Flashback: Solving Tanking

This episode of Hollander and Duncan was published last year, but guess what? The tanking epidemic is still on and all the points made are still valid. So if you're looking for solutions to tanking, check it out. Welcome on to Hollander and Duncan, a very special Hollander and Duncan indeed because today we will solve this scourge that is tanking in the NBA. Clearly we can do it right because this is an easy to solve problem, not really at any complexities or unintended consequences from any of these ideas. So should be able to just get this done with the massive intellectual horse power at our disposal. And the only as the only podcaster who has had a 4 and 31 blaze to the finish line with an actual NBA team, I feel uniquely qualified to discuss this matter. Yeah. Well, as I put it in the description, you never actually were involved in tanking, but you knew of teams that were. I heard stories about other teams that yeah, yeah. We just happened to hit a rough patch there and it was tough. It was tough in that 2018 season. And yeah, so I want to encourage all you all on YouTube. We got a lot of great suggestions on Twitter as well. Throw in your reactions to our ideas. Some more of your ideas will as much as time allows. Try to address every comment that we've gotten here. So you wrote about this actually on Monday. You know, I've been talking about doing this show for a couple of weeks now. It's been pretty egregious. It's been starting earlier than ever with teams like the jazz and the raptors. Some teams that actually have decent players. Other teams are just so bad like the nets that no one cares at this point. Obviously, the top sixers as Tim McMahon calls them so geniusly that they have been on this train for quite a while as well. But just your thesis there when you're in your article and then also some general principles of what types of reforms might work and others that might not. Yeah. So the thing I wrote about in the story related to our season in 2018 because a lot of what looked from the outside like like tanking. In other words, actively trying to lose was more the absence of trying to win and thus what those incentives meant. And what I mean by that, for instance, is Mike Connelly was going to need surgery at some point. Go ahead. After season ending surgery, be right for next year. You know, that was that was the first decision that was that sent us down the road to tanking that had nothing to do with tanking per se, but in a way it did because we had no further incentive to keep trying for that season, which immediately moved all of our chips into the next season. And sort of similar. The thing I wrote about in the story was Marcus Saul had this game where he was completely kicking Rudy Gover's ass. It was like the best game he played all season and then we pulled him after 23 minutes or whatever it was because we had a minute's restriction on him because why wouldn't we? I mean, we shouldn't have even been playing him at all, right? Like our season was over. He was 33. He had broken his foot the year before. We had him for a max deal for two more years. Like what's our incentive to continue pursuing that? So I think that gets lost a little in the in the tanking debate. Now it is interesting though. I mean, just when we talk about the general issue of tanking, I do think the league has accomplished a lot since 2018, which was probably the last truly great draft in terms of both high-end players and depth of talent as opposed to like a Wembee draft or was one player. And there was clearly some egregious behavior going on the second half of that season. But it was the top three teams. I think got drawn into the lottery and then you were guaranteed number four if you had the worst record. Right. So that's changed. And your odds of finishing the top three were much better than than they are now. You know, if you were one of the worst teams. So us finishing with the, I think we were the second worst record and we ended up in the fourth position. So because Phoenix had the worst rate, if I remember, if Phoenix had the worst record and won the lottery, fun detail. I think this is, I think this was reported at the time, but Phoenix actually won that lottery three times in a row because they, you know, they did the drawing first and then they drew another number and it was still Phoenix's and drew another number and it was still Phoenix's and then whoever came in second, Sacramento got the next one. So we've changed behavior that way. We've changed behavior by introducing the play in which keeps more teams from tanking because they still have something to play for. Dallas Mavericks right now would have started tanking as soon as Kyrie went out, right? If there, if there wasn't the carrot of the play in Chicago Bulls would have done the, the same. I presume you could argue one of the two other teams, more two other teams Miami. I think you could say like would have given up at some point and probably won't now. So I think the league has done, has taken steps to reduce the incentives that are involved. And I will also say that people talk about the lottery, but the most egregious forms of tanking have always involved protected picks. And I brought this up over and over again that they should eliminate any pick protection between four and 14. In other words, you can have it so that it's lottery protected. You can have it so that it's top four protected is just straight up you looked into it or you didn't. But anything between five and 14 creates problems for the integrity of the league late in the season. We saw it with Dallas two years ago, received a Philadelphia this year. Even though they ironically are probably not the most egregious example. So I would say, I thought this is an interesting part. I was going to wait to bring it up. But since you said it on the league fixing things, I, listener made a pretty interesting point on this, which is maybe it was better when you really had very high odds again, the number one pick in the top four. And there were only three spots that go up into the top three instead of four spots going to the top four because at least then it was only a few teams that were really tanking. Whereas now we have like eight teams that are actively taking part of that as the protected pick aspect. But of course, Utah last year, again this year, though they weren't in any danger of giving it up this year. And then obviously the top sixers with their situation. But now because you're your eighth or ninth even, you got a decent chance getting in the top four, there are way more teams trying to tank than you might have had say in that 17, 18 season that you talked about. You had, I don't recall that many teams just like really going into the tank other than you guys, the sons, et cetera. And I also don't remember teams just resting every decent player that they have or doing that like what Toronto is doing this year. Like I really don't recall that happening before where they're just playing their guys for 25 minutes and then just sitting them for the last third of the game. Yeah, yeah. That's a pretty novel wrinkle that I think is