I like that it adds value to players like DeRozan, Sabonis, Brandon Ingram, etc. who can get a team from 25 wins to 35 wins but aren't fit for championship contenders. We should care at least a little about those players!
Which I think would juice the trade market in another way: differential value of players between teams. The Bulls have already been acting like being the 12-8 seed was a worthy goal. That's why they traded a great role player (Caruso) for a subpar offensive engine (Giddey). That was a good trade for the league! The Bulls and the Thunder got better and more interesting to watch.
Personally, I’m much more anti-tanking than you. I think every team should be desperate to win every season, and that this is fundamental to the integrity of the sport.
I think draft reform is necessary but only half the puzzle. I think the ‘championship or bust’ mindset has gone too far. I wish there was more honor associated with being a playoff team, and more dishonor associated with stinking. I guess I’m just yelling at the clouds though.
As a British Basketball fan it seems so odd to me how there is such a persistent, loud and negative discourse surrounding the sport. People/media are really desperate to focus on bizarre topics (ratings..?) or be negative about the current state of the sport and proposed changes. Basketball rules move at the speed of light compared to football (soccer) and I love the willingness to actually try to engage with fans and improve the sport as a spectator product (besides obvious change of fewer reg season games...) In my opinion changes like the NBA cup being introduced and the play-in are fun additions but they were met with extreme negativity/performative apathy, just as this change - by virtue of talking heads deciding it's not *perfect* - is being met with negativity even if it may be an improvement on current set up.
One thing I will push back on though is the idea of it being good *in a closed league with a salary cap* for bad teams to be punished and good teams rewarded. To me, given the lack of mechanisms for a team to get out of a bad situation - even if they are trying to win - this would polarise the league and leave it with a top tier and a bottom tier, with movement only occurring due to luck in player development and/or outlier levels of performance from GMs. A system that roughly creates parity in being good *and bad* is a nice feature for fanbases, but the current setup of intentional losing is clearly silly.
FWIW my favourite approach I've seen is Gold Drafting:
TLDR: When you are either eliminated from playoff possibility - or declare publicly you are exempting yourself - every win counts towards your draft standing. So if you suck and you are eliminated early or declare early because you realise you'll miss the playoffs you are incentivised to win from then on because the more wins you get from then, the higher your pick.
N.B. Think there are some holes in that some teams go into a season knowing they probs won't be a playoff team so maybe would declare immediately, but you could restrict it to some point later in the season to prevent that. Plus I think in a setup where you're not incentivised to lose that teams wouldn't lean so far into having *awful* rosters, like some of the tankers intentionally do.
A remaining issue imo is star-player injury - where key injuries derail a season but (if a player can come back healthy) the team isn't *truly*/long-term awful. My fix would be to incorporate games played by players on the roster, weighted by their salary cap hold e.g. season-ending injury for a guy who's on a supermax means you don't get as good draft odds (maybe you also add in something based on how many games they've played over the past X years so when a star guy becomes injury-riddled at end of career you're not cooked?)
Agreed! Kevin Durant famously said that NBA fans hate everything about the NBA, and I've always thought those were wise words. It doesn't help that the talking heads in the NBA world are far more concerned with preserving their past than promoting their future.
See, I think the league is already barbell-shaped with a bunch of good and a bunch of terrible teams. I don't think we'd have nearly as many teams constantly hovering at the bottom under the new proposal. The league needs to figure out how to re-jumpstart free agency as a means to substantially improve.
I think the Gold system is intriguing, and it's been kicked around the NBA world a good amount in various forms, but I am more worried than you about people just frontloading their tanking. I think we'd see a ton of teams fizzle right out of the gates when your time to connect with a hopeful fan base is highest, and then by the time they start "trying" to win, any local connection is lost. It's still better than the current system, but I'm not sure it's better than the NBA's new proposal.
I think you are right that tanking would not be an issue under 3-2-1. If any team did want to tank, they'd be able to miss the play-in just through natural competition without even trying. There may be fans who want their teams to tank out of the play-in or down from the 6 seed to chase lottery balls. But I do not expect to see the teams themselves take that route.
People are already complaining about how it doesn't help the worst teams enough. Based on the complaints, I'm not convinced that this will go through as proposed. If it does, we'll probably be discussing more reforms in a few years when it expires.
I like the capped COLA solution, which I've seen before (Perhaps on that reddit post you mention? I can't remember.)
You might look at this in a different post, but have you explored if bidding were to come into play? I.e., you have either a higher limit or an uncapped limit, and then teams were able to "bid" their tickets to guarantee a pick if they win? Some sort of auction system could be really fun and allow for more targeted picks, but not sure how plausible that would be since I literally thought of this one second ago ha.
