2022 Draft Pick Watch

[Ariel]

Memphis resting everybody, easy Boston win, dammit.
Looks like a 3-way tie is likely both on the Toronto pick (with Utah & Denver, 1/3 chance at each 20-22 slot) and the Boston pick (with Milwaukee & Philly, 1/3 chance at each 23-25 slot).

[objective]

The only way to stop tanking is to make the lottery chances of getting a top 4 pick a privilege and not a right

2 steps:

1. Adopt the same rules as there are for applying for an injured player exception. For that situation teams apply and have to submit medical records to prove the player is unlikely to return that season. The bulls were rejected for Patrick Williams and sure enough he's playing again.

To qualify for the lottery, teams need to submit medical reports and justify not playing guys for long stretches that aren't on minimum deals. That will cut a lot of the crap.

The non-qualified teams start at 5 and to down from there.

2. There should as a second step to qualify for the lottery be a committee after the medicals to certify that a team made efforts in good faith to compete and not tarnish the reputation of the league. This committee should be a mix of crotchety old players, coaches, and media.

The point of the committee is to cut out the crap that OKC pulls when they sit Poku. It's one thing to sit over 30 veterans like Horford last year when the excuse is to give the young players time to develop. But when OKC decides to not play their young developing players, that's going too far and they should be penalized.

At the committee level a team could plead it's case about medicals etc. For instance, Portland might be able to justify to a committee not bringing back Lillard, with his much poorer play this season and the Olympic work load and his age... But they could never justify sitting Nurkic who was kicking ass and they were winning games until he suddenly had plantar fascia that didn't seem to bother him at all

[TD 21]

^ Either that or start rigging it for teams like the Spurs, are who owed anyway for what they allowed to happen to them and who have done what the league wants teams in their position to do for multiple years and stop rigging it for league pets like the Raptors, who shamelessly tanked and complained about their predicament last season only to be rewarded.

[The Truth #6]

A hardcore move would be to make every team in the lottery but obviously would work against us now. The committee idea would be interesting.

[scott]

If you’re gonna have a committee and introduce a level of subjectivity, just have them flat out select the lotto order based on what lotto teams made a good faith effort to compete. Ties go to the team with the worse record

[Ariel]

I agree that the tanking is out of control, and checking on the medical records for top lottery teams would sound feasible. A tanking committee is a can of worms waiting to happen IMO.

[RC_Drunkford]

I would love for the NBA to do the Spurs a solid for not tanking and have them jump into the top 4, but it will probably be Portland cause it's more exciting for the fans to pair a Top 4 pick with Dame

[Ditty]

The Knicks came through ! They finally did something right for once.

[Mr. Body]

Obi Toppin has looked really freaking good at the end of the season.

[CGD]

I agree that the tanking is out of control, and checking on the medical records for top lottery teams would sound feasible. A tanking committee is a can of worms waiting to happen IMO.

It’s still bad, but the basically equals odds at slots 1-4 is an improvement from past years.

The other way to tackle it is to figure out a way to incentivize getting into the play-in game even more. The gate money helps, but perhaps they can slightly improve the odds of a better draft position if you earn the 9/10th seed. I guess I wouldn’t want that legit injured team that limps in at the end to get a slightly better chance at a windfall, but how common would that be? The could also reward a 10th or 9th seed monetarily if they upset a 7/8 seed.

[exstatic]

Memphis resting everybody, easy Boston win, dammit.
Looks like a 3-way tie is likely both on the Toronto pick (with Utah & Denver, 1/3 chance at each 20-22 slot) and the Boston pick (with Milwaukee & Philly, 1/3 chance at each 23-25 slot).

3 way tie on draft picks is decided by coin flips. ALL ties on draft picks are decided by coin flips.

[Ariel]

I think there would be a different solution to the persistent tanking: add a penalization coefficient based past on draft slots in a given window, say giving an exponentially determined weight to the past 5 drafts that detracts from lottery odds. That way, if a team resorts to this strategy on a recurrent basis, they see their chances of a high pick severely diminished, and thus reduces the incentive to do so.

[talkspurs]

I think there would be a different solution to the persistent tanking: add a penalization coefficient based past on draft slots in a given window, say giving an exponentially determined weight to the past 5 drafts that detracts from lottery odds. That way, if a team resorts to this strategy on a recurrent basis, they see their chances of a high pick severely diminished, and thus reduces the incentive to do so.

That I could see being interesting.

something along the lines of If you got the fifth pick in either of the last to year you get 1 win added to your total for this year for each year you had a top 5 pick.
4 would be 2 wins per year.
3 would be 3 wins per year.
2 would be 4 wins
1 would be 5 years.

for year 3 you could cut those each in half. yes that would leave some with half wins but that would be fine and also help separate between ties.

[Seventyniner]

I think there would be a different solution to the persistent tanking: add a penalization coefficient based past on draft slots in a given window, say giving an exponentially determined weight to the past 5 drafts that detracts from lottery odds. That way, if a team resorts to this strategy on a recurrent basis, they see their chances of a high pick severely diminished, and thus reduces the incentive to do so.

I like this. Make disincentives to tank objective rather than subjective.

