WHOA: Lottery reform proposal has been voted DOWN. 17-13.

[Joe Green]

The thought of Hinike dancing his way to the worst NBA team ever and a #1 pick made me throw up in my mouth.

Their roster is so bad, it would not win the NBDL.

I NEVER wish injuries on NBA players (not even lakers) but I hope their picks all turn out to be Michael Olowokandy / Darko Milicic EPIC BUSTS...

If you love sports you should hate the Sixers...

[FreddieJ]

I suspect Sacramento's affirmative vote was just another attempt at currying favor with the league.  This is the same franchise that opted out of the revenue sharing program during the relocation fiasco, after all.

I think their vote reflects the anti-tank philosophy their current regime has demonstrated to its fanbase. Although the team has been bad their management has aggressively pursued veteran talent, and it hasn't appeared to me as if they plan on relying on the lottery. This and it would hurt them in the short term as they look to be in no man's land for the next few years anyways

[Endless Paradise]

I suspect Sacramento's affirmative vote was just another attempt at currying favor with the league.  This is the same franchise that opted out of the revenue sharing program during the relocation fiasco, after all.

I think their vote reflects the anti-tank philosophy their current regime has demonstrated to its fanbase. Although the team has been bad their management has aggressively pursued veteran talent, and it hasn't appeared to me as if they plan on relying on the lottery. This and it would hurt them in the short term as they look to be in no man's land for the next few years anyways

Oh, I definitely considered that. I just feel that's part of a more general theme of basically saying to the league, "hey, we swear we're not the Maloofs! We're going to try to be good and we're even going to shun the draft! And revenue sharing! We're not going to be the jokes of the league anymore!"

[Fafnir]

I think Sacramento's vote is pretty darn rationale.

They're likely to be a bottom 10-15 team with Cousins there, so the increased tail chance would really help them potentially get a premium pick.

[MBunge]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

There may be an arguments in some cases but not Philly.

1.  They traded an all-star player for a draft pick who wasn't even going to play in the coming season.

2.  While in season, they essentially gave away two of their top three veteran players for nothing.

3.  After that, they drafted another player who likely won't play at all in this coming season.

4.  They then traded away their last good veteran player for scraps.

Individually, you can defend each move, though not well.  Doing all of them in sequence like that is crystal clear.  Philly is going to have deliberately tanked two entire seasons and two off-seasons.  I don't think anyone has ever done this before and if it works, is going to establish a precedent that will do more damage to the NBA than anything since the drug scandals so many decades ago.

Mike

[Endless Paradise]

1.  They traded an all-star player for a draft pick who wasn't even going to play in the coming season.

They traded Holiday for Noel (who was considered to be in the running for the first overall pick) and another first-round draft pick.

2.  While in season, they essentially gave away two of their top three veteran players for nothing.

Those guys were neither very valuable nor very good (notice how Turner garnered very little interest this offseason), the team was 15-40 at the trade deadline, and they were already nine games into their losing streak.

3.  After that, they drafted another player who likely won't play at all in this coming season.

This is true -- but Embiid was considered the consensus first overall pick before his injury.

4.  They then traded away their last good veteran player for scraps.

They got another first rounder for Young.

Regardless, it's all subjective.  There's no realistic way to penalize Philly in a way that doesn't leave legitimately flawed, bad teams vulnerable to unfair punishment.  Should bad teams not trade away veterans who aren't part of their future?  Should bad teams not draft the best player available?  Should bad teams not make moves to acquire draft picks at the expense of immediate production from veteran players?

Because Boston did all of that this past season.  They traded away KG and Pierce for draft picks, they drafted Smart presumably because they considered him the best player available at that spot, and they traded away guys like Crawford and Lee and attempted to trade Bass during the season because those guys had (and have) no future with the team.

[celticsclay]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

There may be an arguments in some cases but not Philly.

