Idea: Draft lottery mirroring NBA's new system

[Marcos_Beck]

That's one for the next season.
I'd love to see that implemented, even if I'm rebuilding and have a nice pick in the Lakers one, that avoids tanking. I'm not saying those teams are tanking but all 5 bottom teams have their 1sts. That's no coincidence IMO. I'm included, and while I'm not tanking, I'd have acquired talent and not traded out of talent if we had the new system up. It benefits those teams who bottom out and that incentives tanking.

How to do it?
I have no idea. But we can sort of figure this out together maybe?

One thing we can do is to distribute odds from 1 to 1000 and give like numbers 1 to 141 to team A, 142 to whatever for team B and it follows. Then admins can run a random generator number and find the top 3 picks. But I don't know if that works mathematically. I don't know how NBA lottery runs, nor the odds, but I'd be up to study it and present it here so we can find a solution at a random number generator.

[andrei]

Good idea and whatever randomisation is required can be easily done in excel

[Flaming Homer]

I like the idea!
In the CSL I didn't have the feeling it is too bad even being in the thick of it but the last two years NBA show the flaws of the system.
Didn't read in detail what they change but I think its an adjustment of the odds for the top picks. Not sure if that is enough but the idea of the draft is helping bottom teams to get better,
Before the change I read an article somewhere and the guy had an interesting idea.
Why not help the teams who are closest to the playoffs the most?
The playoff teams would like now, pick in reverse order.
The non playoff teams would select best non playoff team first and so on. With that all teams should have an incentive to shoot for the playoffs. If you all the way down in the standings you have to make little steps first to get better and hopefully get further rewarded when you are in touch with the playoffs.

That sounded good in my first read but probably has some cons too.

[Dennis]

Could be possible for next season

[Myles]

So the way the NBA Lottery works is they have 14 ping pong balls, and they pull 4 of them out, one at a time. There are 1,001 combinations of 4 out of 14 balls (1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 5, 1 2 3 6, etc) and they give the first 250 of them to the team with the worst record, the next 199 combinations to the 2nd worst team, and so on. If we wanted to be truly accurate, we would need to create a spreadsheet with all the combinations.

However, I don’t know what the mathematical difference is between that method and just using a RNG to pick numbers between 1-1000. It’s the same probability either way, I don’t know if there’s a mathematical reason why the ping pong balls method might be more accurate. To me it just sounds like it’s more physically realistic than putting 1000 ping pong balls into a machine, and a RNG would create tampering questions.

[Marcos_Beck]

I like the idea!
In the CSL I didn't have the feeling it is too bad even being in the thick of it but the last two years NBA show the flaws of the system.
Didn't read in detail what they change but I think its an adjustment of the odds for the top picks. Not sure if that is enough but the idea of the draft is helping bottom teams to get better,
Before the change I read an article somewhere and the guy had an interesting idea.
Why not help the teams who are closest to the playoffs the most?
The playoff teams would like now, pick in reverse order.
The non playoff teams would select best non playoff team first and so on. With that all teams should have an incentive to shoot for the playoffs. If you all the way down in the standings you have to make little steps first to get better and hopefully get further rewarded when you are in touch with the playoffs.

That sounded good in my first read but probably has some cons too.

This is complicated IMO. A team like Milwaukee will have to jeopardise flexibility in order to improve for a top pick. And then you get a top pick and have pretty much nothing else, overpays for multiple old guys in order to have a better team.
There's a reason SOME (not all) teams are that low into the stands. Maybe a team is that bad they can't win games (Milwaukee has guaranteed 25% odds for #1 and they still can't beat anyone), it's impossible for them to improve. I like the new system a lot and should benefit teams that doesn't want to tank for best odds while not hurting those who just dont have the talent to win.

