Ideas on Tanking?
2012-04-06
I’m not a huge fan of the NBA’s current lottery system. Â Hoping for abject failure as the road to success doesn’t make sense to me. Â ESPN’s True Hoop Network recently posted a week’s worth of articles on ending tanking. Â There was one idea that I thought was particularly interesting. Â In a presentation at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Adam Gold presented a concept where the team that wins the most games after they are eliminated from playoff contention, gets the first pick in the draft.
For the article at ESPN, see here.
I really like the idea, with one tweak; set the baseline as the “median playoff team” instead of “out of playoff contention”- i.e. the team with the NBA’s 8th best record. Â The presented concept places too much importance on the strength of a team’s conference. Â A thirty win team in a strong conference would start racking up opportunities to improve their draft position far in advance on a thirty win team in a weak conference.
To make this more clear, I’ll address how the idea would impact the race for the #1 pick during this season. Â The basic idea (slightly modified, but totally stolen from Adam Gold) consists of: once a team has enough losses that they cannot surpass the win total of the NBA team with the 8th most wins, the “draft positioning clock” starts for them. Â The team with the most victories after their “draft positioning clock” starts, gets the first pick in the draft.
For this season’s draft race, the LA Clippers will be the “8th best team baseline”. Â Using their record over the last few weeks, here is the list of teams that would have started their clock, including the date, number of remaining games as of that date, and record after 04/04 games.
- Charlotte starts on 03/25 and had 20 games left. Â They are 0 – 6 since.
- Washington starts on 03/27 and had 17 games left. Â They are 1 – 4 since.
- New Orleans starts on 03/29 and had 16 games left. Â They are 1 – 3 since.
- Cleveland starts on 04/04 and had 15 games left. Â They are 0 – 1 since.
- Toronto starts on 04/01 and had 14 games left. Â They are 3 – 0 since.
- Sacramento starts on 04/03 and had 13 games left. Â They are 0 – 1 since.
- New Jersey starts on 04/01 and had 12 games left. Â They are 0 – 2 since.
So Toronto completely takes the driver’s seat on the road to the first pick. Â Charlotte squanders a good chance to get a leg up.
Based on this scenario; Phoenix would be the last team to be mathematically eliminated from besting the median playoff team. Â They end up with approximately 5 games to stake their claim to a high draft pick. (Edit: One other aspect that appears to be a benefit of indexing to the NBA’s 8th best team instead of to “playoff contention” is that it’s harder for borderline playoff teams to “game” the system. Â If a team on the borderline of playoff contention rests some players with ten games left in the season, in order to become mathematically eliminated from the 8th best team, then plays those guys again to try to win many of their remaining games, they could end up making the playoffs, hence becoming eliminated from the top of the draft).
I think the idea is interesting and wanted to bring it to Cavs:the Blog readers for your thoughts.  Surely there are imperfections, but it gives the worst teams a solid chance at the highest pick, while continuing to make wins more valuable than losses throughout the last month of the season.  I definitely like it better than awarding the best picks in the draft by incentivizing teams to field subpar products, multiplied by the anarchy of  a ping pong ball bounce.
The stories I read about GMs only working 5 hours a week or something I thought was the most atrocious aspect to the tanking discussion. As bothersome as it may be to think of a team shaving points or intentionally droping winnable games, I think its far worse to question the incentives for building a winning culture or system and making smart decisions. There was another idea proposed in that article where the draft system stays the same, but losing has an impact on revenue sharing. I think the hard part of this discusion is trying to account for the… Read more »
My simple idea: the 10 worst teams in the league (via differential/SOS) all get the same odds. The other teams missing the playoffs get worse odds, but the same as each other. So, a 2-tier system. Of course, some teams might try to tank into the 10-team scrum, but hopefully those teams are close enough to playoff contention not to.
Tom Pestak and all, Thanks for the discussion today. This is the 50th comment and the Cavs game starts in an hour, so it’s a good time for me to wrap up the “Ideas on Tanking” post. I started the day with two articles queued up: this one and another titled “Come on, Cavs! Lose your last 20 games!!” I put 100 ping pong balls in a hat; 75 with “lose 20” written on them and the other 25 with “Tanking?”. I pulled out the latter and the rest is history. I think it worked out well; talking about losing… Read more »
My point is, that tanking the NFL is bad for the league’s bottom line. Tanking in the NBA might be bad for the team’s bottom line.
Pistons also drew 2000 less than their season average. Bobcats 1600 less.