COLA is a framework with a number of variants. The "Capped COLA" variant was new with that post from last week, so if you hadn't already seen that link above then you probably saw a different variant. The reddit thread is the most publicity we've had, so that is the most likely place you would have seen COLA. The reddit thread just talks about the academic paper, which was before we had named any of the other variants had names.
I haven't looked at bidding, because I think that the optics of an auction would be a non-starter with the NBA. Also, it would amplify the difference between good front office and bad front offices. While that might be more "fair", it is bad for competitive balance.
Mathematically, auction solutions are much more elegant, though. The basic principle of COLA could be applied to an auction proposal. After determining using COLA to determine the order of which teams get the most priority, instead of giving them better odds in a lottery, give them more fake-currency for an auction.
Nate Silver proposed ARC, which is an auction solution to replace the NBA draft:
Under ARC, there is still a tanking incentive, because it uses end-of-season standings. Other than that, it has a lot of good ideas. With a switch to using playoff track record, I might like it more than any other solution. But in addition to the downsides of auctions already mentioned, I think this version is way too complicated to ever get traction, though.
What is the draft supposed to do? Does it fulfill that function? Are bad teams getting better? Is talent distributed fairly throught the league?
Right now draft picks seem overvalued if you consider teams tanking, but undervalued if Player X with good not great stats and impact is worth three or more first round picks.
Sooooo...cancel the draft. Set a team salary cap for rookies for each team based on win-loss records. All rookies are free agents. Allow teams to negotiate with up to five rookies. Allow non-playoff teams to sign three rookies under the cap, plus one more at the veteran minimum. Conference finalists can sign two rookies. Teams will need to be competitive to attract the best candidates, and smart about filling rosters. Rookies can sign based on multiple factors: salary, opportunity, fit, etc.
Like the EPL, they should also make the share of national TV money somewhat track to the standings, with a bump up at making the play-in. So that if you drop out of the play-in for an increase in odd, there is at least some financial penalty. For small-market teams that might be a disincentive to do a minitank.
I love the idea of tying revenue share money to standings, although I'm unsure on how exactly that should work. But I think the general idea is really intriguing.
I like that it adds value to players like DeRozan, Sabonis, Brandon Ingram, etc. who can get a team from 25 wins to 35 wins but aren't fit for championship contenders. We should care at least a little about those players!
Which I think would juice the trade market in another way: differential value of players between teams. The Bulls have already been acting like being the 12-8 seed was a worthy goal. That's why they traded a great role player (Caruso) for a subpar offensive engine (Giddey). That was a good trade for the league! The Bulls and the Thunder got better and more interesting to watch.
Yes, fantastic point! Like, being a floor-raiser will no longer be this backhanded insult! It matters! I wish I'd thought to include this
Personally, I’m much more anti-tanking than you. I think every team should be desperate to win every season, and that this is fundamental to the integrity of the sport.
I think draft reform is necessary but only half the puzzle. I think the ‘championship or bust’ mindset has gone too far. I wish there was more honor associated with being a playoff team, and more dishonor associated with stinking. I guess I’m just yelling at the clouds though.
I completely agree with the general sentiment that there is a nobility in being a pretty good team!
As a British Basketball fan it seems so odd to me how there is such a persistent, loud and negative discourse surrounding the sport. People/media are really desperate to focus on bizarre topics (ratings..?) or be negative about the current state of the sport and proposed changes. Basketball rules move at the speed of light compared to football (soccer) and I love the willingness to actually try to engage with fans and improve the sport as a spectator product (besides obvious change of fewer reg season games...) In my opinion changes like the NBA cup being introduced and the play-in are fun additions but they were met with extreme negativity/performative apathy, just as this change - by virtue of talking heads deciding it's not *perfect* - is being met with negativity even if it may be an improvement on current set up.
One thing I will push back on though is the idea of it being good *in a closed league with a salary cap* for bad teams to be punished and good teams rewarded. To me, given the lack of mechanisms for a team to get out of a bad situation - even if they are trying to win - this would polarise the league and leave it with a top tier and a bottom tier, with movement only occurring due to luck in player development and/or outlier levels of performance from GMs. A system that roughly creates parity in being good *and bad* is a nice feature for fanbases, but the current setup of intentional losing is clearly silly.
FWIW my favourite approach I've seen is Gold Drafting:
https://hockeyviz.com/txt/gold
TLDR: When you are either eliminated from playoff possibility - or declare publicly you are exempting yourself - every win counts towards your draft standing. So if you suck and you are eliminated early or declare early because you realise you'll miss the playoffs you are incentivised to win from then on because the more wins you get from then, the higher your pick.
N.B. Think there are some holes in that some teams go into a season knowing they probs won't be a playoff team so maybe would declare immediately, but you could restrict it to some point later in the season to prevent that. Plus I think in a setup where you're not incentivised to lose that teams wouldn't lean so far into having *awful* rosters, like some of the tankers intentionally do.
