Posted by TMS:

i think if u just give every non playoff team the same amount of ping pong balls & just keep picking until all the lottery slots are filled, it's the fairest & easiest way to stop teams from tanking & ensure that lottery picks are left up to random chance rather than bad teams in bad markets intentionally losing to try & cash in on talented young players & not have to spend money in free agency.

& while we're on that topic, i think there should be a minimum cap figure set on teams that's more proportionate to the median average of salaries in the NBA... if teams are gonna benefit from luxury tax revenue sharing from big market teams that spend a lot on their payroll, then they should be made to spend those shared revenues & invest it back into their rosters.

I agree

i can see it now...

more praise for hijack city

after they landed their...

4th top 5 pick in 3 years

2007:#2 durant (no brainer) & #5 green (good pick)
2008: #4 westbrook (hard to throw around a lot of praise them since a lot of us wanted him)
2009: #3 ?

it is the fact that small market teams get rewarded for decimating their rosters while big market teams with much more pressure to put a winning product on the floor rarely do this that drives me mad.

[Edited by - PresIke on 05-20-2009 2:43 PM]

They need to average out a team's wins over the last three years in calculating lottery chances. That'll put an end to tanking. Team with the worst record in the last three years gets the best chance at the top pick.

Posted by orangeblobman:

i have the perfect solution:

there are 30 teams and 16 make it, so 14 don't

what you do is you have a one game playoffs for the non-playoff teams, the worst 7 have home court. the winner of the playoff gets the first pick. perfect...think of the possibilities.

Now that could be exciting...

Posted by PresIke:

Posted by EwingsGlass:

Reverse the draft. Instead of rewarding the worst team. reward the best lotto team with the most balls in proportion to wins. This will promote good management and force teams to try to win toward the end of the season. This rewarding failure process really doesn't create the right incentives for teams.

except then teams who are borderline playoff teams might start to tank in this case.

Yeah, there is a chance of that, but if the percentage of lotto balls is in proportion to wins rather than the more random percentages currently used and all teams are trying to win, there really isn't as much incentive to tank from the 8 seed to the lotto. Think about it, if the total number of wins among lotto teams is 400 and you just missed the 8 seed with 40 wins and miss the playoffs, you only have a 10% chance of winning the lottery. Compare that to the 25% chance given to the worst team under the current system. Under my system, that horrible team that only won 13 games ends up with a 3.2% chance of winning--- which is still better odds than the Knicks had this year.

I think the current NBA collective bargaining agreement and the lotto system is designed to create and maintain dynasties and not to encourage healthy competition. Mediocre teams stay mediocre. Teams over the cap are stuck in the quagmire (giggity giggity) and become the dumping ground for additional bad contracts. Free agents are discouraged from changing teams making it difficult, if not impossible to re-build through free agency. Trading rules are strict and unless you have a special relationship with another team, you can't get a deal done. The executive and coaching pool is basically a game of musical chairs. Can you imagine that Layden still has a job as an Assistant Coach working for the Jazz?

I think the NFL has the best system to build a team. Use the franchise tag. Stop guaranteeing contracts so players can be cut (so Marbury can't say 'if I wasn't so good, why would they pay me the maximum'). This way, we may never get Lebron via free agency, but teams can still build respectable squads, cut dead-weight and improve through the draft at the same time.