2025-2026 NBA Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter duluoz
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 410
  • Views: 15K
  • Sports 
SnoopRob said:
This is an interesting idea.

When you say non-playoff teams, do you mean those outside the top 10 in each conference or do you include those who made the play-in games but failed to advance to the “best of” rounds?
Click to expand...
That's a detail to be worked out. Do we think teams would tank the play-in games to get the higher picks?
 
Ooh. I have an idea to prevent tanking. It looks like the NBA is going to expand to 32 teams as of the 2028-29 season. Once that happens, have a playoff among the teams that don’t make the playoffs (the bottom 6 teams in each conference + the 2 teams from each conference that don’t advance after the play-in series). Like the regular playoffs, it’s divided up by conference with seeding based on record (i.e., 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc.). Each series is a best-of-3 series with the higher seed getting home court advantage. The further a team goes in the playoff, the better it positions itself in the draft lottery. Thus, tanking is a bad idea if you want to increase chances of getting home court advantage. It’s also way for the NBA to increase revenue and give fans of bad teams something to get excited about.
 
Most proposals to curb tanking end up negating the purpose of the draft.

The ultimate issue is that basketball is unique among major sports in how much value a single star player can provide. Even QBs pale in comparison to the impact a star player can provide.

It's virtually impossible to win a title without having one of the very best players in the league. I suppose you could say the Celtics in 24 didn't have an actual MVP candidate, but I can't remember a "team" winning a title since the Pistons in 04. By "team" I mean no player who stands out as a superstar but the team instead relies on having very good players at all positions.
 
superrific said:
Most proposals to curb tanking end up negating the purpose of the draft.

The ultimate issue is that basketball is unique among major sports in how much value a single star player can provide. Even QBs pale in comparison to the impact a star player can provide.

It's virtually impossible to win a title without having one of the very best players in the league. I suppose you could say the Celtics in 24 didn't have an actual MVP candidate, but I can't remember a "team" winning a title since the Pistons in 04. By "team" I mean no player who stands out as a superstar but the team instead relies on having very good players at all positions.
Click to expand...
And the Celts had 2 top 15 types.
 
superrific said:
Most proposals to curb tanking end up negating the purpose of the draft.

The ultimate issue is that basketball is unique among major sports in how much value a single star player can provide. Even QBs pale in comparison to the impact a star player can provide.

It's virtually impossible to win a title without having one of the very best players in the league. I suppose you could say the Celtics in 24 didn't have an actual MVP candidate, but I can't remember a "team" winning a title since the Pistons in 04. By "team" I mean no player who stands out as a superstar but the team instead relies on having very good players at all positions.
Click to expand...
The 2014 spurs with Duncan/Parker/young Kawhi/Manu is in the conversation. Duncan and Parker finished 12th in mvp voting and Duncan was third team all NBA.
 
pspsps said:
The 2014 spurs with Duncan/Parker/young Kawhi/Manu is in the conversation. Duncan and Parker finished 12th in mvp voting and Duncan was third team all NBA.
Click to expand...
I suppose. But Duncan was a superstar by any measure. Same with Kawhi, even young Kawhi -- he didn't necessarily put up huge stats because there were so many great players around him, but he was already a star player and obviously he had star player talent.

It's true that they had the mentality of a team without superstars. It's also true they weren't nearly as top heavy as the Heat or the Celtics before them. But they had a lot of talent.
 
superrific said:
Most proposals to curb tanking end up negating the purpose of the draft.

The ultimate issue is that basketball is unique among major sports in how much value a single star player can provide. Even QBs pale in comparison to the impact a star player can provide.

