NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes the new lottery system has decreased the incentive to tank, as he told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols in an interview relayed by ESPN’s Royce Young.
Silver believes the former system created a “destructive” mindset in which teams intentionally waved the white flag in order to improve their future prospects. Fans bought into that mentality and preferred to see their team lose, simply to get a better draft choice.
“Hopefully, it’ll stop fans in those markets from rooting for their teams to perform poorly,” Silver said. “Because that race to the bottom is just destructive, I think, for everyone. Corrosive for players and franchises, and I think, in some cases, even some executives who knew better felt they couldn’t withstand the pressure from the communities, from the media in some cases, saying, ‘Why are you operating at this level when you should either get much better or much worse?'”
In the first year under the new system, the Pelicans moved to the top spot despite having only a six percent chance of getting that pick. The bottom three teams in the league had just a 14 percent chance to win the lottery, compared to 25 percent under the previous system. The new lottery also determined the top four picks, instead of top three.
The Knicks, who had the worst record, dropped to third, and the Cavaliers and Suns, who were tied for the second-most losses, wound up with the fifth and sixth picks.
“I think in this case now with the change in the lottery, people are going to realize that there’s only one way to build a franchise,” Silver said. “Of course, you need to get great players, but at the same time you need to build culture, you need strong management, you need strong coaching. And players incrementally get better year after year.”
:( The Process will be no more
If you mean Hinkie’s “the process”, teams will stii try, if not succeed. The
Lakers did a middling-team version of tanking that worked, getting them into the lottery.
Embiid might as well change his trademarked “trust the process” to “trust load management”!
Did the Laker’s tank? How Sway? LBJ got hurt and then the team went into a spiral? Going into the season I can guarantee you their agenda wasn’t to get a top draft pick. It was to at least make the playoffs. What could they do differently once LBJ missed all of those games and was clearly playing with an injury? It’s not like jettisoned vets to save money. Bad take. Poor example. You can possibly make that argument about the Clippers trading Tobias for draft picks and Sharmant when the team was still the playoff picture. They made the playoffs despite making that trade not because of it.
They shut James down after the team did not care to rally around him. They could have brought Ball and Ingram back at the end but didn’t bother. Ingram’s thing is easily controlled with meds. Ball was shut down March 13 two months after a 4 to 6 week ankle sprain when they later found a bone bruise there too. Suspicious things abounded. Ball was going to get unapproved surgery in Ohio, zounds!
It’s funny that tanking is only an issue when big market teams are doing it
That’s because big markets = money. It’s not funny watching New York tank when the ownership should try more.
Did you see what happened when our ownership “tried more”? LOL, no thanks. Perry probably has Dolan and Mills locked in an underground vault in the Pine Barons so that they don’t offer KD and some other injured player max contracts.
Slow and steady is just fine with me right now. We have to learn how to develop our young talent first.
It costs the league a fortune. Big markets don’t need to be contenders, but Dolan and Reinsdorf have cost the league millions in revenue by being so inept.
Even if every team tried their best in good faith, there would still be teams deprived of talent who need top picks to become better that will not have the opportunity to improve
The lottery just needs to go. Go to a reverse standings draft ranking like the NFL and MLB.
the lottery needs to stay…tanking should not be rewarded…dumb luck is just dumb luck…as a fan of some team I’m sure you are, wouldn’t you prefer to see your team be pushing for the playoffs and land the number 1 pick??? Or would you seriously like to watch a team of no ones win nothing and get loading sh)t players with fat contracts…sorry the randomness of a lottery is what makes it an event.
The intent of the draft is to help bad teams improve. There are simply crystal clear evidence that certain NBA cities are destination spots and some aren’t. Those that aren’t struggle. No way in the world you can make an argument that the 2017-2018 New Orleans Pelicans would NOT have been a primo destination for ANY elite FA to choose.
Imagine:
NO w/ LBJ/AD/Boogie/Jrue/Rondo in 2017-18 (assuming Boogie and Rondo stayed because of LBJ)
WAS w KD/Wall/Beal/Morris/Gortat in 2016-17
I mean there are a lot of small market teams that would almost instantly be CF contenders with an elite FA, certainly more suited than the current Knicks at least.
Free agency is nothing to do with a draft lottery…
That’s understood. Think DEEPER…DEEper…Deeeeeper
Thank god they fixed the only problem the NBA had!!!!
It’s unfortunate that they totally screwed up the entire league in order to do it but at least they addressed the biggest problem and made sure that crappy teams that can’t win at least try.
SMH – I’m not sure who put what in the water but the people in this country are so monumentally stupid I’m surprised most of us don’t drown when it rains.
Forbidding NBA Teams from owning tropical fish or reptiles will eliminate “TANKING”.
