Discussion: How to fix the Draft Lottery

[Funkhouser]

Last night the Dallas Mavericks, after finishing with the 12th worst record and narrowly missing the playoffs, won the NBA Draft Lottery. The team with the worst record in the NBA, the Utah Jazz (who blatantly tanked) ended up with the 5th overall pick.

Situations like this discourage tanking and rewards teams that attempt to be competitive. Ultimately, it results in a healthier league and more entertaining product. It got me thinking about the NHL Lottery and what it could learn from the NBA?

The NHL Lottery, for the bottom 16 teams, has 3 key rules:
-top 2 picks decided by lottery
-maximum gain of 10 places
-can only win twice in five-year period (Oilers rule)

The NBA Lottery, for the bottom 14 teams, only has 1 rule (as the Oilers aren't in the NBA):
-top 4 picks decided by lottery

Furthermore, the major difference lies in the lottery weightings in which the NBA has a lower gradation between places (I will show these in the next post).


LESSONS:
-significantly lower gradation between teams in terms of winning %
-every team has the chance to win 1st overall
-no restriction on the number of spaces one can jump

For a team like the Flames (or Flyers, or Wild, or Canucks, etc) who refuse to tank – these changes would be welcome.

[Funkhouser]

% to win 1st overall (NHL / NBA)
1 – 25 / 14
2 – 13.5 / 14
3 – 11.5 / 14
4 – 9.5 / 12.5
5 – 8.5 / 10.5
6 – 7.5 / 9
7 – 6.5 / 7.5
8 – 5 / 6
9 – 3.5 / 4.5
10 – 3 / 3
11 – 0 / 2
12 – 0 / 1.5
13 – 0 / 1
14 – 0 / 0.5
15 – 0 / NA
16 – 0 / NA

(Note the low gradation at the top of the NBA draft, with the top three positions having the same weighting and only 3.5% between picks 1-5 vs 16.5% in the NHL)

% to win a top 4 pick (NHL / NBA)
1 – 100 / 52
2 – 100 / 52
3 – 71.2 / 52
4 – 34.7 / 48.1
5 – 17.3 / 42.1
6 – 15.4 / 37.2
7 – 13.4 / 32
8 – 12.4 / 26.3
9 – 10.4 / 20.3
10 – 7.4 / 13.9
11 – 6.6 / 9.4
12 – 5.3 / 7.1
13 – 4.3 / 4.8
14 – 3.1 / 2.4
15 – 0 / NA
16 – 0 / NA

[troutman]

I might be alone in this. Scrap the lottery. Teams can tank if they want to.

Or, a post-season tournament with non-playoff teams for draft position.

Remove luck from the equation.

[Mr.Coffee]

Once mathematically eliminated from playoffs, all points you get thereafter count towards the draft position. Highest point total gets highest selection and so on and so forth.

[FlamesAddiction]

I don't know much about the NBA.

Is it a league with roughly the same parity as the NHL? And do drafted prospects take as long, on average, to make an impact at the pro level? Is the likelihood to hit or miss on a draft pick roughly the same as in the NHL, especially in later rounds?

One thing that drives me nuts about the way the NHL handles the draft and distribution of draft picks is that it doesn't work towards parity. You have a cap system and points system that strives for parity, but then a draft system that goes against that. Granted, they have made some effort to distribute the odds of winning the draft lottery, but despite the Islanders benefiting from it this year, I don't think it typically does enough.

In the NHL, there is often some lag time where a team is drafting high, but because those players often don't become key contributors or peak until later, they can keep adding high picks for several years until they suddenly have an embarrassment of riches. Meanwhile, other teams whose only crime is not sucking as bad, never get to see that influx of talent. Colorado, Pittsburgh, and Edmonton did this. It looks like San Jose is the next team that is going that route. I think it is easier to go from bottom feeder to contender than from mediocre to contender for this reason.

I would love to see a lottery system where the odds for non-playoff teams are distributed more evenly and with every pick, at least in the top 10, being subject to a separate draw with similar odds. Then snake the order in the following rounds.

[dino7c]

NBA is rigged lol

Team trades a star to the Lakers in what was deemed one of the worst deals of all time and then a couple months later wins the lottery with a 1.8% chance.

Come on now

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Once mathematically eliminated from playoffs, all points you get thereafter count towards the draft position. Highest point total gets highest selection and so on and so forth.

Problem is most teams aren't eliminated until the last week or so these days.

I would say even lottery odds for all non playoff teams for all draft positions and the only weighting is on recent lottery wins. With the cap the there is no reason to suck for years, if your team is poorly managed find an new manager.

