NBA may abolish the draft to prevent tanking

[Mathgod]

As I've said and will continue to say, the draft order should not be based on the current year's standings. Instead, take a look at how much playoff success each team has had over the past 10 years (or perhaps longer).

Championships won, fewest to most.

Then among tied teams...

Playoff series won, fewest to most.

Then among tied teams...

Playoff games hosted, fewest to most.

among tied teams...

etc.

Until you get a clean 1 thru 32 draft order. No tanking, no lottery BS.

And you'd obviously need some additional rules such as no picking top 3 in back to back years, no picking 1st overall more than once every 4-5 years, something like that.

[Gugstanley]

I would be fine if the NBA just went away

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop

I think the current NHL Entry Draft setup is fine the way it is. The E=NG Rule helped.

Half the league or more wants their team to lose down the stretch...even fans of bubble teams are split.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by MegaErtz

I don't know what the answer is, but the current system does not work in the NHL. The salary cap was brought in to help small market teams like the Flames compete, but we're less competitive now than we were in the late 90s and early 2000s. Maybe raising the draft age a couple of years might help? So few players play in the NHL in the year or two after they get drafted.

No way that's a cap issue, it's a management/ownership issue. The Flames would be way worse off, and honestly maybe relocated by now if the system stayed the same before the salary cap.

Yes, there is still a gap between what a team in an undesirable city (relax, not a shot at Calgary as a livable city for the average person, just in terms of millionaire athletes choosing between here and LA, New York, Chicago, Dallas etc) can acquire in trades/free agency vs the big dogs. But, the real failure in most Canadian markets in the cap NHL is the media/fan pressure that GM's/ownership groups succumb to in Canada that end up with fast tracked rebuilds or no rebuilds at all when they needed them to try to get the team back to competitive as quick as possible.

The Flames are a walking example of this issue with Canadian teams (I'm seeing light at the end of the dark Flames fan tunnel with Conroy, but still hints from insiders that random small, in season samples of team success vs lack thereof was driving whether to rebuild properly or not. Just bottom out, acquire top end talent in the draft with a few bottom 5 finishes and start building a core. But GM's just struggle to do that in this country.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

As I've said and will continue to say, the draft order should not be based on the current year's standings. Instead, take a look at how much playoff success each team has had over the past 10 years (or perhaps longer).

Championships won, fewest to most.

Then among tied teams...

Playoff series won, fewest to most.

Then among tied teams...

Playoff games hosted, fewest to most.

among tied teams...

etc.

Until you get a clean 1 thru 32 draft order. No tanking, no lottery BS.

And you'd obviously need some additional rules such as no picking top 3 in back to back years, no picking 1st overall more than once every 4-5 years, something like that.

Totally agree with you.

A draft is a good thing, but using a lottery to determine order is dumb. Especially one that puts weight on teams tanking and penalizes other teams for trying to compete or overachieving in a given season.

I am sure there are metrics and models that can be used to determine a draft order that awards position based on need that doesn't include tanking in a season.

[FanIn80]

Good. Get rid of the draft. Let teams have to rely on scouting and allow players some freedom of choice. Let 32 teams try to sign 18 year-old Cale Makar and see who he chooses. Taylor Hall. Logan Thompson. Brayden Point. Gavin McKenna.

Instead of draft picks, have "signing slots." Teams get 7 slots every year, and slots are tied to player rankings...

- All signing-eligible players and are ranked from 1 to 224 (7*32) every year
- Teams have seven "signing-slots"
- Slots are assigned a ranking bracket, an "R1" slot can only be used to sign a rank 1 to 32 player. R2 slots can only be used on a rank 33-64 player... etc etc etc.
- Slots can be traded, but players signed to those slots can't be traded during the length of their ELCs. (So a player who wants to play isn't going to "only want to sign in Vegas" if Vegas isn't going to make room to play them.) (And a team can't take advantage of a player wanting to sign with them by only signing them to trade them.)
- Othen than that, teams are able to recruit and use their available slots to recruit and sign anyone they want to at any point between June 1st and the final day before training camp.
- Same rules we already have around ELCs with regards to when they kick in and one-way vs two-way.. etc etc.

Essentially it's the same as a draft. A team can only sign a player if they have an avalaible slot for that player's ranking. So, most of the time, it's still just gets one each of the best 32 and then one each of the next best 32, etc etc. Just like now though, teams can make trades to stock up on certain slots. So instead of trading a player and a 3rd round pick for a 2nd round pick (just a very loose example), you'd now trade a player and an 'R3' (Rank 65-97) slot for an 'R2' (Rank 33-64) slot. And then one team can now sign two players in the 33-64 range and the other team can sign two in the 65-97 range.

Also, players know that they have to sign with a team that has an open slot for their rank, so maybe they want to sign in Florida but oh no Florida just used their slot on someone else, and now there's only EDM, STL and BUF to chose from... better phone their agent and tell them to accept whatever STL is willing to offer them! There's no such thing as "I'm only going to sign with NYR" anymore, because if the Rangers don't have a slot for you then you're gonna have to suck it up and play somewhere else, because you can't be traded anywhere during the length of your ELC. So... do you sign a 3 year ELC somewhere else? Do you try to get a 1 year ELC instead and take another shot at getting NYR to sign you? ELCs are max 3 years, and ELC eligibiliy is also only 3 years, starting from the start of the first season that uses up your first ELC year. After those 3 ELC-eligible years are up, your RFA rights belong to the team that owned your final ELC year. So you better hope you can get the Rangers to use a slot on you, Mr. Fox, and that they're prepared to make room for you play... because maybe you end up having to choose between signing in Utah for your 3rd ELC and giving them full RFA rights, or pumping gas somewhere.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

I continue to support the Gold Plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Plan_(sports)

The Gold Plan is better than giving the last place team the #1 pick.