1.  They traded an all-star player for a draft pick who wasn't even going to play in the coming season.

2.  While in season, they essentially gave away two of their top three veteran players for nothing.

3.  After that, they drafted another player who likely won't play at all in this coming season.

4.  They then traded away their last good veteran player for scraps.

Individually, you can defend each move, though not well.  Doing all of them in sequence like that is crystal clear.  Philly is going to have deliberately tanked two entire seasons and two off-seasons.  I don't think anyone has ever done this before and if it works, is going to establish a precedent that will do more damage to the NBA than anything since the drug scandals so many decades ago.

Mike

I would also agree that I would be quite pleased if the NBA was able to penalize Philadelphia in some way for what they are doing.

Look at this box score: http://www.nba.com/clippers/games/PHILAC-140209

If you were a fan that got to go to one NBA game a year and that was it, it was over 5 minutes into it and turned into an exhibition game. With the way they have stripped down their roster they have essentially added an NBA exhibition game to every other teams schedule and eliminated professional basketball in Philadelphia for 2 years.

If you think the above was an isolated game here is what happened the next game

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/bkn-76ers-warriors-writethru-idUSMTZEA2BTIH6YI20140211

So after putting their fans through a year of that, the response is to draft two players that most likely won't play this upcoming season? It is just a slap in the face to their fans and their is still no guarantee that embiid or noel will work out.

[D.o.s.]

Regardless, it's all subjective.  There's no realistic way to penalize Philly in a way that doesn't leave legitimately flawed, bad teams vulnerable to unfair punishment.  Should bad teams not trade away veterans who aren't part of their future?  Should bad teams not draft the best player available?  Should bad teams not make moves to acquire draft picks at the expense of immediate production from veteran players?

Because Boston did all of that this past season.  They traded away KG and Pierce for draft picks, they drafted Smart presumably because they considered him the best player available at that spot, and they traded away guys like Crawford and Lee and attempted to trade Bass during the season because those guys had (and have) no future with the team.

Exactly.

[fairweatherfan]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

This proposal at least isn't a punishment or a penalty, it's a reduced incentive.  I agree that going case-by-case is a horrible approach, but simply flattening the odds I think works to reduce the payoff of deliberately bottoming out. 

But whether there's "tanking" involved or not, is the 5th worst team really that much better than the worst team that it should have 1/3rd the chance at a top 3 pick?  I don't really think so.

[Endless Paradise]

Even still, lost in all of this is the fact that Philly was openly coveting Wiggins (and vice versa) when it was assumed that Cleveland would draft Embiid.  They didn't draft Embiid because he was injured and thus would help with the tank; they drafted him because the Sixers had the third pick, there were three consensus top prospects, and he was the last one on the board.

Do you guys truly think that if Cleveland decided to pull another Cleveland and drafted Zach LaVine with the first overall pick that Philly would've felt compelled to take Embiid over Wiggins?  They had a pretty glaring need for a wing player more so than they did another big man, particularly another injured big man.

[get_banners]

I think the only fair thing to do (since there are legitimately bad teams who aren't tanking and who desperately need top talent) is to switch it to records, period. Team with the worst record = #1 pick. Yes, there are incentives to tank, but how are they different from the current system (the incentives are no different, its just that the strategy is about probability, not certainty)? In the meantime, teams that have no business getting high picks get high picks, and teams that are legitimately terrible are stuck in awfulness. One option is to not allow repeat top 1-3 picks...you get a top 3 pick one year, you can't do better than #4 the next year. That at least disincentivizes teams from pursuing the multi-year tank that Philly is doing.

[D.o.s.]

You don't think an explicit guarantee for a top pick create more of an incentive to tank?

[Endless Paradise]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

This proposal at least isn't a punishment or a penalty, it's a reduced incentive.  I agree that going case-by-case is a horrible approach, but simply flattening the odds I think works to reduce the payoff of deliberately bottoming out. 

But whether there's "tanking" involved or not, is the 5th worst team really that much better than the worst team that it should have 1/3rd the chance at a top 3 pick?  I don't really think so.

This is a fair point.  The issue is that I don't agree that flattening the odds really reduces the payoff of being bad, it just shifts the target.  Instead of the prevalent storyline being bottom feeders trying to be as bad as possible, you'd have the middle class fighting their way out of the playoffs much like Golden State did in 2012.

