BOSTON -- Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said the NBA's method for assigning draft picks needs an overhaul.

"We have to get rid of the marginal incentive to lose," Morey said Friday at the annual Sloan Conference on sports analytic's at MIT.

The NBA places non-playoff teams into a weighted lottery -- worse teams getting better odds of a higher pick -- so accusations of teams tanking to get a higher selection have long been a part the league's culture. As the highly anticipated 2014 draft approaches, those murmurs have increased.

Morey finds the speculation justified.

"It's bad right now," Morey said. "I think last year, at the end of the season, I counted like two-thirds of the teams weren't trying to win."

Morey said several potential solutions exist, specifically noting the wheel created by Boston Celtics assistant general manager Michael Zarren.

The wheel assigns each draft choice to each of the NBA's teams over every 30-year span. The picks are rotated so each team receive a top-six pick every five years and at least one top-12 pick every four years.

Other popular solutions include eliminating protected draft picks and abolishing the draft entirely, allowing rookies to enter the league as free agents.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10532617/houston-rockets-gm-daryl-morey-wants-nba-draft-order-overhaul

Djsunyc this is your teams legacy !

Ex-Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo: ‘I tried to tank a couple of years ago’

And people wrongly accused Vincent Lamar Carter for wanting to escape Toronto when he played there ?
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BOSTON — Former Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo admitted Friday that his team tried to tank during the 2011-12 season.

While discussing the future of the NBA’s draft lottery and the problems with the current system, Colangelo revealed that the Raptors’ front office was not interested in winning during the ’11-12 season, hoping instead to secure a high draft pick. The team finished 23-43 under first-year coach Dwane Casey in the lockout-shortened season.

“Admittedly, I tried to tank a couple of years ago,” Colangelo said during a basketball panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “I didn’t come out and say, ‘Coach, you have to lose games.’ I wanted him to establish a winning tradition and culture, but I wanted him to do it in the framework of playing and developing young players.”

Toronto tied with the Warriors for the seventh-worst record that season. Colangelo noted that the regular-season finale proved critical. The Raptors blew out the Nets 98-67, while the Warriors lost to the Spurs to complete a 6-22 finish. Toronto ended up finishing one game ahead of the Nets, and it drafted eighth after losing a coin flip with Golden State.

“The last game of the season, [Nets coach] Avery Johnson had a 24-point deficit and was looking down at the floor smirking,” Colangelo said.

Colangelo pointed out that the victory essentially kept the Raptors “from a coin flip for Damian Lillard potentially.” Lillard went sixth to Portland, which had acquired that top-three-protected pick from the Nets in an earlier trade. The Warriors picked small forward Harrison Barnes seventh and the Raptors selected shooting guard Terrence Ross eighth. Ross has shown plenty of potential in his two NBA seasons — including a career-high 51 points in a game in January– but Lillard was the Rookie of the Year last season and an All-Star this season.

Colangelo was stripped of his GM duties last May. A few weeks later, he stepped down from the Raptors’ front office.

1. Abolish the lottery and make those 14 picks in order or record.

2. Reverse the order of those 14 picks so the team with the best record to miss the playoffs picks 1st; the team with the second best record to miss the playoffs picks 2nd; etc. That way teams are rewarded for trying to win instead of trying to lose.