Tom, I’m not saying this is because of tanking, but are NBA teams popular in their cities? I’m probably just skeptical because I live the city with the league’s second worst attendance. Looking at the bad teams’ last games; the Kings, Wizards and Raptors all drew approximately 2000 fans less than their season average. The Cavs were 1000 less. New Orleans was at their average and the Warriors (with the world’s most diehard fans) were 1000 above their season average. I wonder how the effect of having nothing on the line (other than the benefit of losing) affects a team’s… Read more »
no matter where you draw the line, there will always be teams around that line that would probably be better off statistically to lose and drop and i agree with you on that…even in your suggested BCS-like ranking system teams at the lower end would still want to stay low. the problem with your system is it is not only unexciting for the fans that feed it, but it doesnt generate any additional money for the league or necessarily minimize or eliminate tanking there probably is no real way to eliminate free loading or tanking unless its a complete random… Read more »
Right now teams vy for the 8 seed because it’s better to be the 8 seed than the 9 seed. If you suddenly make this losers bracket and the consolation prize is LeBron James (in this case the odds of a 9 seed winning this tourney might be higher than the worst team in the league winning the lottery) you have no created a system where it actually makes more sense to land at the 9 spot vs getting swept in the first round and getting the #14 pick.
Here’s an idea. Keep the draft lottery as is but change two items: 1st: Add up the amount of ping-pong balls (or number combinations, etc.) that the top 3 worst teams get, remove 1/4 of them, then divide the rest evenly amongst those 3 teams. Spread the removed balls/# combos amongst the rest of the lottery bound teams. 2nd: Use the lottery to determine the draft order from the 1st through 13th pick, instead of the 1st through 3rd pick. What this does is that it increases the risk for the worst team(s) to get the best picks. For example,… Read more »
@John – the Spurs sit their stars when they are in the hunt for the #1 seed. Also, you can play Brandon Jennings 48 minutes a night and still have an atrocious game plan that leads to losing. Hell just draw up iso for Jennings over and over. You get the loss, he gets to be on sportscenter for dropping 68 on 19 of 87 shooting.
and have fun going the tanking-by-management/coaching route and telling josh smith, brandon jennings, or monta ellis to sit down and expect them to not have a word to say about it to the media as the fall 4 spots down in the standings.
look at the warriors situation, thats not really great for fans who buy tickets or players who look for desired places/organizations to play for
youre probably right that its better for a crack at the #1 pick then a sweep in round 1, but how is that different than the scenario that currently exists?
the reality of it is the idea that makes the most practical sense doesn’t always make the most financial sense in a for-profit organization.
pretty sure Stern would go revenue > credibility every time
As far as the sentiment that it might not be right to reward bad organizations with #1 picks. Who can judge that? At one time I thought Otis Smith was a genius. He overpaid for the exact players he wanted and the Magic absolutely eviscerated the Cavs defense. Remember when Golden State believed! How cool to put together those players with those skillsets. The Cavs spent more than any organization not named LAL in the last 3 years of the LeBron era, Danny Ferry assembled a bevy complimentary players to LeBron’s skill set, the Cavs won 60+ games despite injuries… Read more »
Kevin – no I’m responding to the countless articles/opinions I have read on the subject. John – I was referring to teams that are stuck in that no mans land of the NBA. Teams that are not bottom feeders and not even close to championship contenders. Teams that will fall between 4 and 8 over the course of a few years. And, quite often, the separation between 4 and 8 is a few games. As for your a.) Look at the alternative. How many 8 seeds have won the Championship? What is the expected value number of playoff wins for… Read more »
Jimbo,
Honestly, I agree with you. That’s part of the problem. If a fan base is hoping for losses, the attitude might as well be, “call me when the season is over. I can hope for next year while doing something else.” Hardcore fans (like us) won’t necessarily feel that way, but don’t most fans just quit caring? Is that for the best?
Tom – Not sure how a 4/5 seed could “just” miss the playoffs, yet be in the top 1/4 to 1/3 of their conference? You are assuming that: a) a team that tanks to get into the consolation bracket will be guaranteed to win it b) no other team will have the same tanking mentality, because if they did then relatively speaking, tanking to just make it to the consolation playoffs would do nothing because everyone would be doing it, and most importantly… c) players that are talented enough to form a team that is in the playoffs will be… Read more »
Why is tanking bothersome to anyone but sports writers such as this blog ang TrueHoop? If a fan doesn’t like watching a bad team then watch someone else until said team becomes competitive.
An NBA fans wants one of two things: wins or hope. Tanking at least gives them one.