The nature of basketball and the draft lottery inherently makes it impossible to "fix" tanking in the NBA.  And I'm honestly not convinced it's something in need of fixing.  Philly is a unique, isolated case.

[fairweatherfan]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

This proposal at least isn't a punishment or a penalty, it's a reduced incentive.  I agree that going case-by-case is a horrible approach, but simply flattening the odds I think works to reduce the payoff of deliberately bottoming out. 

But whether there's "tanking" involved or not, is the 5th worst team really that much better than the worst team that it should have 1/3rd the chance at a top 3 pick?  I don't really think so.

This is a fair point.  The issue is that I don't agree that flattening the odds really reduces the payoff of being bad, it just shifts the target.  Instead of the prevalent storyline being bottom feeders trying to be as bad as possible, you'd have the middle class fighting their way out of the playoffs much like Golden State did in 2012.

The nature of basketball and the draft lottery inherently makes it impossible to "fix" tanking in the NBA.  And I'm honestly not convinced it's something in need of fixing.  Philly is a unique, isolated case.

I've heard that before, but I don't buy it.  Deliberately trying to miss the playoffs for what would be a 2-5% chance at the top pick is a very different animal than trying to drop from, say,  the 4th worst to the 2nd worst record. Any team that appeared to be trying to tank its way out of the playoffs would receive a tremendous amount of scrutiny from the media, the league, its fans, and its own players would probably be very publicly discontented. 

We've seen players call out their teams for not trying to compete when they're already well out of the playoff picture; that's going to be seriously amplified if they appear to be trying to deprive those players of a playoff appearance.  Fans would care a lot more about missing the playoffs than losing 60 games instead of 50.  And owners would be deliberately forgoing playoff revenue to chase a small chance at anything beyond the back of the lottery.  It just doesn't seem likely the way the current system favors bad teams getting worse.

The 2012 Warriors don't really fit either model; they weren't playoff contenders, never cracked .500 after the first week, but tried to drop down a couple notches so they could keep their top-7 protected pick.  That's not really relevant to a flattened odds model since it was pick protections that drove the decision, and they were going to be in the lotto either way.

[Boris Badenov]

The problem with trying to punish teams for tanking is that no one can even agree on a universal definition of "tanking."  Are you going to penalize teams for simply being bad for a few years?  That's counterproductive.  How will you determine that what the Sixers are doing is any worse than what the Celtics did last year by not wasting their time looking for a stopgap mediocre, veteran point guard in Rondo's absence or a similarly mediocre veteran center?

This proposal at least isn't a punishment or a penalty, it's a reduced incentive.  I agree that going case-by-case is a horrible approach, but simply flattening the odds I think works to reduce the payoff of deliberately bottoming out. 

But whether there's "tanking" involved or not, is the 5th worst team really that much better than the worst team that it should have 1/3rd the chance at a top 3 pick?  I don't really think so.

This is a fair point.  The issue is that I don't agree that flattening the odds really reduces the payoff of being bad, it just shifts the target.  Instead of the prevalent storyline being bottom feeders trying to be as bad as possible, you'd have the middle class fighting their way out of the playoffs much like Golden State did in 2012.

The nature of basketball and the draft lottery inherently makes it impossible to "fix" tanking in the NBA.  And I'm honestly not convinced it's something in need of fixing.  Philly is a unique, isolated case.

You're right. The only ways to "fix" tanking are (a) a completely random lottery with equal odds for all, or (b) a completely deterministic order (like the "draft wheel"). Any system in which draft position is somehow linked to records will change incentives to win, somehow and for some teams. You are just picking your poison.

What I've never understood about all this is that for the most part, the "tanking" problem the league wants to fix occurs at the GM level - i.e., gutting the team's talent like the Sixers have done. It's not a game-throwing problem where players or coaches are making themselves worse than their talent would merit.

But then, are we to believe that GM-based tanking reduces the overall quality of league play? Why would it? Talent is zero-sum across the league, and if bad teams make themselves worse by dumping talent then good teams must be getting better by acquiring it. The current lottery system might mean more exciting playoff races, and more exciting and talent-laden playoff squads.