a response to the player participation policy because what teams used to do Nate was just shut guys down. They would just blazers would just say, Danny Lillard, why don't you go, you know, do whatever for you. Even that though, I feel like this is it that's in this modern era. Like I don't recall in like 2016, 2017 guys just getting completely shut down for the season, you know, 20 games left or something like that. I don't know, maybe my memory is not as good, but I felt like it was. We had a, we had a, a, a, a, a, a, Tyree Gettin's took some, took some VK with us that March. I don't know if you remember that one. That was part of our program. Well, so before the lottery reform for, and I went back and look at some stuff that I wrote on this very early in my career, you know, 2012, 2013. The bigger issue was, you know, the, and I think this is part of why lottery reform happened the way it did was you had teams that were just deciding we're going to be so incredibly awful at the start of the year. Of course, like the Sam Hinkie's. Yeah. The lottery reform that started in 19 was a direct reaction to that. And so that, I distinguish that as like the season long-tanking versus teams that just decide, oh no, we're going to, we can always just make it up if things aren't going well during the season by completely shutting guys down. And so it doesn't matter if we actually have talent on our team because we're just going to, we can just shut those guys down. It doesn't matter like that's kind of what the U.T.S. has done the last three years. The trade deadline tank. Yeah. Yeah. And Portland has done that too as well, like with shutting down Lillard and when they still had him and even what they've done the last couple of years as well, guys like Jeremy Grant or so. Yeah. I think they have curbed this. We have to make ourselves so awful at the start of the season that we're just, we're never a possibility. We're going to win more than 15 games. Like that doesn't really seem to exist anymore. There's more just that now teams are like, all right, we can just, like even the Pistons last year and they won the 14 games, like they were kind of trying, right? Like we haven't seen teams that have gone into just like not try it all to start the season, just be completely unwatchable with the talent, although it's on the roster the way some of those sixers teams were. All right. So let me get back to my framing here that I had earlier. A few other things that I think need to happen. This is, I think was good from your pieces that it probably needs to be more carrot than stick because you can always get around the stick. That's what we're seeing. Right. Yeah, like the player participation policy and in particular, you know, they're kind of making a joke out of it with, you know, with what the jazz have done with marketing, with what the raptors have done with Barnes and other guys. Walker Kessler getting much needed rest, you know, every third game or whatever it is. Yeah. Or the work rounds are just really working on his three point range. Well, that's in that recently. He's been instructed to really explore the studio space. They're Mark Madson style. I was going to say I was going to bring up Madson, one of the legendary tank games in NBA history. Yeah, another one that came with the protected pick. All right, let's say so that to me because I think there can be some disincentive to saying like that's going to be some of my ideas, certainly where you get penalized in some way. But ultimately, the reality is teams do this because it's rational and so we need to and even if it's like, oh, there's some financial penalty, right? Like that's something that like, okay, you get an extra amount of the players get something if you win or the team gets more revenue sharing for every win that you get during the course of the season or something like that. Well, that's an incentive, but it's also if you're really trying to win in the long term, you're going to ignore that short term incentive because it's better for your team and maybe, you know, your, your Michael Jordan's would be swayed by that, but the smart organizations wouldn't. So really what we're trying to do is make it so guys like you and me are like, yeah, if I were in their shoes, I would actually be trying to win right now. Like that's what we're going for here. Yeah, that, that is hard. He has it is. Rationally, like you're, you're in set the value of the high draft pick is just so much more than the than the marginal value of finishing 10th instead of 11th. So yeah, how do you how do you offset that? Well, I will say one more thing before we actually get into specifics. The draft is still a good thing, right? If you're going to like, for example, the wheel is one that has been thrown out there for over 10 years now that Mike Zaren came up with. To me, the goal is, like as bad as tanking is, you still need to have a draft. You need to have something where you're at least somewhat giving the worst teams a chance to get into the cycle and potentially get a great player because that's just like having fan bases who are totally disengaged in the league, acknowledge this back with Ted Stepion in the 80s that having fan bases that are totally disengaged like a 10 year period that teams just has no chance. They don't have any young players are even worth liking that that is much worse for the league than tanking. Do you agree with me on that? Yeah, like you have to give the shitty teams hope. Okay, you want to throw an idea out there? Let's talk about them. Oh, it's still like how we how we fix this. Could you could you the thing I was wondering about is could you have some kind of NBA cup in the spring that had like could it could it almost be like a like a play into the play in or something? I don't know. Something for the teams that are out of it that gives them like this this sliver of a chance slash something worth playing for slash the possibility of an extra home home date revenue where they could either play themselves into a better pick or play themselves into the actual playoff tournament. Yeah, I guess that's now is that going to fix the fact that we have 20 bullshit games in in March and April? You would you would hope that because those bullshit games are now some of them are, you know, cup games that you could resolve it that way. It would be it would be the complexity of this as I map it's out of the complexity of this is such that it could probably not be solved into one hour podcast, but I just wonder about the general concept of of giving these teams something to play for and the thing is it has to be enough that it has to be something that actually matters. You know, could it could it be something that like hard cap to your pick at number three? Like no matter what else happening in the lottery, you can't do worse than three if you win this tournament or I don't know, I'm just I'm spitball in here, but just struck me as something that might because I think I think the thing that really stood out to me when I watched when I was thinking about our own situation and watching Toronto is that they you're absolutely right. Like the the