NBA Draft Lottery

[love_that_reefer]

I know I'm not KOZ but I will give it a shot.

1. Football is harder since it is a shorter season and if you tie, it goes to a coin flip. Baseball has September callups so teams can see if their promising prospects are good enough. No team tanks it. Any sport can tank but basketball is the easiest.

2. The Heat tanked because they had more chances to get that #1. The lottery doesn't necessarily reward teams for losing which is the beauty of it.

[love_that_reefer]

I don't like the lottery system, only because you're assuming teams will tank. And clearly, it doesn't prevent tanking, as we saw the Heat tank this year. I think they have to go with the straightforward format used by other leagues and just police teams to prevent tanking.

How does that prevent teams from tanking?

[ljshorty89]

Well, the lottery system clearly doesn't either. So my point is, if the league finds a team to be "tanking" they can then penalize that team's pick. The lottery system is a BS way of ignoring tanking. The Heat tanked, and still got second pick. So I'm saying make the league enforce something instead of finding loopholes to ignore it.

[love_that_reefer]

The Heat tanked but didn't get rewarded with the first pick. If they tanked in other sports drafts, they would be awarded the first pick.

[ljshorty89]

True. But with the second pick in this draft, is that REALLY a punishment? Not really. If the league ACTUALLY did something and policed it manually, they could be dropped, or even had their first round pick taken away. THAT would prevent tanking.

[love_that_reefer]

Who is trying to punish anyone? Who is judge and jury of what's tanking and what's bad play? Point is no one was rewarded for tanking, it goes to a lottery where anyone can win it. The Bulls weren't the worst and got the #1 pick having less chance than the team that tanked. NBA stands out in this aspect and have done well with it. Boston fans are still crying over not getting Duncan.

[ljshorty89]

My point is that if a team tanks, there should be a real punishment. Because tanking kills credibility for the team and the sport. Not some BS excuse to ignore the fact that the Heat intentionally lost.

[love_that_reefer]

Heat hurt themselves by losing fans and money in the off chance to gain a franchise player.

[ljshorty89]

Maybe. They'll still get either Rose or Beasley. That's no punishment at all. If they had played hard and still sucked this bad, they would have deserved one of the two. If they tried, the Spurs could have done the same thing. But the problem is that next season,fans will pile in to see whichever rookie they draft, and this year will be forgotten.

[HollywoodLeo]

2. The Heat tanked because they had more chances to get that #1. The lottery doesn't necessarily reward teams for losing which is the beauty of it.

If it didn't reward teams for tanking the Heat would have no incentive to do so.

Clearly they did. (better shot at #1)

Teams are going to do it no matter what, punish them if they're caught, but don't punish teams who legitimately lose too much with a dumb system.

[love_that_reefer]

Who is being punished here??? Heat was not rewarded for tanking. They were simpy second in the lottery. If it went by any other draft, they would be rewarded with the first pick. Now they don't have first pick!! It adds suspense to such a boring process!

[ljshorty89]

But the point is that they SHOULD be punished. They cheated, simply in reverse fashion. The point is that the lottery system still gives them a very good pick, when it is not deserved. If the league wants to maintain respectability and PREVENT INTENTIONAL LOSING, they should punish teams that clearly tank by taking away a pick, or putting them at the end of the first round, not #2.

[love_that_reefer]

But that is unrealistic. And its not cheating in anyway. I don't like it either which is why I like the lottery. Teams can tank all they want and not be rewarded with the first pick.

[Kingdom]

I still love the lottery. Clearly every sport doesn't have to conform to every other sport, otherwise college football wouldn't have 70 billion bowl games and would have some sort of playoff system.

Also adds more thrill. It's not perfect and there's never going to be any system that is. But I like that it works strongly against the intentional tankjobs. Sure, the knicks of the 80's and the spurms slipped through, but a couple of times out of how many? I can dig it.

Knick fans will get over it. This is a loaded draft, assuming Isiah actually kept a pick, you'll get a potentially great talent. There's no once a decade type talent in this draft (i.e. Shaq, Iverson, Duncan, Lebron), I'm saying pick 10 or pick 15 could be every bit as good as 1 or 2.

[ljshorty89]

That's not really true. There's still a (pretty good) chance for them to get the first pick. This year they didn't, but the point is a team who will not win it all should not be able to lose and get first pick. I agree on that. But the lottery still gives them a chance that they should not be afforded!

That's not even as a Knicks fan. I'm almost indifferent about them. Honestly, I expected them to get the 10th pick or worse. I don't care that they got the 6th. But why the HELL should the Heat get a better player when they ALREADY have more talent than the Knicks?