Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
Gold plan is silly IMO because it depends too much on how good the 8 (or now 10) seed is - and how many games they've played. The bottom 10 teams in the East have been garbage in the NBA for a lot of years, so it takes longer for the 15th team in the East to get eliminated than their counterpart in the West.
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Easy modification for NBA purposes: after each team has played the first 20 games on its schedule, it gains one point for each win that it earns while that team is in a standings position outside of the top 10. At the end of the season, the team with the most points accumulated that did not earn a place in the playoffs drafts first, followed by the second most points, and so on. Playoff teams draft in the usual order of elimination from the playoffs.
This incentivizes teams to keep trying to make it into the play-in, because it's a win-win scenario: either you win your way into the playoffs through the play-in, or if you lose, you are probably still in line for at least a pretty good draft position.
There is a scenario where a team needs to win to get into the play-in and opts instead to lose because it is in the pole position for the first overall pick, but it would be pretty rare to see that happen.