Suns News: Week 18 (2/16 - 2/22)

[TOO]

I think there’s an important distinction between tanking naturally and the tanking Ishbia is talking about. Purposely sitting good players to lower the quality of your team with the purpose of getting better rewards is the problem. Being bad and trading vets away for young players is not the problem.

Utah basketball.

[ShelC]

I was going to suggest giving the highest lotto odds to the non-playoff teams with the most wins but then you may have bubble playoff teams throwing games to drop in the standings. Imagine us being the 7th seed now and tanking just enough the rest of the way to miss the playoffs and get a top 3 pick.

[Split T]

I really think there is two options…

1. Completely remove the connection between record and draft position(The Wheel or something similar)

2. Keep essentially the same system with slight tweaks and just punish teams for intentional tanking.

For 2, I would like to see pick protections removed(with maybe the exception for top 3)and put limits on how many top 3 picks you can get. Maybe if you get 1, you are out of the top 4 for 3 years. If you get 2, you are out for 2 years, and if you get 3 you are out 1 year. Go back to just 3 teams for the lottery and give the worst teams better odds and just punish teams that do what Utah is doing by taking away ping pong balls and not fining them.


I think stuff like switching to rewarding teams for wins after a certain point will help with ensuring good basketball is being played late in the season, but you still leave it open for tanking…teams could throw the first half of the season and then start winning once the schedule flips. This doesn’t help the actual bad teams.

I prefer to not reward bad teams, so The Wheel appeals to me, but I doubt that will happen, so I’ll be happy if they do #2 and actually enforce clear tanking with big punishments. Make them severe enough that no one would even try. 1 strike slashes your odds by 33%, 2 strikes by 67%, and a 3rd strike removes you altogether from the lottery.

[Superbone]

[Mori Chu]

I think there’s an important distinction between tanking naturally and the tanking Ishbia is talking about. Purposely sitting good players to lower the quality of your team with the purpose of getting better rewards is the problem. Being bad and trading vets away for young players is not the problem.

I don't even think I would call it "tanking naturally". It's rebuilding. Trading veterans for youngs and picks is NOT tanking; it's starting over with a rebuild. There is nothing wrong with that, and the league should not punish teams that have lots of young guys and picks and lose a lot of games because of it. Even if they made those moves knowing / hoping it would cause them to lose more and get better draft picks, I don't care. I don't think they should try to make a system where they to guess an FO's "intent" or reason behind making various moves.

[ShelC]

Since the tanking discussion is in this thread I'll post this here

[MightyMoog]

I think they should abolish the lottery and replace it with a live auction for draft positions every year. Draft credits are awarded by reverse standings, but also for winning in season tourney, biggest difference in wins from previous season, winning your conference. Also makes it easier for league to impose infractions. You can no longer trade draft picks, only draft credits. Incentivizes proper scouting, talent evaluation and talent development. It gives all teams a fair shot at top talent, and de-incentivizes losing for multiple seasons in a row.

[Split T]

I think there’s an important distinction between tanking naturally and the tanking Ishbia is talking about. Purposely sitting good players to lower the quality of your team with the purpose of getting better rewards is the problem. Being bad and trading vets away for young players is not the problem.

I don't even think I would call it "tanking naturally". It's rebuilding. Trading veterans for youngs and picks is NOT tanking; it's starting over with a rebuild. There is nothing wrong with that, and the league should not punish teams that have lots of young guys and picks and lose a lot of games because of it. Even if they made those moves knowing / hoping it would cause them to lose more and get better draft picks, I don't care. I don't think they should try to make a system where they to guess an FO's "intent" or reason behind making various moves.

I agree as far as punishments go…you can’t punish a team for losing organically. You can try to de-incentivize it though…

I think what Memphis is doing right now is fine…they realized their core was not going to be successful and they’ve pivoted to trading Bane and JJJ for assets(I’m sure they tried to trade Ja too). What Utah is doing is not ok(Resting healthy players because they are too good). They are trying to game the system by losing a lot of games with a good team to make their team even better.

I also think what Philly did was too far. It wasn’t necessarily “tanking” in the sense that they were shutting down healthy players, but they made zero attempts to field a good team and carried that out over multiple years. They actively tried to have the worst team in the nba for multiple years in a row and I don’t think that’s good for the NBA. Putting measures in place(like not letting a team get a top 3 pick in consecutive years) helps keep teams from doing that.

[Shabazz]

I think I solved the tanking thing. Let me know where there are holes in this. This assumes the draft and lottery stay.

14 lottery teams.
4 best records among those teams have the worst odds at the #1 pick, flattened for all for 4. This stops teams from tanking out of the playoffs.
For teams with the 10 worst records, their odds are inversely proportional to their record against the other 13 lottery teams. So the team with the best record against the other lottery teams among those 10, has the best odds at the first pick.

The first flaw I see if that teams in the 11-14 range may try and get into that bottom 10, but the neat thing is if they do that by losing against the other lottery teams, they're worsening their lottery odds. So you're talking about a small subset of teams possibly tanking against half the league instead of 1/3 of the league tanking against the whole league.

Thoughts?

[TOO]

Just make the 14 teams in the lottery play for position, kinda like a bizzarro losers playoffs, champ gets the top pick. You'll never have a reason to lose on purpose, NBA gets to televise more games.

[Split T]

You’d have teams tank to be in the bottom 14 so they could win this lottery tournament. The actual bad teams would still not be able to win.

To me the problem is the nba incentivizing the teams in the middle to pretend to be bad to get better players. The problem isn’t that we have bad teams.

[TOO]

You’d have teams tank to be in the bottom 14 so they could win this lottery tournament. The actual bad teams would still not be able to win.

To me the problem is the nba incentivizing the teams in the middle to pretend to be bad to get better players. The problem isn’t that we have bad teams.

At that point they'd just make the playoffs the next year, plus you still gotta play the games. Nobody would tank like they do now, there is no incentive. Add some sort of rule where if you win you can't pick in the top 5 for 3 seasons. The lottery has to go. It's trash and there is no transparency.

[The Bobster]

I like the idea of using a team's record for the last two years to determine their position pre-lottery.

I would also make traded picks ineligible to select 1-4.

[Kryptonic]

I like the idea of using a team's record for the last two years to determine their position pre-lottery.

I would also make traded picks ineligible to select 1-4.

actually, I like what you're thinking and think you're on to something... make it an aggregate of multiple seasons and top 4 protected would help ensure the teams that really need to improve have that opportunity.