Breaking: The NBA's Board of Governors has passed new anti-tanking rules that include expanding the draft lottery from 14 to 16 teams, a relegation zone where the bottom 3 teams get penalized with lessened chances for the No. 1 pick, and flattened odds, sources tell ESPN.
@Doug_Thonus The draft also sucks the next couple years compared to the last two, but I’m sure the league will attribute less teams tanking to their new lottery rules instead.
I know it’s easy to make certain Bulls players the butt of every joke, but I think it does a disservice to the player, the person making the joke, and the audience. Seen it happen with a few different Bulls players over the years (Snell, WCJ, Denzel, Pat) but it’s always wrong.
@mustang6944 I’m not saying that teams didn’t egregiously tank, I’m saying that it’s not the “real” problem. And these reforms don’t accomplish anything positive for the league while creating a host of problems.
@mustang6944 It’s fake because people act like all these teams have gone rogue by tanking for talent, when in reality the league has systematically forced teams into doing this by flattening lottery odds and removing free agency for star players. Tanking is the symptom, not the cause.
It used to be the bottom 5 teams that tanked.
People complained about Philly, so the odds were flattened, resulting in the bottom 10 teams tanking.
Now the “solution” is to incentivize teams 7~16 to tank, but hey, the bottom five teams will try harder? Yay?
@VeryVegeta@theXExpert The league rules prevent them from spending more. It has nothing to do with ownership. The only situation where an owner matters in spending is going into the tax to retain your own players, but that’s not really relevant to this discussion.
@VeryVegeta@theXExpert The league has instituted apron rules, max contracts, and contract extensions to stop this from happening. Bad teams can’t simply spend more to get top players, so they can only overpay non-star players. And now their picks are worth less so trading for them is even harder.
@couldntbeme96 There’s zero reason to be disrespectful to me over an opinion. Maybe fake is the wrong word, but tanking is a symptom rather than a cause. Free agency stopped being a way to get stars once extension rules changed, so teams are more reliant than ever on the draft to get them.
@theXExpert I’m awake. Tanking is just the symptom, not the cause. Teams need ways to get stars, and free agency has almost disappeared because of extension rules. There’s more reliance than ever on the draft as a result, so teams are incentivized to tank. Punishing tanking doesn’t solve it.
@Biyombonesaw Kind of. It disincentivizes manipulation of standings at the bottom in favor of manipulation of 4-10. And it heavily punishes 1-3, teams who are actually bad, by giving them a 47% chance to get pick 10-12. I don’t think it really solves any problems, and it will create more.
I honestly can’t believe the league is approving this plan. I keep thinking this is a bad joke. But nope, they are moving forward with this plan that solves very little and creates significant problems. They are responding to a scratch by doing surgery on the wrong body part.