THURSDAY, 8:44am: A Sixers source tells Jason Wolf of the Wilmington News Journal that Philadelphia isn’t particularly opposed to the notion of evening the odds for the top pick, but the source nonetheless indicates that the Sixers aren’t high on the idea. An Eastern Conference executive who spoke with Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer believes that the Sixers’ lack of effort to field a competitive roster is negatively affecting the integrity of the league. A vote to approve the league’s proposal could take place as early as October, Pompey writes.
WEDNESDAY, 9:14am: The Sixers are resisting proposed changes to the draft lottery system, but their lengthy rebuilding process and willingness to build non-competitive rosters has curbed revenues and angered other teams, reports Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. The league has put forth a proposal to even out the odds for the top pick by as soon as next year, giving the team with the worst record in the NBA significantly longer odds of winning the lottery.
The league’s proposal would grant the top four teams in the lottery the same 11% odds of winning the No. 1 overall pick, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe explained a few weeks ago. All of those teams would have better odds under the current system. The Sixers finished with the second-worst record in the league last year, and there’s seemingly a strong chance they’re even worse this coming season, especially if they deal away Thaddeus Young, who’s been in multiple trade rumors of late, for little or no immediate return. Philadelphia is hoping to delay any change in the lottery until at least 2016, Windhorst writes.
GM Sam Hinkie‘s team will also be without Joel Embiid, who has a broken foot, and Dario Saric, who’s playing overseas, to start next season, meaning the Sixers will be without both of the players they netted with their pair of lottery picks from last month. The Sixers took a similar long-range approach last summer when they drafted injured center Nerlens Noel, who missed his entire first season.
The Sixers had the second-worst attendance in the league last season despite their presence in large-market Philadelphia. Smaller-market teams typically stand to benefit from the NBA’s revenue sharing plan that redistributes cash from franchises in urban hubs. The NBA has remediation plans in place to address teams that fall short of expectations based on market size, but it appears as though the Sixers aren’t carrying the weight that many other franchises expect them to.
i dont know how this rebuild will turn out but as an owner how do u let your gm draft 3 lottery picks in two yrs and none of them play there rookie seasons..i guess hes happy with the 2nd lowest attendence in the nba
All out rebuild experiment, all or nothing. 76ers could end up with the three best players in the last two drafts.
Exactly. In the NBA it’s better to do a complete teardown and suck rather than be mediocre and try to rebuild piece by piece. Look at what my team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, have been doing by trying the middling way. Of course, then again, they’ve gotten screwed repeatedly in the lottery in the past. But they’ve simply been mediocre the past decade or so. Would have been better to just gut the team and start over.
i dont have a problem with the all out rebuild my problem is why take 2 players you know arent gonna play in the nba this season..to me it feels like there not tryna win games this yr.
The league should change the draft lottery system, where only the top-3 teams in the lottery have a chance at getting the 1st pick, and the worst team in the league would at worst get the third pick. This would prevent better teams from getting the 1st pick.
Agreed. There should never be a team who gets 3 #1 picks in 4 drafts, especially when that team came close to the playoffs
All that would do is encourage more tanking, which is what they’re aiming to curb with lottery reform.
Let them tank. If they are getting multiple No. 1 overall picks and still sucking, that says something about their management. Since the whole point of the draft is supposed to be about distributing the most talented incoming players to help the struggling teams get better, then I actually have a bigger problem with better teams sneaking up in the draft order to get top picks than I do with tanking teams getting the top pick.
There’s no sense in having a competitive sports league where every team in it doesn’t go into each season with a goal of competing. It defeats the integrity of the game and makes all 82 of the tanking team’s games pointless.
Maybe if you live in a perfect world. But this is far from a perfect world.
Don’t need a perfect world to discourage teams from intentionally putting together a bad roster. That’s why they’re trying to change the lottery.
The lottery doesn’t need to be changed, or if it does it needs to go away and be a straight draft based on record. This nonsense of “tanking” is ridiculous. There are always going to be teams in position to lose the majority of their games, because long term deals for middling talent doesn’t make sense in a capped league.
I don’t see what the Sixers are doing as tanking. In fact, they were a surprise team out of the gate last season, winning games no one expected them to. They won their first three and were 5-4 through nine games. There’s tanking like the Minnesota Timberwolves did in 2006 when they sent out Mark Madsen to jack up three pointers and then there’s growing pains that will hopefully pay off down the road.
No, this train of thought is wrong and short-sited. It’s the point of a one year league. If the NBA ended in 2015, then every team needs to compete right now. But this is a league with a salary cap and with implications down the road. If you’re not going to win it this year, trying to put the most competitive team on the court for no other reason than to be more competitive right now and handing out long term deals for slightly better players will actually hurt your team in the long run.