[KW]

I like the idea!
In the CSL I didn't have the feeling it is too bad even being in the thick of it but the last two years NBA show the flaws of the system.
Didn't read in detail what they change but I think its an adjustment of the odds for the top picks. Not sure if that is enough but the idea of the draft is helping bottom teams to get better,
Before the change I read an article somewhere and the guy had an interesting idea.
Why not help the teams who are closest to the playoffs the most?
The playoff teams would like now, pick in reverse order.
The non playoff teams would select best non playoff team first and so on. With that all teams should have an incentive to shoot for the playoffs. If you all the way down in the standings you have to make little steps first to get better and hopefully get further rewarded when you are in touch with the playoffs.

That sounded good in my first read but probably has some cons too.

nah. completely defeats the purpose of the draft- the teams that are devoid of talent need star talent, the teams in the middle need good supporting pieces, the top teams need depth. The idea you proposed will make solid teams capable of making the playoffs tank for a late lottery pick to get that extra piece. That's not a good system at all. That just ensures a team like Milwaukee stays where they are forever.

I don't think the current system is broken. The new system just means more non-playoff teams will suck and not go all out for every W, but not hardcore tank. I'm fine with either one.

[mgtr81]

The system we had in the GAH, in case you're interested ...

For 11 non-playoff teams (27-team league) we created a text file, including 66 lines with teams names. 11 of those were for the team with the worst record, 10 for the second worst record, 9 for the third worst record and so on. They were randomly ordered. In other words, I placed the 66 lines in any order. The file was then compressed, password protected and uploaded to the forum. All GM's had the chance to download the file, but could not open it since they didn't know the password. Then, one GM was chosen every season to provide a number sequence. He posted that sequence in the forum, with numbers from 1 to 66 in any order he wanted. Once he did that, I released the password for the file and that way we got the draft order.

Let's say he posted the sequence 9, 28, 45, 61, 10 ... Then the team in the 9th line in the file would get the first overall pick. The team in the 28th line the second pick, unless it was the same team, then it would be line 45 and so on.

[Myles]

So the odds were as follows:

Worst team: 16.6%
2nd worst: 15.2%
3rd: 13.6%
4th: 12.1%
5th: 10.6%
6th: 9.1%
7th: 7.6%
8th: 6.1%
9th: 4.5%
10th: 3%
11th: 1.5%

[andrei]

Awesome system Manu. Simplicity and brilliance at it's finest

[KW]

The system we had in the GAH, in case you're interested ...

For 11 non-playoff teams (27-team league) we created a text file, including 66 lines with teams names. 11 of those were for the team with the worst record, 10 for the second worst record, 9 for the third worst record and so on. They were randomly ordered. In other words, I placed the 66 lines in any order. The file was then compressed, password protected and uploaded to the forum. All GM's had the chance to download the file, but could not open it since they didn't know the password. Then, one GM was chosen every season to provide a number sequence. He posted that sequence in the forum, with numbers from 1 to 66 in any order he wanted. Once he did that, I released the password for the file and that way we got the draft order.

Let's say he posted the sequence 9, 28, 45, 61, 10 ... Then the team in the 9th line in the file would get the first overall pick. The team in the 28th line the second pick, unless it was the same team, then it would be line 45 and so on.

That's an interesting thought- If we expanded that to 14 teams like we have here, we get 105 lines, with the worst team getting 14 lines and the least worst getting 1-

Worst team: 13.33%
2nd worst: 12.38%
3rd: 11.42%
4th: 10.48%
5th: 9.52%
6th: 8.57%
7th: 7.62%
8th: 6.67%
9th: 5.71%
10th: 4.76%
11th: 3.81%
12th: 2.86%
13th: 1.90%
14th: 0.95%

That is probably too flat for my liking. I just did a couple of test runs with a random number generator that picked three numbers between 1 and 105 (those three teams would jump), and the 12th, 8th, and 7th seeds jumped into the top 3 on my first try, and 4th, 13th, and 8th jumped in my second run. That's disproportionately good for the mid-lottery teams.