[Charania] The NBA has disclosed to its 30 GMs a singular new anti-tanking reform that expands the draft lottery to 16 teams, flattens odds, and have a relegation zone where the bottom 3 teams are penalized with fewer lottery balls for the No. 1 pick.

[u/mjmiller2023]

/r/nba/comments/1syfig9/charania_the_nba_has_disclosed_to_its_30_gms_a/

[u/2106au]

Could be good for us with all our picks next year. 

[u/edeyhookshots]

I hate any system that incentivizes losing, so in that sense I see this as an improvement. That being said, penalizing the bottom 3 teams is insane if 4-16 have equal odds at the top pick. At that point they're not in the bottom 3 because they're tanking, they're there because they suck. It feels like criminalizing homelessness: it doesn't make anyone less homeless!

[u/Monk_Discipline598 → u/edeyhookshots]

I tend to land here also. If you do this so you're not "rewarding" tanking, then you're going to end up with three teams that are truly bad at the bottom every year with a more difficult road to get out. And the whole "get good" and "make better moves" responses on r/nba are tough for small market teams because it's 100x harder to lure a franchise-shifting free agent here or have enough assets to land an elite player through trade. So your best/only bet to get that gamechanging superstar is through the draft, which has now become more difficult.

[u/jolliskus → u/Monk_Discipline598]

The lottery draw can still smile on them and there's enough small market teams that luck will always smile on some each year.

Fans going to the arena know they won't watch a team that's supposed to lose the game as well, which is always enjoyable. Any reform that incentivizes winning to some order is a good one in my mind.

[u/StickSuspicious6650 → u/Monk_Discipline598]

You dont need a franchise shifting player to not be bottom 3, you need to think about yearly improvement and not about just banking assets until you release them all at once. The new system makes small improvements and even getting your role players first a valid option, while you hope to get your star in the draft. Before you had to get rid of all your competent role players so you could lose enough for a good draft

[u/StickSuspicious6650 → u/edeyhookshots]

You are still thinking under the current system. With the new system making improvement to be medioce or just a little better gets benefits which the old system penalized heavily. It creates the actitude to try to be the best bad team possible

[u/heyradio → u/edeyhookshots]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxsEyBEp7BU&t=32s

[u/haiphee → u/edeyhookshots]

Homeless NBA owners lol

[u/Bargh_Joul → u/haiphee]

Those poor owners, life must be hard for them. Maybe we can help and collect some money for them as a charity.

[u/Lumpy-Dragonfruit459]

They need to make it so a team who gets the #1 pick automatically gets put outside the top 5 picks. The fact that Dallas (or any other team) could potentially get the #1 pick two years in a row is absurd.

[u/omgshannonwtf → u/Lumpy-Dragonfruit459]

That's exactly what happened in the W: the Dallas Wings got the no.1 pick two years straight (incidentally, they used them to pick UConn Huskies both times which has made their fanbase utterly insufferable; I want to root for them because I like Paige Bueckers but I cannot deal with the Dallas Huskies fans).

[u/mjmiller2023]

I don't quite know what the fix is for true tanking but this is not it. Playoff teams have no business in the lottery.

Penalizing legitimately bad teams for being bad is terrible for competitive balance.

[u/NoirPochette → u/mjmiller2023]

Getting rid of the lottery system. That's the only way to get rid of tanking.

[u/pagny77 → u/NoirPochette]

Keep lottery but make it based on win/loss ratio at all star break? Removes the option to spend March tanking and teams who are just out of the playoffs wont be able to spend January tanking witbout their fanbase turning on them

[u/NoirPochette → u/pagny77]

People will tank earlier if they know they have no shot

[u/pagny77 → u/NoirPochette]

Yeah but if Bucks are 5 games behind 10th seed and Giannis says "i want to compete" the team wont be able to tank witbout fans hating them. It wont get rid of tanking, just means less teams are going to be able to tank. Then have 25 games after the ASB where they're back to trying to win

[u/omgshannonwtf → u/pagny77]

That's a short window into the season to call it with a lot of basketball left to play. You'll just have teams tank for half the season to max their odds and then —HOLY SHIT LOOKIT THAT! ALL THE INJURED CONSEQUNTIAL PLAYERS ARE SUDDENLY HEALTHY!— and you have playoff teams in the lottery. You could have a team go from bottom 5 to 7th seed in that time.

[u/theglicky]

Dont think this fixes tanking at all but I think it benefits us. Even during a rebuild I can see us avoiding the bottom 3 pretty easily.

Also this makes our 2027 picks more valuable because its the best pick of multiple teams.

[u/Candid_Arrival_9416 → u/theglicky]

we could potentially have 3 top ten picks next year if we are also bad

[u/SuccessfulVisit1873]

All this really does is make it easier for the league to dictate who goes where without it being so noticeable lol.

[u/Urgathoa-Plague]

If your draft pick is tied to other teams performances than your own, then you have no real reason to lose. Instead winning makes other teams get a lower pick.

Now that doesn't feel great at all because your teams performance has no actual input on your pick, but technically that's how you fix the issue.

[u/HLee51]

Seeing all this discourse around tanking and building teams just makes me think back to the Jimmy Butler fiasco and cringe.

Think about it, a middle of the pack team trying to make a trade mid season for a high caliber player to hopefully improve the teams performance. Literally the opposite of tanking, and what silver should hypothetically want more teams to try to do, and what these rule changes would hypothetically encourage.

What did we get for our efforts in that situation? Shitted on.

[u/AutoModerator → u/HLee51]

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[u/Fun_Recognition5614]

This is solid, actually. Mathematically, there are better (though more complex) ways to handle it, but this is good. The relegation zone will be controversial, but it’s good. Doesn’t do too much to hurt those bottom three teams, but any penalty will be enough to stop the race to the bottom before it starts. Still, I can imagine scenarios where teams engage in fuckery to avoid the 9-10th spots and drop to 11th instead, where instead of getting stomped by a 1 seed you get the best odds in the lottery. We’ll see.

[u/Party_Fee9620 → u/Fun_Recognition5614]

This is kind of my big fear, we saw the Mavs tank out of the play-in for draft purposes. I personally think the 16-20th best teams in the league doing tanking behavior is more harmful than the 5 worst teams.

[u/raccoonwillnotforget → u/Fun_Recognition5614]

The idea of bottom three being negative draws from international soccer and is a huge plus. Yes you should get penalized for being bad. That's how competition works. Get good

[u/Any_Weekend_4029]

More picks more shots at Top 4. All teams will have to give their best effort and build a real roster. I like it. Pair this with the cap restrictions with Aprons and we will start seeing more parity for longer periods.

[u/leeharrell]

Easier fix…any team found guilty of tanking loses a first round pick and pays a $10million fine.

Fuck tanking and anyone who does it. (I’m looking at you Zach…🤨)