe in the entire nba
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I disagree completely. Nurse needs to play his players. No excuse to start the 4th quarter with the bench on. A key reason why the Raps choked this game away.
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What a shit fourth quarter by the Raps
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davidponte posted...

I disagree completely. Nurse needs to play his players. No excuse to start the 4th quarter with the bench on. A key reason why the Raps choked this game away.

didnt Kawhii play like 40+?
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raps just need more offense. more people need to step up.
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