penalizing the negative isn't enough. You need you need the the care something positive to play for some incentive to actually try to win as opposed to just incentivizing or just penalizing the most intentional of losing. Yeah, I I do think it would be interesting. I would watch it. I'm not sure how much other people would I there does seem something. I mean, how much would want people watch any Washington Toronto game, right? Shout out Raptors, Nets, the wizard Sixers tonight, by the way, hoping hope your league passes a teed up for those. Yeah, I guess there is something a bit unsavory about the idea of we're going to play and try to win so we get a draft pick. And it also is decoupling being bad with getting a pick, which is kind of the point of the draft to begin with. Are you opening up this tournament to every lottery team? Is there a certain cut off? This is the issue to all these ideas of like, okay, well, before the trade deadline, it's losses. Then after the trade deadline, it's wins. So but like then, okay, then everyone's going to just tank before the trade deadline is that like if you have some sort of an arbitrary cut off, that's always going to lead to some kind of manipulation. Would that be better than the current system? Maybe it would be, but then also again, like if you're rewarding wins, then you are decoupling the idea of helping some of the bad teams. I mean, would it be cool to see teams that are bad actually trade for players to help them win in the second half of the season? Is that a good hard drive? Yeah, that actually, like there would just be more teams competing, trying to be good. Yeah, the big problem is just that these are the two teams that are going to be in the season. These games are absolutely unwatchable. I mean, there are teams that go in, if they're playing a real team, they just have no chance of winning a game. Like they're just not going, like Memphis doesn't have John Morant last night and they win by 37 in Utah, right? Like it's just, yeah, there's no chance of these teams doing anything with the groups that they're putting out there at this point. So, you know, I do think it would be interesting. It's also, this is another general principle too, is the more complexity that's just generally kind of a bad thing if fans kind of can't really understand it. I mean, now, if you have a tournament, sure, when are they going to put this tournament? It would be an interesting question. Like, you don't want to take away from the play in necessarily. There are a couple of off days during play in week. Maybe you could put it then, but I just, I don't think the league wants to be promoting the idea of, oh yeah, like you, we're playing for this great draft pick. Like it's sort of, yeah, that to me is, again, feels a little unsafery. But I also appreciate the appeal of these sorts of ideas. Is there something else they could play for somehow? Pride? You have pride, yes. Less shame? Could you try that? Yeah. Could they play for less shame? Could you, I don't think it would matter to people and I think it would be really complex. Have the, there was one conference this year that did their conference tournament in college basketball where it was like, let's say there were eight teams in the league. Well, the number 18 plays the number 17 in the first round. And then the winner of that advances to play number six. The winner of that advances to play number five. So like, if you're the eight seed, you got to win seven times to win the league tournament. But if you're the one seed, you only got to win the final game. And I wonder if there's, it probably take too long to execute some kind of play in tournament like that where you're, your constant, you're playing for a seed line all the way through the end of the season. So how would that work? I'm having no trouble wrapping my head around that one. So like the day after the season, number 15, Washington plays number 14 Charlotte. The winner of that gets on a plane of flies to Brooklyn the next day to play number 13, Brooklyn. And the winner of that advances to play number 12 Philly. And the winner of that advances to play number 11, Toronto. Like it's, it's probably too much, right? I was trying to figure out if there's some way to streamline it so that, but the idea that you get, you get into the bracket with some marginal chance depending on your seed now. It's sort of an extension of the play in, but it's probably too grand an extension. Uh, again, I'm, I'm spitballing here. Yeah, I mean, there's been talk of doing just a tournament among all the teams, there, although then the other problem is that that just devalues the regular season even more as well. I mean, that was one of the big arguments against the play in that I think has been relatively debunked. But it's like, man, we played 82 games just to get here. Um, I think the play has been great actually because there are other things to play for besides just the playoff spot teams are targeting top six or targeting to get seven eight and at least get that home game, uh, to get themselves in or they're further down. They want to stay at nine, stay at 10 and give themselves a chance. Yeah, among the top 20 to 22 teams in the league, I think there has, has the league has done a great job of increasing the incentive to win games throughout the year. It's just that that bottom eight team, like once you're not really in play in contention or you don't care about potentially getting the 10c because you know you're not going to go anywhere. That's when it really, we just haven't had any kind of incentive. What's I mean, that because that's, I mean, just having eight teams that are just complete bullshit. It really sucks. Like as you look at the schedule, it's actually more interesting when they play each other. But when any of those teams is playing real teams, just like, don't bother watching. You can't, there's no incentive to watch the game at all. Yeah, 100%. This has been a common one. Just completely flattening the lottery odds, going back to the Patrick Ewing style lottery where every team that doesn't make the playoffs gets that an equal chance. What do you think of that? People got very pissed off when a 500 bulls team got Derek Rose, as you know, that kind of way. Yeah, I mean, that was, that was a 1.8% chance though back then. That was, it was, that's right. They were, they were, they were form the odds to, no, you're right. Yeah. Because they were form the odds after Rose to make it even harder for a, for a team in their position to win. That's what it was. Yeah, I don't love that. I also think that you might see teams not trying to make the plan or maybe even not trying to make the playoffs so they could get destroyed by in the 8th seat if the odds were actually that high. Yeah, because I, we've already seen it a little bit where teams are like, yeah, we could make the play in. I mean, I think Toronto, probably with the Tampa tank was one situation. And even this year, like, they still had a chance to make the play in and they kind of opted to pull their cards off the table. All right, let me throw a few out here. Okay. This is one that I haven't heard