Great news that the change was not passed. Horrible proposal, mostly just because of Philly. It would have been a disaster for small market teams.
This part I don't understand, and I've seen it mentioned before (
like in Woj's article). So someone explain to me how this unfairly hurts small market teams?
Small market teams struggle to attract star players, so their only hope is to draft them. Okay I get it so far. But why would they be less likely to get a good draft pick in the proposed system? Why would this help large market teams?
I mean look at this last season. You had one large market team (NY) and one small market team (Phoenix) finish 9th in each conference, and one large market (Philly) and one small market team (Milwaukee) finish with the 2 worst records in the league. Why would the proposed reform help NY more than Utah, Phoenix, or Minnesota (unless of course the lottery is rigged
)?
The big market teams have actually done pretty well in the lottery, winning almost half the lotteries in the last 20 years ('95, '96, '98, '99, '01, '02, '07, '08, '09, '10). I just think this would help the small market teams more (since there's more small market teams in general, and there tends to be more small market teams in the lottery). It seems like teams like Utah, Phoenix, Minnesota, Charlotte, who have had plenty of 9th, 10th, 11th place finishes amongst them the last several years would benefit.
I mean sure if this system was in place in 2014, and New York or LA won it all, everybody would hate it. But I don't see the how the new system puts the odds in their favor and benefits them more than any other team.