I understand the premise of anti-tanking tactics but it really is going to have the exact opposite effect of what the draft is suppose to serve, and that’s helping losing teams devoid of talent have access to the best new crop of players. The Cavs without LBJ under the ownership of Dan Gilbert have been at the bottom of the ranking system on Lebron-less teams. That’s not because Gilbert is cheap and doesn’t want to win. Even after LBJ left the first time the team made strides to improve. They drafted Kyrie the next year and gradually went from a 19 win team w/ LBJ, drafted Irving the following draft and gradually went from 19 to 21, to 24, to 33 and then he came back. But even before LBJ came back, they were in pursuit of Kevin Love who made it clear he would only be a rental. It wasn’t until LBJ announced his return and spoke to Kev and he agreed. Even now he’s given GM Kobe Altman authority to take back bad contracts in trades in return for draft picks and young assets. So here’s an owner who not only had a bad team but in efforts to improve is willing to go into the luxury tax if it meant bringing in top picks to develop future stars for a return to competitiveness. How is that being rewarded? By watching teams with better records and assets draft ahead of them (NO, Memphis and Lakers all had +14 to +18 more wins then them last year) yet they spent more on salary than all of them and will likely top NO and Memphis by millions in effort to become better thru the draft and trades this upcoming season.
We all know that small market teams have a near impossible task of luring prime FA to their city. They end up spending top dollar for marginal or over the hill semi-stars. So what luck would they have of getting elite talent under contract other than the draft? While there are SOME owners who could care less about competing (see Cavs former owner Ted Stepien’s history) most owners are smart and prideful and understand that the better the product the more money you can make. I would say that we confuse “not caring” with “not well run”. Even for Dolan with a team with little star power, he spent about $20 mil less that the GSW and TRaps. So, yes there’s some lux tax exposure by spending more and through the hard cap era we have seen owners that traded key players for salary concerns (and money that was never re-purposed for other players). Most WANT stars on their team. Most WANT to be competitive.
This new lottery system will make it even harder for teams like the Cavs, Kings, Suns, etc to rebuild. Look at the Sacramento Kings. They’ve drafted and acquired good players thru the lottery and trading Cousins but they likely won’t go further because most top 5 FA don’t want to play there.
If you’re rebuilding then what hopes do you have if you’re constantly drafting after the 5 to 11 slot unless you have the absolute best scouts and luck on your side??
A better way of giving teams an incentive to avoid long stretches of team’s “tanking” is to set different penalties. If a team fails to improve their team by a certain measure then they have to lower ticket prices each consecutive year. Or they have have to increase the player’s share of revenue to a more favorable percent going to the players. If a team doesn’t care about winning then attack them where it does matter. Make them pay a higher revenue split with the players that start the year off on the roster. Prevent them from raising ticket prices for a period of time until they show a 10 game, 20 game, 30 game, improvement. Those are the only ways to separate owner’s of cheap and perpetually bad teams from teams that are largely devoid of talent and are undergoing a rebuild and need to improve via the draft because they are historically unable to lure in great players via FA.
And maybe a solution to help bad teams attract top FA talent is to allow those teams to offer 15% more than a max contract from any other team with a 50% winning % at the end of the last season. If Kawhi can get a max of $200 mil deal from Clippers then allow the Atlanta Hawks a chance to offer him $230 mil and absolve them from salary cap penalties on that specific yearly cap number. Or allow them to offer more years. Maybe 3 additional PO so this way the player can ride out the normal length of his contract but can decide to stay or go if the team still sucks. So the GSW can offer Durant a max of (as an example) 5/$175 @ $35 per but the Atlanta Hawks can offer 5/$201 mil (15% more) and 3 player options of $40 mil per. Durant can take 5/$175 from the GSW knowing he’s joining an already great team or 5/$201 and up to 8/$320 from the Hawks knowing he’s joining a team that won’t be immediately be competitive, hopefully will be successful in becoming successful but can opt out after the 5th year if he doesn’t want to stay, for whatever reason. Maybe give that team’s #1 to the team Durant is leaving to join. Make it so they’re aren’t any cap penalties to the Hawks for extending such a large contract. Make it so the long-term contract options can be insured for up to 75% if the player incurs a career ending or changing injury (Chris Bosh early retirement to John Wall if he comes back but is unable to play up to his usual all-star form or spends 50% of his remaining contract years on the injured list). Some of those ideas may have small flaws but I think they are more effective against teams that are cheap and not trying to compete without penalizing teams that genuinely need to build thru the draft and show marginal year to year progress.
KD can get 220 from the Warriors, no other team can offer more than 170 so your contract math is flawed
Top long man, but i like the system now.
If you are in the bottom, you ll have a big pick, but no incentive to loose top much.
This is the stupidest system in Pro Sports. Really not a coincidence the Pelicans who are losing AD get the first pick and then the Knicks at 3 and here comes Coach BRON BRON and the Lakers at 4. What a joke. Won’t to going to any NBA games for awhile. The NBA is trying to save New Orleans all this is rigged.