Tom, I’m not even sure “tanking” is the problem. The current system definitely does incentivize “tanking”, whether it’s happening or not. For some franchises, it almost surely is. Wouldn’t Cavs fans (or really, insert team name here) be excited if we finished 7 – 8 and got the first pick while playing competitive basketball? Doesn’t that sound ideal compared to whatever the hell is happening right now? Or if the Cavs only went 5 – 10 and got the 3rd pick, wouldn’t that be better than watching the team win and saying “damn, i wish that hadn’t happened.” I still… Read more »
Tom Pestak, I’m not sure how much of your last post is responding to me, or just to various articles you’ve read. I didn’t try to say that the #1 pick isn’t helpful. I did say that from the last 28 drafts, only the Spurs have employed a player that they drafted in the top 3, in order to win a championship. The current system hasn’t helped teams win championships or retain their superstars (everyone will come laughing at me when the Thunder win this year). I’m not sure where the Spurs would have picked during the season where they… Read more »
I agree with The Nupe, random lottery removes incentives for a team to tank and not just do what they believe is best for the team. Actually sounds almost too easy/too perfect of a solution.
In any case, a very clearly defined definition of “tanking” and the problems that arise from “tanking” are needed before you can try to form solutions. I define tanking as purposely losing winnable games. Having the expected win total far outpace the actual win total for a team of a certain talent. I cannot define any obvious problems that arise from this other than irritating a local fan base. That’s it. Right now, I don’t know many Cavs fans that are just devastated that our draft position is rising. And don’t we all love OKC? Weren’t they a talent SuperSonics… Read more »
@John – that would give ever fringe playoff team (think the Bucks/Hawks of the last 6 years) the incentive to JUST MISS that 4-8 seed so they could win the tournament and grab a #1 pick to put them over the top. It makes the difference between the 8 seed and the 9 seed the difference between the #1 pick and the #15 pick. I’m telling you guys, the best thing is the current lottery system (no guarantee that more losses = #1 pick, just more probably) with it just tweaked so that it’s more about team’s overall performance (talent… Read more »
Kevin – I thought about this at lunch, and I’ve come to the conclusion that “this tanking stuff” is something everyone has an opinion on and no one can REALLY agree what the problem even is. Yeah we sort of define it as: “don’t incentivize losing”. Then we come up with all these analyses that prove “getting the #1 pick doesn’t even help you that much, here, look at this list of #1s that have championships minus Tim Duncan.” Then we see the posts that basically say “why the heck do we let these blue chippers end up on terrible… Read more »
I would think this format would also generate better ticket sales than a meaningless regular season game of the Nets coming to town
How about the non-playoff teams get thrown into a consolation bracket where the teams with the best records have the higher seeds and home court advantage in a best-of-3 format?
The champion of the consolation playoffs gets the #1 draft pick, and the remaining draft order is determined the way it is now.
The amusing part is we are considering a similar format for our Fantasy Football league, so non-playoff teams have an incentive to remain competitive.
The Nupe,
Your idea is interesting. Make the lottery process completely random; teams would really just need to make the moves that are best while considering the present and future….the draft day chips fall where they will.
or, if you wanna simplify it more…. each win a non-playoff team has equals a pingpong ball in the hopper. Might penalize the trule awful teams, though.
What’s to stop a team without championship aspirations to tank the beginning of the season, get out of playoffs contention, then start playing? Why not just reverse the lottery and give the mid-level teams a greater percentage chance of winning it? Maybe not to the extreme that the worst record currently holds, but something similiar. i.e. a team that falls at 15 in record gets a 14-16% chance of winning whereas the worst team gets 7-9%?