anymore. Okay. They are draft picks so valuable. Obviously, you get a chance to the generational talent, but they also are cost controlled. So maybe just the cap number on rookie scale contracts at the top of the draft should just be a lot higher. Now, you don't actually get paid more because that would, would probably veterans wouldn't be happy about that. But let's say, you know, you get Cooper flag. All right. His cap number is $30 million. And the, or any other year, it's the same way. So, and he only gets paid, you know, starting like 12 or 13 or something like that. But I think that's, that would be a way where it's just like, okay, maybe this just isn't quite as valuable, right? Like, yeah, getting Cooper flag, paying them $30 million, getting him on a restricted deal. That would be nice. But it's still, and as particularly if you're going into two, three, four, it's like, ah, you know, it's nice to have this. But also like, this could be a little bit more than Altrus, sort of like NFL style before they went to like, they're comically low rookie scale. And then that money would just get distributed among other players on, on the team. So it would more go towards veterans or just get distributed throughout the NBA, however you wanted to do it. So that player isn't actually getting paid $30 million, but that's what his cap number is. And so now you don't have as much of an incentive to get these guys at the top of the draft. That's an interesting one. I'm trying to think of how distorting it would be on the, on the, because you actually have to do cap planning then if you're going to be bad in a way that you don't have to right now. The league also doesn't descend the salaries in like the five to 10 range nearly enough. Yeah. So there's a little bit of an adjustment that would need to be made there, I think too. Because otherwise literally everyone between five and 10 would be like trying to trade out of it. You know, if it was, if it was proportion, like number one, still a great value. Number two, still pretty good. But if you start raising the price on those on those late lottery picks, I think that because those historically haven't been nearly, I know there's, there's curry. There's a couple others, but historically they haven't paid off nearly as well. And the contract drop off doesn't really reflect that right now. Yeah. I'm thinking it's only, only really in the top four is probably like those lot of spots. Like it would drop down very quickly. As you noted, right? Oh, it's all right. Yeah. That's fair because you're saying if you locked into your pick, then we're going to raise the cap number on it. The other idea that I had back in 2012 that I think probably wouldn't work as well now that I don't love. I called it the bid draft where basically you would, you wouldn't have a lottery. It would just be in order of the standings. However, if you wanted, and this actually would kind of fit in with what I was talking about here too, with the cap number just generally being larger for the number one pick, if you had salary cap space and you wanted to bid that salary cap space on a draft pick, you would have the bill and you would go higher than the slot number. Remember our slot numbers are higher. You could jump the line in the draft. Now in this year with Cooper flag, the teams would probably just be willing to bid the max salary, right? Like the Zyan and Anthony Ares, they might be willing to do that. Other years, maybe they would. So then it would probably just have to go back to being a lottery if you had multiple teams that were willing to bid the max. But first of all, you would have to get the salary cap space to do that, right? And then you would have that high cap number. Again, that number would just get distributed to the other players on the team. You would still make whatever the scale amount was. But that was my thinking back then at a time when not as many teams had salary cap space, either now again, they don't, but in the year like 2016, which it got pretty crazy. You can, yeah, you can, you can plan for it too. So part of the reason teams don't have cap spaces because they know there's not going to be anyone worth signing in free agency. Yeah. And also, I mean, I do think that the players would have to agree to this. I don't think they would like that because it would have more, it would depress free agency even more if you're, you're marking the salary cap space for, yes, even if players would, the veterans would end up getting the money from that. It still would overall depress the market in free agency. Guys would just generally get paid less. So I don't think you could sell the players association on that necessarily. But basically it, it again would be if you have careful cap planning, you're not going to be like a great team probably that's going to have max salary cap space if you want to try to go get Cooper flag in the draft. But that was another idea I had probably too far a feel. I think maybe just what happens to the scale amount of more realistic. What happens to the team that's outbid? They just moved down to number two. Yeah. So you got just, unless so it's almost like if you get the top pick, you need to make sure you have max cap space too. So you can kind of fend off. Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, because yeah, the second there's multiple what happens with multiple maximum teams. Like what's what's the tiebreaker? Yeah, we probably would have to be record at that point. I know that one's probably too complex. No, it should be like an NBA cup tiebreaker somehow. It's a point differential in games between the teams. Okay, what are some of the other ideas that you have? I feel like I have had a lot that are like I get two steps into it. I'm like, no, no, actually that one actually I can throw some more out there. I mean, I've seen I've seen the wheel, the wheel address is tanking, but it doesn't. I think people actually want the draft to be redistributed. Yeah, right? When it comes to our sports for socialists. So I think that that's never going away. So there has to be some element of that and quote unquote rewarding the worst teams for lack of a better word. So I don't like anything that that takes that away. And so the probably the most challenging part is maintaining that without incentivizing what we call tanking. No, I mean, I think that's I don't like the wheel for that reason. I mean, I do think that it would the cure would be worse than the disease in that respect. I mean, here's the other one that I had Danny talked about this to. I've talked about this before just short in the season. I have like fewer games teams. You're just you're not behind by 37,000 games at the end of the season. Like it's with fewer games, you're just closer to being into it. Maybe you still, you know, hit a four game win streak and other team hits a four game losing streak and you're right there. It's just more realistic to be in it towards the end of the season. Also just because there are fewer games, there are just these games aren't like throwways the way they are now. And in 82 game season, you're not having the situation where