The one that will probably gain the most traction imo is to flatten the lottery again. Given every team equal odds and there will be no reason to tank, at least once you're assured of not making the playoffs.

[Ariel]

3 way tie on draft picks is decided by coin flips. ALL ties on draft picks are decided by coin flips.

I don't follow. Are you claiming that n teams tied don't have 1/n chances on each of the n possible picks? Explain.

[objective]

That I could see being interesting.

something along the lines of If you got the fifth pick in either of the last to year you get 1 win added to your total for this year for each year you had a top 5 pick.
4 would be 2 wins per year.
3 would be 3 wins per year.
2 would be 4 wins
1 would be 5 years.

for year 3 you could cut those each in half. yes that would leave some with half wins but that would be fine and also help separate between ties.

I prefer a simple points based limiting system.

#1 pick = 4 points
#2 = 3 points
#3 = 2 points
#4 = 1 point

No team can have more than 5/6 points in a 2 year span, and no team can have more than 7/8 points in a 3 year span

It wouldn't stop tanking as much as crap teams would still tank their ass off, for instance it wouldn't have affected OKC or Indiana or Portland at all. But it would be a hard ceiling, so in 5 points in 2 years system neither Detroit or Houston would be eligible for the #1 pick, though they'd still tank anyway to get the best they'd be eligible for.

So it's less of a deincentiviser and more of a punishment.

[Ariel]

So it's less of a deincentiviser and more of a punishment.

That's a matter of semantics, negative incentives and punishments are conceptually the same thing. The point is, recent high picks should negatively affect the picking order. How does happen is a matter of implementation (time window, penalization coefficient, etc) and subject to debate, but its necessity we can agree on.

[exstatic]

I don't follow. Are you claiming that n teams tied don't have 1/n chances on each of the n possible picks? Explain.

My bad. Non lottery ties need to be broken. Lottery ties have their odds combined and split. If there is an uneven number, random draw determines which team gets the extra chance.

[Ariel]

My bad. Non lottery ties need to be broken. Lottery ties have their odds combined and split. If there is an uneven number, random draw determines which team gets the extra chance.

For the top 4 yes, but other than that lottery tie-breakers would work much in the same way as in non-lottery spots. Point being, n-way ties have to be resolved by sorting the teams involved, by whatever method provided it warrants each tied team the same chance (be that coin toss or whatever, for practical purposes the results are the same).
By the way, having the lottery odds of tied teams combined and split is mathematically equivalent to sorting and then performing the lottery with the new order.

[Ariel]

So far all results are going to plan...
Spurs losing would ensure 9th place in the lottery.
Denver and Utah winning would ensure Toronto's pick falls at 20 with no tie breaks necessary... I didn't see this one comming, thanks Obi Toppin & Immanuel Quickley!
The Boston pick will be at 23, 24 or 25, with equal chance at each spot.
The Lakers 2nd rounder will be at 38

In summary: provided things don't change, we'd get 9 (subject to lottery) + 20 + 23/24/25 (one of those) + 38

[scott]

This years’s four worst teams, same as last years. Love the point system idea above. But at the same time, no matter what draft picks they get, I have a hard time seeing Det, Hou, Orl, or OKC ever being more than lotto teams. They are just sham franchise forever bottom dwellers

[Uriel]

So far all results are going to plan...
Spurs losing would ensure 9th place in the lottery.
Denver and Utah winning would ensure Toronto's pick falls at 20 with no tie breaks necessary... I didn't see this one comming, thanks Obi Toppin & Immanuel Quickley!
The Boston pick will be at 23, 24 or 25, with equal chance at each spot.
The Lakers 2nd rounder will be at 38

In summary: provided things don't change, we'd get 9 (subject to lottery) + 20 + 23/24/25 (one of those) + 38

When do we find out what the Boston pick will be?

[Kurik]

So far all results are going to plan...
Spurs losing would ensure 9th place in the lottery.
Denver and Utah winning would ensure Toronto's pick falls at 20 with no tie breaks necessary... I didn't see this one comming, thanks Obi Toppin & Immanuel Quickley!
The Boston pick will be at 23, 24 or 25, with equal chance at each spot.
The Lakers 2nd rounder will be at 38

In summary: provided things don't change, we'd get 9 (subject to lottery) + 20 + 23/24/25 (one of those) + 38

Very good news on the Toronto pick, thanks for the updates!

[ZeusWillJudge]

My bad. Non lottery ties need to be broken. Lottery ties have their odds combined and split. If there is an uneven number, random draw determines which team gets the extra chance.

The NBA website shows that the 8, 9, and 10 seeds get the same number of ping pong balls. (45 numbers out of 1,000 or 4.5%) https://www.nba.com/news/nba-draft-lottery-explainer If that's still the way it is, splitting the odds wouldn't change a thing about the odds of getting a Top 4 pick. The coin toss would just determine who gets the better pick in the draft.

That's what the NBA site (linked) says. But it doesn't add up with the chart on Tankathon, so I don't know which to believe. Unless the NBA made changes after they posted that do ent, Tankathon is wrong.

[The Truth #6]

I think Premier League forces the worst team back to the minor league. Would never happen here but a punishment for habitually being the worst seems like a good idea to consider and debate.