Tom Pestak, I think that point differential would result in the same race to the bottom for the worst 6 or 7 teams while continuing to legitimize GM’s that are just doing a bad job. ALso, regarding your Charlotte ME3E’s, I think it’s much less likely that a team loses their first 45 games, than whatever may happen with a late season push to be bad. To some extent, your post is exactly the point of the plan I mention above. A bad team keeps fighting through the end of the season and gets a high draft pick because of… Read more »
I believe relegation is the answer. The bottom two teams go to something similar to the D-league. The top two teams in the D-league get to come to the NBA. Keep the lottery system as is. Teams fight to stay out of those bottom spots, however bad teams can still build through the draft. The teams relegated to the D-league have an opportunity to remain competitive and build confidence. While in the d-league they can trade and negotiate to try to acquire the best of the d-league so if they do remain at the top of d-league they will be… Read more »
There are many things to like and dislike about this proposed system as well as the current system. How about a “Double Lottery”? What I mean by this is first do a lottery to determine which lottery process will be used that year. (e.g. the current system, this method or some other plausible lottery/selection structure). Then, after the lottery drawing to determine which lottery/selection system is selected, then that system is implemented. I would propose that all this happens AFTER the season in completed. This way teams don’t know what the selection process is, so then they don’t know what… Read more »
Based on PPG/Diff only, here is how the order would change today with BEFORE and then AFTER
X.) BEFORE / AFTER (delta pick)
1.) Charlotte / Charlotte (+0)
2.) New Orleans / Washington (+1)
3.) Washington / Cleveland (+1)
4.) Sacramento / New Jersey (+3)
5.) Cleveland / Sacramento (-1)
6.) G State / Detroit (+5)
7.) New Jersey / New Orleans (-5)
8.) Minnesota / Toronto (+1)
9.) Toronto / G State (-3)
10.) Portland / Minnesota (-2)
11.) Detroit / Phoenix (+3)
12.) Utah / Utah (+0)
13.) Milwaukee / Milwaukee (+0)
14.) Phoenix / Portland (-4)
I think a very simple way to both decrease tanking and increase competition is to award ping pong balls based on a strength of schedule/point differential basis. The reason is that the only TRUE disincentive for tanking is the media/fan charge of tanking. What ruined Vince Carter’s legacy more, that he didn’t win anything, or that he admitted he didn’t always try? These athletes/coaches have pride/big egos and are very fine losing games because of lack of talent, but not fine losing games and being accused of quitting. Therefore, you have a truly awful team with a horrible ppg/diff and… Read more »
Honestly I think the only solution is eliminating a lot bunch franchises. Every suggestion I’ve seen has holes in it that are quickly pointed out. With fewer teams in the league the talent pool increases all around and it helps diminish the impact of having a superstar. I think the league is in a pretty big mess right now, with a lot of good player rotting on really bad teams that no one wants to pay to see. Tanking will still exist, but it would be less necessary.
I don’t get the logic behind this at all. it almost seems that it simply SHIFTS the tanking to earlier in the season. Under this system, let’s start a season with the Charlotte Mass Effect 3 Endings and the Phoenix Trending Twitter Topics. Teams that you can judge just by their names. One is the most epically awful thing ever and the other can be really bad or really clever. So the Charlotte ME3Es lose their first 45 games, because they 1.) would normally have a -12 ppg differential, and 2.) they sit their starters in 4th quarters because they… Read more »
Matthew,
I just think it’s a decent debate. I wasn’t thinking about the lottery when the team was wining 60 games, but why would I have been. Now that the team stinks, the lottery discussion is more towards the forefront of my mind.
baconbacon, Isn’t Charlotte a young team that should be improving? Isn’t Toronto a relatively older team by comparison? And why wouldn’t this system spur interest in the end of a season and the hope for a great draft pick? I think it would keep fans engaged in the successes and failures of their teams a lot better than the current system. Regarding luck, teams that were really bad would have 30-ish games to build wins. The effects of schedule randomness would be fairly diluted over that time frame. Teams that had only 8 games, if they had a really easy… Read more »
kevin point underscores the fact that part of the thunder’s luck is that team ahead of them chose the busts and the thunker (lucked up) by draft a best fit player in their mold. that is a fortunate situation and cant be replicated. i highly doubt that there will be any proper fix for the lottery. though many see it mute to discuss, contraction and the economics of contraction could work but no owner or fan base want them to be on the chopping block.
At least the luck associated with the lottery is determined by a full season’s worth of play. In this proposed system, draft order would be determined by an incredibly small sample size that really isn’t indicative of a team’s quality. While the lottery is random, at least the randomness is weighted by performance over a whole season and not just a few games. Also, what if a team is so terrible that even with an easy schedule down the stretch they continue to lose despite attempting to win. Teams like that are totally screwed and this system would prolong their… Read more »
I think it’s interesting how during the LeBron years in Cleveland, all we wanted to do was win. Then last year we were so bad that all we wanted to do was win. And now this year, when we are bad but not terrible (when Kyrie and Andy are healthy), we finally have a problem with the lottery system and tanking because fans are torn between winning and losing. Just funny how we finally care now. And we won’t care anymore once we are contenders again.
