NBA may abolish the draft to prevent tanking

[stemit14]

Posted it in the draft day thread but I think it belongs here. Friedman mentioned that he thinks Florida might intentionally tank so their pick protection will take effect and they’ll get to keep their pick this year. Said they could likely do it using “load management” to sit players.

Brings up the question of how to fix this. Does it need fixing? I like some of the ideas the NBA is looking at to address intentionally tanking… especially ones that prevent already good teams (eg. Florida) from winning draft lotteries.

Not sure how it can be done but maybe if it was a bit of a “black box” calculation where all kinds of variables are put in to determine lottery odds. Ultimately, I think that calculation to adjust lottery odds should be based on:

-recent (last 2-3 years of regular season and/or playoff success)
-injury totals in regular season specific to scoring stats of the injured players. For example, if a really good team had injuries to a bunch of top players and it made them have a bad season, I don’t think that should help their lottery odds.
-proportion of regular season spent at the bottom 5 of the league standings. Meaning, rather than calculate the lottery odds based on who finishes last on the last game of the regular season, make it so it accounts for teams spending long portions of the season at/near the bottom. That way, a hot streak at the end of the year for a bad team does not sewer their odds of winning a high pick.

I’m sure there are other variables that could be considered and each input would have to be weighted differently. It would make for something fairly complicated so I doubt the league would ever do it but it’s tough to think Toronto, Winnipeg and Florida could all pick ahead of the flames due to the current lottery system. Unlikely I know but the odds are not that poor that one of them could end up with a top 3-4 pick.

[Mathgod]

Any system that rewards teams for tanking is bad.

Any system that involves lotteries & random chance is bad.

Need a system that doesn't involve either of these things, IMO.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by stemit14

Not sure how it can be done but maybe if it was a bit of a “black box” calculation where all kinds of variables are put in to determine lottery odds.

The last thing the league needs is to make the process more opaque. The people who think the lottery is rigged would have a field day claiming that complicated rules are rigged – and they could well be right.

[Tbull8]

It would be so flames to introduce anti ranking rules right as we’re positioned to pick high for the next few years

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

Any system that rewards teams for tanking is bad.

Any system that involves lotteries & random chance is bad.

Need a system that doesn't involve either of these things, IMO.

If the goal of the draft is to distribute new talent to teams that most need the help, then having a dumb luck lottery is stupid.

There has to be a reasonable formula to determine what teams need the draft advantage more. The way they do it now is just lazy.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

If the goal of the draft is to distribute new talent to teams that most need the help, then having a dumb luck lottery is stupid.

There has to be a reasonable formula to determine what teams need the draft advantage more. The way they do it now is just lazy.

Well, let's hear the solution because I can't think of one.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Well, let's hear the solution because I can't think of one.

They should maybe take into account how much pain each team's fanbase has been through over the past 20 years. Crazy idea, I know...

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

They should maybe take into account how much pain each team's fanbase has been through over the past 20 years. Crazy idea, I know...

I'm in. We draft 1st.

[looooob]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

I'm in. We draft 1st.

for the next several years


yeah maybe just measure fans cortisol levels or something

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

If the goal of the draft is to distribute new talent to teams that most need the help, then having a dumb luck lottery is stupid.

There has to be a reasonable formula to determine what teams need the draft advantage more. The way they do it now is just lazy.

It’s not lazy, it’s gamed.
Insert Jurassic park clip that life finds a way.

It’s been 20 years since the draft was about distributing talent and not who can best f the system.

Abolish it, or go to a wonder wheel. Anything else I’ve heard of is more of the same.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by Bend it like Bourgeois

It’s not lazy, it’s gamed.
Insert Jurassic park clip that life finds a way.

It’s been 20 years since the draft was about distributing talent and not who can best f the system.

Abolish it, or go to a wonder wheel. Anything else I’ve heard of is more of the same.

If you abolish the draft you will have the same teams getting the best young players every year. The Flames might as well fold up.

[DJones]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

If you abolish the draft you will have the same teams getting the best young players every year. The Flames might as well fold up.

top prospects going to top teams would be terrible for them getting paid.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by DJones

top prospects going to top teams would be terrible for them getting paid.

Too prospects going to top teams would be the end of any competitiveness in the league. Every small market team would be done.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by DJones

top prospects going to top teams would be terrible for them getting paid.

Since ELC salaries are low anyway, it doesn't matter which team a top prospect goes to as a rookie. As soon as he's eligible to get paid, the team can dump him on the market and sign another prospect for peanuts. Even with the salary cap in place, that gives them an enormous advantage in filling out their roster after paying their established stars.

[BoLevi]

What about no retaining the rights of players at all. Everyone is a free agent from day one. The salary cap manages talent distribution. I guess you could even have teams that finish out of the playoffs get a flat cap bonus.