it's real is to be like, oh, we really got to rest this guy on a back to back. It's like, no, you don't have back to back to you. Two games a week, like you should be able to play the guy. So that would be a big thing. We're just a culture of every game, meaning more being more of an event and everyone being closer together in terms of the standings. I think would make it would really help a lot. I think the example where you really see that is the NFL where there's actually in a good quarterback year, there's crazy incentive to tank. Like I would argue more than the NBA even. And yet you don't really see that kind of behavior. Yeah, because they don't have a lottery. They just do it straight by record. Yeah. And frankly, it's not part of the culture and part of why it's not part of the culture is you have one game a week under my proposals. It would be 58 games a year. So basically two games a week. So that's one that I think it's not directly related to it, but I do think it would help a lot. Yeah. I mean, the short of the season, the more compressed the standings, the more the bigger percentage of the season, you still have quote unquote hope. And the fewer just ask games you end up with at the end of the schedule. And I also think the players are less run down too. I mean, part of the reason we get some of these games is because some of these teams have legitimately run out of players too. Yeah. So that's exacerbated the situation. And as you noted, and I noted this when I wrote about this years and years ago, back to this is back before baseball teams realized that it was actually good to have a draft pick. Yeah. Right. Like good because they just, you know, they didn't care what their record was. But they would do the same thing. If September expanded to 40 man rosters, we're going to get a look at these prospects. Like it doesn't really matter if we're going to win these games if we're out of it. So it is, I mean, even when you look at like what the Brooklyn net stood all those years that they didn't have their draft picks, it's not like they were just pushing really hard for Demari Carroll to play every game or something like that. Like they, it just, yeah, it makes more sense generally to get a look at younger players. And as you talked about with Gassol, that one year for you just preserves the guy for the next season when it actually matters. So again, that's why you really, it needs to be more of the carrot than the stick in my opinion. Let's see here. Let me throw another couple out there. I mean, I think this one is one that I would implement is just if you don't win X number of games, you just are ineligible for the number one pack. I think I would probably put that number at maybe 15, maybe 17, something like that. It just, like, that's really more to just prevent being so awful and more to curb the like season long we're just going in. - The Hanky Rule. - The Hanky Rule, yeah. - Yeah. - I mean, I don't really see, do you see any downside to implementing that rule? I don't really see one, honestly. - So basically you're ineligible for the lottery, so you end up at five if you were so shitty that you feel like that. - No, no, you just, you can't get the number one pick. You can get two. - Oh, okay, get two. - But you're not, you can't get one. - Okay, all right, okay. - Yeah, it's not that severe of a valley, but it's like that would be enough to where, I mean, there might be an edge case ever once or all, but like, you should be, I mean, and fine, you know what? - Yeah. - Like if you want to get the number one pick, trade for Isha Smith at the deadline or something for two second on picks, if you're really that worried that you're not gonna win 15 to 17 games, whatever. - Was that why they made that deal? - It was to avoid the all-time loss record. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And 50. - 'Cause I think that's the bar now for some teams is like, okay, we gotta get to 10. - Yeah, so make that the record for. - Make that 15. - And you also force GMs to at least, like get enough talent on the team to where you're not in danger of doing that. - I think that, and it's not, you know, okay, if you don't get, you're ineligible for the number one pick that year, if you truly have a horrendous year and you can't get there, like, okay, you're still eligible for number two, like it's not gonna just kill you, but it's enough of an incentive where it's like, okay, we gotta actually be semi-competent this year. So that's, of all of these, that is the one that I 100% would implement right now. - Yeah, I like that idea. I think that's really good. Yeah, it's set in the win number. There's probably some debate, but yeah, somewhere between 15 and 20, that number exists. - Yeah, I mean, I think like 15, if you're 15 and 67, that's just like, that's like all-time bad. That is really, and how many of those have we seen? We've seen a team win less than 15 games. I was Detroit last year. They could, if they had pushed a little harder at the end, could have got over that probably. Maybe fired Monte Williams in. - Yeah, I was gonna say if they had fired Monte so that they could have a chance to number one. (laughs) That would have been at all time, or? - I do think this, a couple of these ideas would be good. Just some kind of financial incentive for winning games. - I at least, I don't think that was a matter. I don't think that was a matter. - Well, I don't know if it was enough. It would like, like, whatever you're, like for every game you win, you get more, and you're not in the tax, you get more tax distribution, or if you just, you get some amount of money from a fund in the league, your team gets an extra million bucks for every win, or something like that. - I mean, or you could have every player contract would have to have a bonus for team wins in a given year, then at least the players would be like pushing the play. That would be kind of an awkward situation if they got shut down. I think those things would help a little bit. I don't think they would solve it, but I think they would help. Don't like that one? - Nah, I think there'd be more trade demands. (laughs) - I kind of like that, actually. - Have that. - You're out of shitty teams. Like, come on, I'm free. I get free money if I'm traded to Cleveland, right? Like, let's go. - Well, I think it would have to be only for wins that took place while you were on the team. - Still, like, who are you banking? Which horse are you banking on? Yeah, Traveys, October 18th, like trade me. Give me out of here. - I would like to see more trade requests. It'd be good for our business at least. (laughs) - So let me ask you this. Obviously, it would create some unintended consequences. But do you think that either just freezing the standing to get the trade deadline or losses before the trade deadline wins after, it's not perfect, but is that better than what we have now? - I like freezing the standing to the trade deadline. - Yeah. - Because I think that's the decision point for a lot of teams, on whether they're gonna cut bait on the rest of the year or not. And then it also still leaves open the possibility of trying the rest