Specifically for the NHL, I have been pushing got a mini playoffs for the 4 teams (9&10 on each conference) who just miss to play a best of three for the top four picks.

If the NHL wants to expand the playoffs, this is a better way to include more teams IMO. It could be scheduled on the travel days for the first two rounds, with the caveat that the NHL is subject to the demands on the arenas, especially with the NBA playoffs happening at the same time along with busy buildings such as LA and MSG.

A system like this would benefit teams that perpetually live in the mooshy middle.

[Finger Cookin]

If tanking to the be worst team in order to have the best chance of the first overall pick is problematic, how is tanking to 9th or 10th any better? That's an even easier to achieve target for more teams.

[Geeoff]

Unless they stop keeping score, someone is always going to finish in last

I guess one thing you could do to end tanking is to make the trade deadline before the season starts

[Geeoff]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Mark Cuban says they should "embrace tanking".

Money really does make people out of touch with reality.



So it doesnt matter how your team played when you doled out 300 bucks to go to that game...nope....what mattered is who you sat beside.

JFC what an absurd take.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...fan-experience

This sounds like 50% of CalgaryPuck. Is the issue that a team executive is saying it?

[loob job]

What about taking total points from the last five years (or a higher number of years) because in that timeframe, whatever the number is, a team should have been going for a playoff spot at some point

[zukes]

I'm in a rush this morning so not sure if this was brought up, but I support a modified version of the Gold plan. Do points percentage after each team is eliminated. You'd obviously need some protection in place, maybe you can't gain or lose more than 5 draft positions, and maybe teams completing for a playoff spot until the last x # of days aren't allowed to move up.

It is definitely a problem. But instead of fans cheering for losses and players mailing it in, this incentivizes both I think.

[Erick Estrada]

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with the current NHL draft structure. How many teams are really tanking this season? Canucks, Flames, Rangers, and maybe Blues. That's not really much in a 32 team league. We have seen over the past few seasons the Habs, Senators, Sharks, and even Hawks and Sabres kind of take a step towards competing so the process is relatively sound if a team is patient, scouts, and develops well.

All these leagues have expanded over the decades and that means there's going to be more teams that miss the playoffs and those teams that find themselves on the outside more than not need to look in the mirror and accept they aren't good enough in their current stats and embrace rebuilding as the winning/losing cycle has been a part of all league sports since the very beginning. IMO poor ownership/management is the biggest problem with any league. Too many micromanaging owners, too many green ex-players fast tracked into GM positions, too much nepotism, etc. Modifying the draft isn't going to fix broken organizations.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Terrible idea. Though I also think the NBA has a big problem with tanking that is really hurting the game.

I continue to support the Gold Plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Plan_(sports)

Edit: nevermind, I didt understand it at first. I like this idea.

[Table 5]

Feel free to just abolish the NBA.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

I totally disagree and actually think that Cuban is right about what people remember/care about at live event experiences.

It is easy to forget that most people are totally unaligned with the people of CP in numerous ways, but primarily most people dont give even close to the amount of ####s as we do about results and winning, or even the hockey team. Even many casual fans will barely know more than 5 players by name on the roster. Long term losing makes a dent in this, but game to game, or even season to season probably means very little.

Between the people there for corporate schmoozing, and those given tickets by their parents/boss/friends for a night out, maybe a third of the people attending a game are there mainly for the hockey. And most of those aren't anywhere as hardcore fans as the people posting here. How many people walking around the Dome concourse would you have to ask before you found someone who could name the top five prospects in the upcoming draft? 8? 10?

For the last half of the season, a portion of the fanbase of the worst 5-6 teams hopes for losses. How is this a big problem that needs to be remedied with a complex new draft format?

The NHL is cyclical, and that's a good thing. Without teams deliberately rebuilding and tanking we'd see even fewer trades.

[VilleN]

I think the easiest fix to the draft is to limit the amount of top 3 picks you have in a given time. For example, keep everything as is - but if you picked top 3 once in the last 3 years, your odds are cut in half, twice in the last 3 years, cut in half again, etc. Something to that effect I think would help the bad teams get competitive, but would spread the draft talent more equitably through the non-playoff teams.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

The Gold Plan is better than giving the last place team the #1 pick.

Specifically for the NHL, I have been pushing got a mini playoffs for the 4 teams (9&10 on each conference) who just miss to play a best of three for the top four picks.

If the NHL wants to expand the playoffs, this is a better way to include more teams IMO. It could be scheduled on the travel days for the first two rounds, with the caveat that the NHL is subject to the demands on the arenas, especially with the NBA playoffs happening at the same time along with busy buildings such as LA and MSG.

A system like this would benefit teams that perpetually live in the mooshy middle.

The problem with that is I don't think the players union and players would want to play more games just for a higher draft pick.

[Strange Brew]

I don't think tanking is such a serious issue. Much ado about mostly nothing.

The one solace about watching a bad team play at the end of the year is seeing young players. I wouldn't be a fan of a system that discourages that.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

I don't think tanking is such a serious issue. Much ado about mostly nothing.

The one solace about watching a bad team play at the end of the year is seeing young players. I wouldn't be a fan of a system that discourages that.

I don't think tanking is a big issue in the NHL either (NBA it is though)
What I'm interested more in solving for is:
- Fans should be cheering for their teams to win not lose. How do you incentivize that.
- And how do you keep the entire season interesting even for teams out of it.

I like the gold system for those reasons.