It's virtually impossible to win a title without having one of the very best players in the league. I suppose you could say the Celtics in 24 didn't have an actual MVP candidate, but I can't remember a "team" winning a title since the Pistons in 04. By "team" I mean no player who stands out as a superstar but the team instead relies on having very good players at all positions.
Click to expand...
Nate's plan to fix the draft

www.natesilver.net

⏜ Our radical plan to replace the NBA draft ⏜

What if you could penalize tanking, decrease randomness, reduce perverse incentives, and give teams more control over their fate? There's one big catch: you have to ditch the draft for an auction.
www.natesilver.net www.natesilver.net
 
Calheel said:
Nate's plan to fix the draft

www.natesilver.net

⏜ Our radical plan to replace the NBA draft ⏜

What if you could penalize tanking, decrease randomness, reduce perverse incentives, and give teams more control over their fate? There's one big catch: you have to ditch the draft for an auction.
www.natesilver.net www.natesilver.net
Click to expand...
I've had that idea before, more or less. I've thought about a rookie salary cap system where teams can basically negotiate with rookies directly, subject to the rookie salary cap (though perhaps one could also add in any actual cap room) with the worst teams getting the highest caps. That's a much simpler version of Nate's plan here, and more or less equivalent in effect.

But neither are a solution to tanking. As you can see, Nate is relying on the same stick as all other systems: if you tank, you lose. Well, great, but how do you determine tanking? If we could distinguish tanking from no-tanking, we could very easily do that in the draft. If we were happy with the idea that perennially bad teams should be penalized for being perennially bad, we could do that too.

In Nate's system, there are all sorts of strangely perverse incentives lurking. Not as bad as current perverse incentives, but still perverse.
 
SnoopRob said:
A couple of things...

1) No team has won an NBA title as lower than a 3 seed in over 20 years (Houston as a 6 seed in 1995, it was 1969 before that with Boston as a 4 seed). So that means that in any given year, there are 6, maybe 8, teams with any real shot at the title...leaving 22-24 teams who we pretty much know won't win it. A third of the teams in the NBA are going to miss the playoffs (including the play-in games) altogether. The worst thing you can be in the NBA is a team not good enough to win anything of note but not bad enough to really benefit by getting a high draft pick. So, if you're not going to be a top 3-4 seed in your conference, not a playoff team on the upswing with good young talent or, especially, if you're not good enough to make the playoffs, you should be trying as hard as you can to be as bad as possible so that you have the best chance to get a draft pick that leads you to a top-tier talent. In essence, if you can't be very good or better, you should be bad with a purpose. Top-tier talent is pretty much the only way to win anything of significance in the NBA and, if you don't have it, you should be doing everything you can to acquire it.

2) Small market teams, in particular, need to utilize the Draft and, therefore, tanking as a means of talent acquisition. For the most part, small market teams struggle to not only acquire talent (without massively overpaying for it), but to retain talent once they've acquired it. The surest way they can acquire talent is to draft it. If small market teams in the NBA (especially those without outlier talent draws like Miami) are to ever be anything other than cannon fodder for the bigger & (largely) better teams, then they have to be able to maximize their talent acquisition opportunities through the Draft and that essentially requires tanking. Again, if you're going to be bad, you should be bad with a purpose and do everything within your abilities to be as bad as possible so that you maximize your chances to acquire the top picks and, hopefully, the best talent coming into the league. (IMHO, if the NBA moves any further into anti-tanking territory, they might as well just cut/move a handful of small market teams because they are very unlikely to have any real consistent shot at talent acquisition.)

So, those are the reasons that I am pro-tanking in general and, specifically, for teams that are outside the playoffs and need additional talent.

In essence, IMHO, this ultimately comes down to one's opinion on a different question...is the NBA primarily a sports league or an entertainment company? If it's a sports league, then teams ought to be doing everything they do with the goal of acquiring the best talent possible, including being as bad as possible unless you're among the top teams with a real chance to compete or already on the upswing with suitable talent to get there. If the NBA is primarily an entertainment league, then the NBA should want to prevent truly bad teams in order to raise the nightly entertainment value of each game and therefore should be anti-tanking. If it's not obvious, I would prefer the NBA to primarily be a sports league and therefore I am pro-tanking.
Click to expand...
you were saying this from the perspective of a bad team and a bad year... embrace tanking means nearly half of the team should take in some might as well take from the start.

If everybody does it, the League is a bad product. Also, those bad teams will depend on the good teams to sell tickets and TV contracts.

There should not be incentives for taking that is completely silly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top