of the way. - Yeah. - You know, Toronto could have made an honest effort for 10th and that they didn't get it like, oh well. Now, some teams will argue like, okay, if you're gonna do that, I'd eat the same number of home road before the trade deadline and strengthen schedule and whatnot. That's where it's gonna get a little trickier and whineier probably. But their elements of that that I really like, it makes it a lot harder to do like what Portland did, what Dallas did, where they just blatantly just pull the plug later in the year and are just, just objectively awful trying to lose. - Yeah. A couple of comments that we've had here, make the lottery odds the same for the seven through the bottom. That would certainly lead to tanking to get into the bottom seven. But it also, you know, once you're clearly in the bottom seven, you'd probably be okay when you're never gonna make it to the bottom seven. It would at least reduce the number of teams that have the incentives to tank. I mean, that's the biggest issue that I have right now. And I love your idea of eliminating the eliminating pick protection. It's either a lot of protected or it's top four and that's it, you can't do any pick protection in the middle there. I think that is definitely good. Let's see, if there's anything else, anything else that's just like general concepts that have come to mind for you or anything else you want to throw out there? - I'm just trying to make sure I've thought through every potential negative incentive that comes with freezing the standings. And they would probably have to deal with certain situations like what if a team makes a late run or whatever. But we're talking about-- - Yeah, I mean, if you make the playoffs, then obviously you're still not eligible for it. - Yeah, we're talking about, it's basically, we use the standings for all the 14 teams that didn't make the playoffs. We use the standings as of this day, as our marker for how we're delineating the lottery odds. It's early enough that it would be hard for a team to like, tank into that in January. That would be like super embarrassing and probably do more harm than good in most cases. I would think-- - That's the NFL playoffs, nobody cares. Here's another idea that I had. - Okay. - Do the lottery for every single pick. So there's no, like you're still, 'cause a lot of the tanking I think is to like, give yourself a floor. But you're basically, you're doing the odds for every single pick. There's a drawing for every single pick, obviously, until you get to-- - And the pick protection is more honest. - You're right. - You wouldn't need that if you did it that way. So you're saying you're gonna have another lottery, after you do the lottery for the top four, you're gonna have another lottery for five, another lottery for six. So even if you have the worst record in the league, you could end up at 14, although the odds of that happening are infinitesimal, right? So you're probably still gonna be really high, but you don't know exactly where and to your point, you can't manage a floor. You're just working with odds. And so there is probably, I mean, it really takes away the pick protection shenanigans. So if you're gonna keep picking protection alive, then I like that to have a lottery for each position. And probably reduces some of the incentives even that we're seeing right now between, like Philly, Brooklyn and Toronto, we're basically trying to position VeeCeVee each other. But if it's nothing about odds for each of the three of them, it's like, yeah, each of it's gonna end up anywhere. It doesn't matter that much. Whereas they're looking at right now, like, hey, if we're in at the top four, like this is definitely three spots of draft right here. - Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was saying. The idea being that you're really trying hard to raise your floor where the flat and the lottery odds, I think are pretty good as far as like your chances of getting in the top four. But the bigger concern is just, oh man, we can't be 10. So we gotta get up to seven. That kind of thinking will largely be eliminated then, 'cause, okay, you might be changing, where are you? Hey, if we have a top six protected pick, if we get to four, we're guaranteed to keep it. If we're at five, oh, we got a 50% chance losing. If we're at six, we got like a pretty big chance losing at whatever the number is. Whereas if you don't have that, now you're, you're, okay, we've got like, you know, a 4% lower chance of keeping the pick or something if we're in this slot. That is a, or an 8% lower chance. That is just a much different type of incentive. - Yeah, you know, you know what's funny is, we actually had a very different incentive in Memphis that has come up rarely, but there are situations I think where it could come up, where we had a top 10 protected pick going out to Boston that we wanted to convey that year. So we were actually trying to win at the end of the year, but we ended up with like tied for the ninth worst record, but we ended up moving up to two in the lottery, 'cause that was the year that the Grizzly's got job. But we were trying not to give, we were trying to give Boston the pick that year so that we could tank the next year and not have to give them a very likely protected pick or an unprotected pick the year later. I think that was how the protection went if I remember right. - Yeah. - So, but to your point, we, there was a certain number of wins that if we had gotten to, we would have been pretty much assured of doing that unless we ended up in the lottery, which obviously we did. And we just missed on achieving that. It was the opposite of your floor argue, but we would have played that out differently, certainly. And again, if it had just been percentages rather than sort of this very clear line of like, yes. If you win one more game than Dallas and don't lose this double overtime game to them, that you tried to win, then you'd definitely be at 10 or whatever it was. And the pick would go to Boston. Yeah. Sumo pockets here. Thanks for the super chat. Some teams of a plan, a lot of these teams are just a mess playing a bunch of young inexperienced players looking for their own shot has never been the answer. Well, it's been the answer if you want to lose. If you question is, how do we get a good draft pick? Trust me. That's the answer. I've seen it in action. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I, there have been all these arguments about all you're going to poison the culture and stuff like this. Like, not Philly. As soon as they got Joelle and beat out there and Ben Simmons, they started winning immediately. Houston, once they signed Fred Van Vliet and Dylan Brooks and got him a Udoka as the coach, then like they started winning immediately like Jalen Green actually is like developing good habits. I really don't think that that ends up hurting you that much. Especially coach and your team is so shitty that your roster is going to change anyway. Yeah. Like by the time the Grizzlies were good again and 20 or 21 or whatever, I mean, Dylan Brooks was the only player left from that 18 team. He was, he was a rookie. Let's see if we got any other, let me see if I have any other good ones. Then we can hit a few more comments as well here. Another one is just make it based on wins over a three year period rather than over a one year period. So you can't really do that much in a given season to put yourself in a certain area. But I still think you would, you would still know what the number was. You needed to get to in a given year. Some teams were tanked because they had one 55 games two years ago or something. But yeah, I don't like that for old teams on the downslope. I agree. I agree. I agree. I mean, maybe it could be a, or even like your gold, your golden state, you have that disaster year. Like, yeah, it's, it's okay to get a lottery pick for that. What about just some subjective stuff? What if there was just this was one thing that was suggested just a, and a competition officer in the league office who's just going to look at you and he's like, Hey, you know what? Like you're obviously not trying here. I'm going to just ding you guys some lottery points or something like that. A lot of these are. Yeah. And because it is like a justice potter's to it. We know it when we see it, right? That would be that a, that would be the best job in the world. No, actually it would be the worst job in the world because you'd have to watch every Brooklyn Toronto game, right? Okay, I take that back. It would be, it would be a hilarious job. I, I just think there's, yeah, we know when we see it, just man trying to enforce it. We've seen it. We've seen it now with the player participation policy and everything. Like just trying to enforce that just becomes impossible. We know that guy wasn't really injured. And then you know, you just have teams leveling up and their ability to fake injuries so that you can't figure out who's hurt or not. Like I don't, I think it creates more issues than it solves probably. Yeah. Life finds a way is what I always say with these sort of things where, if there's a way around it, they will find it and you just, you have to find a way to change what they want to do. Now you're trying to force them to do. Yeah, just imagine every GM is Chris Paul. I mean, the other, another idea I had was something along the line to like a 65 game rule for certain, like for, for players where if you, if guys don't play that many games, then you get penalized in the lottery odds. But again, how do you distinguish between that and between legitimate injuries? I mean, that's really tough to do. So I, I thought of that and then I kind of dismissed it. Yeah. I think, I think teams have already solved that too with the, you know, 24 minutes of Laurie Marken in 24 minutes of ass strategy, you know, that usually gets them home with a now. Yeah. Yeah. Personal absences like is the league going to like dig into personal absences of why like Laurie Marken is a personal absences. Well, okay. Like, yeah. Oh, well, his, his personally, he wants to play with Cooper flag. Yeah. His fifth cousin died, but like they were really close or like, like now, like the, the competitions are is going to be determining like whether that's okay or not. Um, yeah, that you probably just don't want to go down that road and they're even like workplace protection issues with that. Um, let's see. Ask chat GPT who deserves it. That's a, that's a good. This, this is one that was thrown out there too. He was to abolish the draft and teams can hoard salary, cap space and make an offer and guys can sign whatever they want to see. I sort of liked that idea, but I don't think as any chance of actually happening. I mean, the draft is a great way to restrict, to redistribute money from players who are not in the league, but are about to be to the players who are already in the league, right? Because of the rookie scale. Yeah. So I think that's a pretty massive hurdle to implementation in the future is that you're, you're taking money from players who are currently in the players association and giving it to players who are not. So what are the odds? A relegation is one that's been thrown out there a lot too. And I mean, it's just these are no owners going to pay $3 billion for a team that can get relegated. Yeah. I'm not going to happen. That there's just we're just not set up the way English soccer is. Yeah, there is literally no chance of that. Yeah. Well, and then also because there is relegation, these teams at the bottom, lights for city aside are just don't have a chance ever, you know, because they're just, you know, so low on the economic totem pole. Richard says black ball more people like it like happened to hinking. Ha, ha, ha. That was both. I mean, he was about his games that he just, you know, he was doing what everyone else was doing. He just went, went at it way harder. Yeah. Well, and I do think that there is like that's what he was doing. That's what my rule of you're ineligible for the number one pick if you don't win 15 games would eliminate that behavior to just be so unbelievably atrocious. Um, and you can also for this whole, uh, the idea of just abolishing the draft, you could just give each team a over a five year period, X amount of dollars to bid. And all right, if you think this is the number one guy, you've been everything for him this year. And now you're going to be picking 30th the next four years. Now, everybody would have still bid the maximum amount for one, but yeah, but they might not have any money left over that period, right? Uh, yeah. Uh, that would probably be a little too complex though. Uh, and I'm not sure how you would avoid a steppie and like situation where teams just spend all their money on, uh, you know, Marvin Bagley at number two. And then you just are picking 30th for the next four years. That's probably not great. You have to protect teams from themselves. That was my, that was the, with students that left your mouth. That was my biggest worry. I was like, this is going to separate the smart teams and the dumb teams like Moses, parting the red sea, man. All right. I think that's about all, all that I've come up with here. Let me see if I, if I had any other ones. Oh, what do you think of this one? Okay. You don't know when it's going to be, but for a random 15 game portion of the season, it's wins instead of losses. I suck. I haven't found out. I say, you only find out after the season and it's randomly turned on. I suck. Kevin Pelton post that shout out. That's, oh, did it. I came, I came over. I didn't. Definitely. That's pretty funny. I had that. He and I both thought of that. Uh, that is really cool. That is a really cool idea. Uh, again, if we, if we want to do it that way, because then, yeah, you basically, you have to run through the tape and every game matters roughly equally. You don't, you don't know which 15 game stretch is going to be, right? So, um, and could, could we say even that the 15 game stretch will be somewhere in the second half of the season, like to incentivize late, uh, trying, maybe, um, I like that idea. People, people will whine again about home road and strengthen schedule and all that shit. Um, but I, I think, I think it's a, I think it's a pretty interesting