Adam Silver is finally fed up when it comes to tanking. He finally figured out that many games in the final half of the season are unwatchable. Not only that, they don't really make great games to bet on, for most gamblers. Less eyes on the prize, means less revenue.
It is very hard to come up with a way to completely stop tanking in the NBA, but I've come up with an idea that might come very close to eliminating it.
To be clear, Silver is already talking nuclear, considering getting away from the draft completely. C'mon, he even knows that the draft keeps the NBA relevant in the early off-season. It won't happen. However, he needs to come up with something that will stop rewarding tanking, even if it winds up hurting a truly bad team, even a little.
I stayed away from too much math and algorithms. NBA fans already have too many headaches trying to figure out aprons, the luxury tax and salary caps. KISS when it comes to the draft. Here is the plan:
The 10 teams with the overall worst records for the year get the top 10 picks. The top 20 teams go in reverse order, except it is based on record and playoff elimination. The four teams eliminated in the play-in get the 11th-14th picks based. The 11th goes to team with the worst record of the four and so on.
After the first round of the playoffs, the 13th-16th picks are determined the same way, and so on.
Now for the good part-the bottom 10 teams get their picks based on their performance during the last 30 games of the season. The catch is that the teams with the best records during that period get the highest chance at the better picks.
The team that finishes in the bottom 10 with the best record last 30 games gets a 20% lottery chance at the first pick. The team with the second best record gets a 16% chance. The team with the third best finish gets a 14% chance. The 4th best gets a 12% chance. The 5th best gets a 10% chance. The 6th best gets an 8% chance. And those with the 7th to 10th worst record last 30 games get a 5% chance each. I checked, it equals 100%.
After the first player is drafted, the ratios remain the same, which means that if the team with the 3rd best record (14% chance) gets the pick, the team with the best last 30 game record would now have a 20/86 chance at the 2nd pick, and so on.
I guess the nightmare scenario would be if the 19th or 20th worst team had a sensational end of season, and decided to tank the last game or two to give them a shot to be the 21st team in the overall standings. But such a hot team might be thinking of playoff upsets instead of the draft lottery. Again, no system is perfect.
Ok, who has Adam Silver's phone number?
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