[Nadal Fan]

They should hold the draft lottery at the All Star Game. No one is going to intentionally tank that early in the season.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by troutman

I might be alone in this. Scrap the lottery. Teams can tank if they want to.

Or, a post-season tournament with non-playoff teams for draft position.

Remove luck from the equation.

I have been advocating for something similar in lieu of expanding the playoffs. Instead of a tournament which I wouldn't be opposed to, I would suggest a mini-playoff.

The team that finishes 9th in the conference hosts the team that finishes 10th for two games in a best of 3. If the first two games are a split they play the deciding game at #10. The winners of those two series play a best-of-3 for #1 overall. The losers play one game for #3 overall (could be a series, don't really care that much, was going for the 1996 World Cup of Hockey vibes).

If you want to tank, go ahead and tank. The best you will pick is #5.

[Weitz]

The best league in NA sports doesn’t see tanking as a problem so why do the lesser leagues feel they need to fix it?

Worst team gets top pick and move on.

[Boo Radley]

Originally Posted by troutman

I might be alone in this. Scrap the lottery. Teams can tank if they want to.

Or, a post-season tournament with non-playoff teams for draft position.

Remove luck from the equation.

Instead of playing extra games I wonder if you could determine a draft ranking based on the head to head match ups of the non-playoff teams.

Once the season is over, calculate each teams earned points against the other non-playoff teams. The #1 draft selection is then given to the highest ranked team.

Q: Would this create more interest for regular season games against non-playoff teams?

[MacDaddy77]

Leave the draft for now. if anything needs fixing it's the LTIR issue.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Once mathematically eliminated from playoffs, all points you get thereafter count towards the draft position. Highest point total gets highest selection and so on and so forth.

This would do the opposite of what people think it would.

1) Teams would actually start tanking earlier in the year - the sooner you get eliminated, the better.
2) Teams that aren't tanking (i.e. the teams you are trying to reward) wouldn't get eliminated from the playoffs until April, and thus would have NO chance of earning enough points to draft early.

[lazypucker]

Originally Posted by MacDaddy77

Leave the draft for now. if anything needs fixing it's the LTIR issue.

Fix the loser points first. I still don't know why the NHL not think about the 3-2-1 point system yet.

[Bonded]

Originally Posted by lazypucker

Fix the loser points first. I still don't know why the NHL not think about the 3-2-1 point system yet.

They want the standings to be as close as possible for as long as possible

[Paulie Walnuts]

The thing about the NBA draft lottery is Dallas had a chance to win a game in the play in and make the playoffs, and they end up with #1 overall.

[Itse]

This is extremely simple: just make the first 16 picks random between non-playoff teams.

The league is tight, there really isn't some massive difference between the teams in the bottom half of the league, and if you eliminated tanking, the differences would be much, much smaller.

The current system is the worst they could have come up with. It heavily encourages tanking, without actually guaranteeing the bad teams get "help". It's a system only people who don't understand math or games could think is good, and the fact that the NHL uses it tells me the league is not run by smart people.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Itse

This is extremely simple: just make the first 16 picks random between non-playoff teams.

The league is tight, there really isn't some massive difference between the teams in the bottom half of the league, and if you eliminated tanking, the differences would be much, much smaller.

The current system is the worst they could have come up with. It heavily encourages tanking, without actually guaranteeing the bad teams get "help". It's a system only people who don't understand math or games could think is good, and the fact that the NHL uses it tells me the league is not run by smart people.

I have favored more complicated systems that reward winning down the stretch like MC has proposed. There have been several thought through proposals around something like that made. I can't recall the names of them but they are out there.
But I don't see that ever happening.
So I'm actually in agreement that randomizing the bottom 16 makes a lot of sense.

I hate tanking and that teams are rewarded for it. It's one of the worst things about sports now.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Weitz

The best league in NA sports doesn’t see tanking as a problem so why do the lesser leagues feel they need to fix it?

Worst team gets top pick and move on.

They only have a handful of games compared to other sports...not 30 or 40+ games of tanking to sell tickets for.

Its also just a bigger sport, not something special the league does, they constantly #### things up but it doesn't matter because football/gambling on football is part of the culture.

[CliffFletcher]

I honestly don’t see a problem with the system now. Bad teams typically get the best prospects (even if a statistical outlier sometimes sneaks in), which promotes parity. And parity is good in the long run.

So it’s good that teams tank. It’s good the league is cyclical. We barely seen any trades these days as it is, and most of the ones we do see are because teams are sorted into clear buyers and sellers. No tankers = no sellers = no trades.