Since the Hakeem and Jordan draft, the following players have been selected in the top 3 and been on a championship team for the organization that drafted them (or were traded to on draft day) are: Darko Milicic, Tim Duncan, Jason Kidd (18 years later and after several teams), Sean Elliot (10 years after being drafted, following the Duncan pick), David Robinson, Basically it’s all Spurs. Combine this with the recent departures of Lebron, Carmelo, Chris Paul, Deron Williams and the Dwight situation; what is the argument for the fact that the current system is helping small market teams get… Read more »
Articles like this make me realize how few people understand luck. teams with harder schedules early in the season and easier late ones would benefit from this system, as would teams who had key injuries early instead of late (not to mention the huge East-West discrepancy if “eliminated” from playoffs remained as the determining factor). Consider the difference for the Cavs between Andy going down just 2 or 3 weeks earlier of the season and coming back a week or two after they are eliminated and going down when he did and not making it back at all. It is… Read more »
The Cavs are a great example of why this is a bad idea in general. They aren’t “tanking” they legitimately suck. They have little talent and a ton of injuries, the only “tanking” they have done is trade Sessions (and arguably keep playing Parker, but the other players on our roster haven’t exactly outshone him by much if at all). This system heavily skews towards young bad teams- ie ones who will start badly and show improvement- and away from old bad teams- ones who start (relatively) well but age and injuries force the decline. The main problem I have… Read more »
For the record, I think these debate inducing posts are fun.
Jeff, I think the ESPN article refers to non-playoff teams winning 35% of their games prior to being eliminated from the playoffs, but 30% after elimination. Whether it’s “tanking” or not, teams are definitely doing something that results in them being worse late in the season. Cody, How is the randomness of NBA scheduling any different than the randomness of a ping pong ball draw? Carson, The Spurs drafted Tim Duncan because of one season of injuries, so that happens in the current system. And regarding the crime of the Bobcats being the worst team ever and not getting rewarded… Read more »
Bumsquare and Matt, How is this any more silly than drawing pingpong balls? Also I think you’re wrong about the damage it would do to team’s like Cleveland and Orlando. Say that Cleveland bottomed one season, but only got to pick 6th. The next season, they were still bad and picked 7th. Finally with those two players and a couple of value free agent signings, they’re a 30 win team, that closes the season 6 – 5 and gets the first pick. Now instead of the superstar coming to play on the worst team in the league, he’s joining a… Read more »
I’ve heard this argument many times but the reality is that most of these teams aren’t really tanking…They are losing as much now as they were at the beginning of the season…These teams are truly terrible…It would be ridiculous to give the pick away to mediocre teams while awful teams that most likely can only build through the draft get stuck with mid level lottery picks…The system in place now seems to be working fine I really think there is very little reason to address this…
just a preface… contraction is not what i am 100% behind but it would solve a free-agency and lottery problem. less teams means more stars and great role players per team. poorly managed teams in less attractive cities are no longer an issue. it would also solve the issue of small markets dont have the fan base or economies to support expensive arenas. contraction would really go along way. think of the teams that could be removed (would anybody be upset if the kings, hornets and bobcats were bought out?) what about other cities like milwaukee, indy, detroit, memphis, minnesota… Read more »
I agree with the concept of keeping the competition alive down the stretch, but the idea of rewarding wins with higher draft picks in any scenario is counter-productive to me. I understand teams on the fringe are eliminated from playoff contention/median record later in the season, thus have fewer “draft clock” games to improve their picks, etc. But there could an instance where an injury/injuries cripples a team for a large portion of a season, eliminates them from the playoffs (or median team record) and they run off a bunch of wins as they get healthy and all of a… Read more »
The main problem with this is that it punishes the truly crappy teams, especially those with tough end-of-season schedules, and rewards teams that might not be as bad or might be lucky enough to end the season with an easy schedule.
If you look at the Warriors, they seem to be trying to win, but they’ve had a fairly tough schedule and are only 3-7 in their last ten. Under this system, they would be punished for playing good teams and would still go unrewarded for not tanking.
To be honest, I don’t think this sort of thing would be good for the NBA at all.. A team stuck in the lottery for years would have only one way of getting better; free agency. And if that team is a small market team then nobody that’s capable of making a difference would be willing to sign there. Middle of the pack teams would get considerably better when bottom teams would continue to be horrible, leading to scenarios where coaches are unde pressure, owners losing money, poor attendance and worst case scenario, teams having to relocate. While I agree… Read more »
This seems silly. Especially when you consider teams like the Cavs who were unduly punished by the vagaries of free agency. So if Dwight Howard bolts Orlando after 2013, Magic fans can basically kiss the next 10 years of basketball relevancy goodbye.