There’s a difference between building for the future and intentionally putting a D-League caliber team on the floor, which you’re choosing to ignore. The Sixers are doing the latter.
There is no effective way to “build” for the future without gaining a superstar through the draft, short of being in a market that superstars will actively try and play for. Not only is there absolutely nothing wrong with what Philadelphia is doing, but they should be lauded for trying to vastly improve their franchise in the long run instead of accepting a team that will maybe make the playoffs but spend a decade in nba hell before being rebuilt again.
If there’s no way to effectively build without getting a superstar in the draft, then what would you say the Bobcats are doing? What did the Pacers do? And don’t claim Paul George because he went 10th; nobody’s tanking for the 10th pick. Same goes for Memphis. The Sixers may be building for the long run, but they’re making a joke of the game in the process and ruining 41 home games per year across the other 29 teams in the league.
The tenth pick is a lottery pick. And the Bobcats roster is full of lottery picks high in drafts.
AND neither team is a real contender. Indiana was more a function of a weak East than anything. They’re likely a 4/5 seed now and in NBA Hell (being capped out and without anyway of improving via draft).
Correct, the 10th pick is a lottery pick, what’s your point? Teams that tank aren’t aiming for a 10th pick. That’s not what’s being curbed with lottery reform. The Bobcats turned around when they signed Al Jefferson, which opened the door for them to sign Lance Stephenson. It’s not just draft picks, because the MKG pick was a total flop and Kemba went 8th. They didn’t tank to get better, they were just legitimately bad and have improved since hiring Rich Cho.
See, you and I view these teams differently. If I were a fan of one of these clubs, I’d almost not bother with basketball. It’s not that they aren’t “competing” in the traditional sense. It’s that I know they’re not going to be winning an NBA championship in the next five years, probably ten. Because their rosters aren’t even close to being that good, and it will take at least the better half of a decade to clear the roster if you want to try and rebuild.
Well you could make a rule that CLE doesn’t get the #1 pick again for…. idk at least 2 years.
It always cracks me up when people complain about a random system by design producing random results.
NBA has too many coincidences/storylines for there not to be some sort of foul in play. Whenever someone thinks of a rigged team sport, you think of Basketball, NCAA/NBA – even if you can’t prove it. Things like New Orleans getting the first pick over the bobcats, Cleveland getting LBJ, then Kyrie, then Bennett & then a re-do with Wiggins, Knicks getting Ewing, D-Rose for the Bulls… things like that and the playoff officiating over the years/ties to gambling. I don’t really believe that it’s fixed/rigged, but in general “Perception is everything”.
No the NBA has too many dumb fans that would rather buy in to any worthless theory rather then take 10 minutes to understand probability. Every team has someone watching the lottery process, why would a team voluntarily screw themselves out of talent just to help the NBA make a story? You can make up a story no matter who gets the pick and call it a conspiracy after the fact. If Boston got the 1 its rigged because its Boston. If the Lakers got it its rigged because its the Lakers. If the Tpups got it it was for loosing love. If the pelicans got it it was to save themselves from that terrible trade and help establish a rising team in a small market around Davis. Bucks / Kings to establish recently sold small markets. You could do this all day. For every baseless story there is 100 idiots who want to believe it.
Well Boston had a 10% chance and LA a 6% chance… CLE had a 1.7% chance. But again like I said, its perception You bring up the Pelicans – well they got the # 1 pick after being league controlled & losing CP3. If the Wolves get a #1 overall next year it just adds fuel to the fire. Like I said, I don’t think it’s really rigged, but Rule 39: “There is no such thing as coincidence.”
So your telling me on top of being to dumb to understand simple probability you can’t read. You don’t “believe” it, yet you continue to pedal the baseless idea over and above logical conclusions.
No matter how you feel about the NBA draft lottery, and I think it’s terrible, I think the Sixers have a point here. You can’t have rules set in place and then change them suddenly in midstream. If the NBA is going to change the way the lottery works, they should phase it in so teams building their core under the current system don’t get screwed. Announce the changes now and then implement them in two or three years so teams can change their strategies going forward. Or, you know, just eliminate the lottery all together in a few years.
This is one of the problems with the NBA: making decisions and rule changes for money’s sake rather than letting teams, owners, and GM’s play things out according to their own vision. The league has a problem with parity and the same teams coming out on top a decade-by-decade basis. Tanking and rebuilding is one of the few ways to attempt to shift the landscape.
Losers Bracket… bottom 4 teams in a 1 game playoff for the #1 overall pick. They should all be relatively terrible teams so..