A remaining issue imo is star-player injury - where key injuries derail a season but (if a player can come back healthy) the team isn't *truly*/long-term awful. My fix would be to incorporate games played by players on the roster, weighted by their salary cap hold e.g. season-ending injury for a guy who's on a supermax means you don't get as good draft odds (maybe you also add in something based on how many games they've played over the past X years so when a star guy becomes injury-riddled at end of career you're not cooked?)
Agreed! Kevin Durant famously said that NBA fans hate everything about the NBA, and I've always thought those were wise words. It doesn't help that the talking heads in the NBA world are far more concerned with preserving their past than promoting their future.
See, I think the league is already barbell-shaped with a bunch of good and a bunch of terrible teams. I don't think we'd have nearly as many teams constantly hovering at the bottom under the new proposal. The league needs to figure out how to re-jumpstart free agency as a means to substantially improve.
I think the Gold system is intriguing, and it's been kicked around the NBA world a good amount in various forms, but I am more worried than you about people just frontloading their tanking. I think we'd see a ton of teams fizzle right out of the gates when your time to connect with a hopeful fan base is highest, and then by the time they start "trying" to win, any local connection is lost. It's still better than the current system, but I'm not sure it's better than the NBA's new proposal.
I think you are right that tanking would not be an issue under 3-2-1. If any team did want to tank, they'd be able to miss the play-in just through natural competition without even trying. There may be fans who want their teams to tank out of the play-in or down from the 6 seed to chase lottery balls. But I do not expect to see the teams themselves take that route.
People are already complaining about how it doesn't help the worst teams enough. Based on the complaints, I'm not convinced that this will go through as proposed. If it does, we'll probably be discussing more reforms in a few years when it expires.
My full thoughts on 3-2-1:
https://highleytj.substack.com/p/a-professional-draft-reform-researcher
My own proposal on how to deal with tanking is Carry-Over Lottery Allocation (COLA), which both helps the weak teams and gets rid of tanking:
https://highleytj.substack.com/p/overcoming-inertia-to-stop-nba-tanking?r=630hcs
I like the capped COLA solution, which I've seen before (Perhaps on that reddit post you mention? I can't remember.)
You might look at this in a different post, but have you explored if bidding were to come into play? I.e., you have either a higher limit or an uncapped limit, and then teams were able to "bid" their tickets to guarantee a pick if they win? Some sort of auction system could be really fun and allow for more targeted picks, but not sure how plausible that would be since I literally thought of this one second ago ha.
COLA is a framework with a number of variants. The "Capped COLA" variant was new with that post from last week, so if you hadn't already seen that link above then you probably saw a different variant. The reddit thread is the most publicity we've had, so that is the most likely place you would have seen COLA. The reddit thread just talks about the academic paper, which was before we had named any of the other variants had names.
I haven't looked at bidding, because I think that the optics of an auction would be a non-starter with the NBA. Also, it would amplify the difference between good front office and bad front offices. While that might be more "fair", it is bad for competitive balance.
Mathematically, auction solutions are much more elegant, though. The basic principle of COLA could be applied to an auction proposal. After determining using COLA to determine the order of which teams get the most priority, instead of giving them better odds in a lottery, give them more fake-currency for an auction.
Nate Silver proposed ARC, which is an auction solution to replace the NBA draft:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-192766580
Under ARC, there is still a tanking incentive, because it uses end-of-season standings. Other than that, it has a lot of good ideas. With a switch to using playoff track record, I might like it more than any other solution. But in addition to the downsides of auctions already mentioned, I think this version is way too complicated to ever get traction, though.
I like the test drive. Poor sheep catch another stray.
Ha, I mean, look at my last name!
What is the draft supposed to do? Does it fulfill that function? Are bad teams getting better? Is talent distributed fairly throught the league?
Right now draft picks seem overvalued if you consider teams tanking, but undervalued if Player X with good not great stats and impact is worth three or more first round picks.
Sooooo...cancel the draft. Set a team salary cap for rookies for each team based on win-loss records. All rookies are free agents. Allow teams to negotiate with up to five rookies. Allow non-playoff teams to sign three rookies under the cap, plus one more at the veteran minimum. Conference finalists can sign two rookies. Teams will need to be competitive to attract the best candidates, and smart about filling rosters. Rookies can sign based on multiple factors: salary, opportunity, fit, etc.
Like the EPL, they should also make the share of national TV money somewhat track to the standings, with a bump up at making the play-in. So that if you drop out of the play-in for an increase in odd, there is at least some financial penalty. For small-market teams that might be a disincentive to do a minitank.
I love the idea of tying revenue share money to standings, although I'm unsure on how exactly that should work. But I think the general idea is really intriguing.