[dino7c]

I still like the freeze the standings after the TDL for the purpose of the draft odds method. Would make the final 2 months far more enjoyable

[Itse]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Well, let's hear the solution because I can't think of one.

Randomness is stupid. Just calculate what you want the reality to be, and then make that happen.

I would start by giving the picks out evenly over a 32 year cycle, and then moving teams down for championships, division titles and playoff rounds won.

Every team should, as a starting point, be picking top half every other year, top 4 every 8 years and top 8 every 4 years, etc. In theory you would pick exactly once in each of the 32 spots over a 32 year cycle. This in itself would fix a lot, a teams should be getting a fairly steady influx of young talent without a need to tank.

Now lets add support for non-successful teams.

If a team wins a championship, all their picks move down during the whole cycle, and for every division title and second round win you move down the next 8 years, every first round win moves you down for the next 4 years, and every conference final win moves you down for the next 16. This might push some of your low 1st round picks to become high 2nd round picks etc.

The effect of one year on one succesful team would be pretty small, but over time this would add up for the unsuccessful teams that never win everything (Flames), as successful teams would keep moving down around them year after year, sometimes multiple spots.

As there would be no difference between a 1st round loser and bottom of the standings, there would.be no incentive to tank. The only way to move up the draft is to not have meaningful success, and it would be a calculation that takes into consideration success in much longer time scales than just each individual year.

You wouldn't need to actually create 32 year cycle on day one of this system, but instead do a lottery formula which would consider both your previous draft positions and your previous success to hand out picks as evenly as.possible given those parameters. It would be pretty complicated, but absolutely doable.

Or you could just do the lottery one time, meaning each team would theoretically always know with pretty good accuracy where they would be picking each year quite a long time into the future. The downside of this is that you would have some outliers as some teams would for example get extra 1st overalls due to just having the right teams move down at the right time. Doing each year separately would help you control this.

[FlamesAddiction]

Just for fun, I made a spreadsheet that awards "points" to teams based on standing over the past 3 season, playoff success, and previous draft position. The team with fewer points drafts higher.

It goes like this:

Finishing top 2 in the standings in any of the last 3 seasons gives you 10 points.
Finishing 3-7 gives you 7 points.
Finishing 8-17 gives you 5 points.
Finishing 18-27 gives you 3 points.
Finishing 28-32 (or bottom 5) gives you 1 point.

Making the playoffs in one of the last 3 seasons gives you 1 point.
Making the final 4 gives you 3 points.
Making the SCFs gives you 4 points.
Winning the Cup gives you 5 points.
Missing the playoffs gives 0 points.

Drafting top 3 in any of the past 2 seasons gives you 5 points.
Drafting 4-5 OA gives you 4 points.
Drafting 6-10 gives you 3 points.
Drafting 11-20 gives you 2 points.
Drafting 21-32 gives you 1 point.

For this year's standings, I assumed that the standings at the end of the season are the same as today.

For the playoffs, I just assumed that the top 4 and top 2 teams by point percentage would be the last teams standing with Colorado winning the Cup. Since it is just an experiment, it didn't matter.

For drafting, I only considered where teams would have picked and not picks that were acquired through trade.

There were also some ties in points, so I used goal differential as the tie breaker (you could use regulation wins, or whatever). The former just seemed easier and quicker.

The final draft order looked like this:

1. Calgary
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. Columbus
5. San Jose
6. Vancouver
7. Seattle
8. Pittsburg
9. St. Louis
10. Nashville
11. New Jersey
12. Anaheim
13. Detroit
14. Utah
15. Montreal
16. Boston
17. New York Rangers
18. Buffalo
19. Ottawa
20. Minnesota
21. Los Angeles
22. Toronto
23. Vegas
24. New York Islanders
25. Winnipeg
26. Washington
27. Tampa Bay
28. Edmonton
29. Carolina
30. Colorado
31. Dallas
32. Florida


I swear when I started do it, I had no intention of coming up with a system that would give the Flames 1st OA. It just happened that way, probably because there are only 5 teams in the NHL set to miss the playoffs three years in row, all of which are in the top 5 on this list. Also helping was the obvious fact that the Flames haven't drafted top 5 in any of the past couple of seasons. It also might overly punish teams for being in the final 2 in the playoffs and the Cup winner as there was some duplication (they got points add for also being in the final 4).

Anyway, it was just an experiment and a really rough idea for awarding draft position based on actually parameters and measures rather an just year-to-year standings followed up by a lottery. It's definitely not perfect, I realize that.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

Abolish the draft and abolish entry-level salaries. The teams with the most cap space are often the worst teams. I think everything would come out in the wash with some variation of this.

[GioforPM]

My solution is that a panel of me decides who needs and deserves the top picks more. How would I decide? Who has had a lot of high picks already, who tried to compete for their fans but just had a bad team, who actively threw games?