idea to, to just incentivize, um, the right kind of behavior. But again, what, who, who is the cohort we're saying that for though? So we're saying wins matter, but only for the teams that are the least successful winning, right? I mean, it probably is just it, it would be any team that doesn't end up, uh, making, doesn't end up making the playoffs, right? So it'd be in that stretch. Your wins, your, your wins determine. Yeah, your, your win, a win basically counts as a loss and vice versa for this team. It would have to be a long enough period where it would actually change some things. I mean, I guess the downside there is that there could be legitimately decent teams that are going for the play and they're going to win 46 games and they, they would, they would just be the ones to benefit much more than, you know, okay, like, let's say for the wizards, you're talking about, all right, in this 15 game stretch, they might win six games instead of four, whereas these other teams are trying, anyway, they might go 11 and four during that stretch. And it's just, you're benefiting the teams that are actually good more than you're incentivizing the bad teams to try a bit more. Yeah, probably. I mean, you, again, if you're offsetting losses with wins, like it gets complicated, it's hard for fans to track and all that shit. Um, it, it could be, I don't know, could it be more helpful at the margin? I don't know. You, hmm, that's an interesting one. I'd have to go back and look at a few seasons and just like randomly pick and see what, what, what would have actually happened? Well, but you don't know because you don't know what the incentives are, right? You don't, you don't, that's, that's the problem with testing any of this stuff is, you can't just run it retroactively because teams will behave differently. That's what you're trying to accomplish. You're, and this is one of the few things we can't test in the G league either. No, I, I go, hey, you get the number one pick in the G league draft, right? Congratulations. You can pick a guy who averaged four points of game at Fresno State last year. Yeah, G league draft is, uh, it's not, not so amazing. Okay, so what are things that we would implement right now? Is there anything where you're that you feel like would obviously be an improvement? Let's do it. Uh, yeah. Um, the one we just talked about that, um, that the incentivizes the picture and drawing, drawing for every pick. Drawing for every pick. I agree. I would, I would, I think that's the one I've got. If you guys could think of unintended consequences of that, let me know. I, I can't really think of many. There is some small chance that a 60 lost theme lend a picking 11th or something, but it's, it's very low odds at that happening that they'd get pushed all the way down because once, once the other bad teams are off the board, like their odds are just so much bigger than, you know, their ping pong balls just dwarf the number of other ping pong balls remaining in the in the pod. So yeah, yeah, probably the biggest downside would just be like you would continually be drawing teams that, uh, you have to like find a way to take all the ping pong balls. Out for the teams that had already been drawn or like, like, it would just, I tried to do the lottery itself with the out of the uh, uh, we'll just, we'll just have an AI lottery. Okay. Fair and fair. I think, I think that would be a surmountable problem. Um, so I agree through. I would do that. I would implement my can't get the no one pick if you haven't 115 games or we would decide what that number kind of was historically, you know, 17, I think 20. Can we can we can we name the rule after Sam? We can maybe or maybe some, some like clippers, uh, you know, or, or, or do we yeah, yeah, no, no, no, so the so the, so the red, the redrawing the lottery picks would be we would be renamed the Madsen rule after the, uh, the, that clippers wolves game were mad some was shooting all absolutely absolutely. Um, so, so but the, uh, the rule with the minimum number of wins could either be named after hinky or we could name it after like the 22 through 24 trailblazers, one of the other. Um, okay, so those are two. And then I think the third, I'm at the point where I would want to try some sort of win based incentive at least one year and see how it went. And I think it probably would be the line of demarcation would be the deadline and so you know what if there and if there were some tanking before the deadline, it would be a shorter duration of time and you know, it wouldn't just be as obvious it wouldn't be going on for a two month period, necessarily like shifting some of that, like you just, you would have fewer teams are just like, okay, we're just gonna lose as many games as we can. At this point, like we don't know that we're out of it. Um, I mean, maybe you even would put it the halfway point of the season or something to where, uh, you're, I mean, that might just be too early, but I think the deadline is a good because that's really like a decision make point. So I think I would try that I would make it losses before wins after because they only have like what 23 games after the deadline 25 games. Yeah, so that's not that wouldn't be enough for the wins to overwhelm the losses, but it would be in itself. So I think that's probably the three things that I would do. Um, and it still wouldn't be perfect, but I think that would get us a little bit closer to where we went. Oh, and then the the pick protection thing too, only you can only protect top four or a lot of. If we were redrawing for every pick, I wouldn't, I wouldn't sweat that one as much. Yeah, okay. I mean, I still don't really see a huge downside of it honestly. Like it's just why even fuck with it. Are there so many deals that are getting done because it's top eight protected instead of top four? Right. Right. You know, there's a, there's a scenario where Atlanta might want to actually lose its last game because it has a top 12 protected pick that it owes to sacrum. No, that's that is coming from sacrameno, but like Atlanta and sacrameno could end up tied for the 12th worst record theoretically. So like if the Hawks already locked into the seven position, you know, and they have the home playing game anyway, if they just lose that final game, that makes them 12th worst if they, if they don't make the playoff somehow. And then so like there is it, there is this weird incentive for them, even though it's not their pick that has to protection to mess with the other teams protection so that they can keep the pick. We think of this comment from long john silver. If we did the thing where it's losses before the deadline wins after wouldn't teams just sit there best players to start like LaMella or Larry marketing would have played sub 10 games prior to the deadline. I just don't think teams want to tank that early and just give up all hope is like there's you know, there's still a business where you're selling tickets and meteorites and whatnot. If you want to tank that early and then possibly risk, you know, falling foul of the of the 15 win, you know, rule that that's good point to you.