When was the last time the 1st and 2nd worst teams

[Nicholasp27]

if we got rid of it, i'd hate to hold another team's future first that is protected...if it's top-5 protected, u better believe that team will be top 5 if they can't make playoffs...top 10 protected, they'll end at #10 or better...

[emeans]

I agree with you on that Diesel. Why even have a lottery? The worse team gets the first pick works in every other sport. I think it is in most, not all however, peoples competitive spirit to try to win.

I think the lottery should be taken out of the equation. The NFL has the best organized professional sports body period. Baseball has the worse!! The NBA is somewhere in between those two, but the lottery should get squashed.

Watch the Hawks get screwed this year!!!

[Weez]

perhaps to take into account the 'variability' now present in the NBA (among top picks). granted, this theory holds little water, given when the lottery was institued (different general conditions than now), but it's one thing.

-makes for media intrigue as well.

- it could prevent teams from tanking (in theory).

[Diesel]

Neither is really true...

Have you seen the draft Lottery build up? It normally happens during the playoffs at halftime of a Sunday game. If you blink you will miss it. The best part of the Lottery is seeing who the teams will send to represent them...

As far as tanking goes..

Orlando tanked last season.

Everybody with a losing record tanked the season before to get a good spot for the Lebron Sweepstakes.

It was pitiful to see SA tank when they got Duncan. I recall this most because Nique was having a good season then all the sudden they benched him to "let the rookies play".. Everybody was already injured..

The point is that teams have been tanking anyway...

Look at football. They don't have a draft lottery. However, they get by. IF Stern can use the excuse that it makes for better players to get his above 20 passed.. Then the league should also get rid of the draft lottery. The notion of a draft lottery makes one assume that there is a dip in talent level of the first few picks. I think that is no longer true.

[Nicholasp27]

if the lotto is gone by then, then i will openly support the tanking of the hawks the year oj mayo is coming out...

[Diesel]

I would actually support the getting rid of the Lottery this summer... with the new CBA...

It's not because the Hawks are in the lottery.. I've been saying this for years.

I also support paying College players a stipend from the NBA players league, but that's another post.

[chillzatl]

that reason being "to stop teams from tanking". Sure, teams might still do it. But instead of having teams racing to lose games knowing that if they get lucky and lose the most, they will get the number 1. YOu at least have the uncertainty that they might actually get stuck with the #4 instead. And let me tell you, as active participants in the lottery for a few years, I would much rather have the #1 than anything else.

Doing away with the lottery system only encourages cheap teams with bad ownership to continue being cheap and bad. They know that if they put a low cost, young, inexperienced team on the floor, they can maintain the illusion of trying while ensuring themselves the #1 pick. Which will eventually yield a superstar that may or may not enable them from having to be good, intelligent owners.

Sure teams tank, but as Boston will tell you, there is NO guarantee that you get the #1 for it.

[Diesel]

The effect has been that more truly needed teams have been penalized by the lottery than those who were tanking. Many of the tanking teams have gotten lucky in the lottery and moved up and taken the place of a team that was truly bad... Like Chicago..

Most of all, with the parity in the draft... meaning that there are no run aways in talent, I think that it could easily be a case where the lottery is no longer needed.

[Spiral]

I agree with Diesel. I'm not a fan of the lottery. I don't think it's rigged, I just think it's dumb.

[chillzatl]

More often than not, there ARE clear cut stars in the draft. At the very least there are guys that, when they do turn into stars, nobody is surprised. You have to go back to 2001 to find a draft similar to this one, with no early clear cut #1 no question star. Even if you have 3 straight years with no clear cut, without a doubt #1 star player. You will eventually get a Lebron, Duncan, etc type player and then it will be tank city for every team that knows they aren't going to make the playoffs by the all-star break.

I like knowing that it could backfire on those teams that try to tank for the #1. Heck, I remember the draft order selection from 1997. I think it was pitino who actually sat for it and I remember laughing when he looked sick when the Spurs got the #1 pick. They had made no attempt to hide their happiness at being the worst team that season and had banked on getting the #1 pick to get Duncan. It backfired and basically ruined Pitinos 2nd NBA career. That is what makes the draft lottery fun. There just aren't any guarantees that losing will pay off the way you expect it to.

[Diesel]

Lebron

Darko

Mello

Bosh

Wade.

Now, say what you want to about the ability of Lebron..

I think Wade is having a hell of a career and Bosh, Darko, Kaman, and Hinrich could all turn out to be excellent picks.

The same was true Last yr.

Howard, Okafor, Gordon, Livingston, Iguodala, Childress, Deng..

All these guys could turn out to be good. All are in the running for 1st team all Rookie.

This coming year.. you just can't call it.

I don't think that there will ever be a clear cut #1, especially if we go to an age limit..

[Lascar78]

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I don't think that there will ever be a clear cut #1, especially if we go to an age limit..

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What are you talking about? With an age limit teams will know what they're getting much more so than now. All of the players that would have made the jump will have had 2 years to show if they are ready to play with men or not. That's the main idea behind the age limit in the first place.

Of course I like the lottery alot, and it is needed. Sure, every now and then a team or two will still tank, but overall it doesn't happen nearly as much as it would. There would be 5 teams tanking every year I bet.

Also, it's a PR disaster in my eyes. Teams actually would be competing to see who could lose the most to get the top pick. That looks horrible. This way, even though some teams do it, they're not tanking to get the top pick. They're tanking to get the most ping pong balls for the lottery. And as we all know, odds are the worst team won't get the #1. So it does make a big difference.

Overall it helps the worst teams, but it doesn't guarantee to reward tanking. I think it's a good system.

I mean look at last year for us. Half of the board still wanted us to win games, which basically ended up getting us out of the top 3. Clearly, our coach also wanted us to win games. If there was no lottery, I doubt anyone here would have argued against us tanking. It would have guaranteed us getting Okafor/Howard/Livingston depending on how early we started.

[Nicholasp27]

lebron was the clear-cut best in that class, and will have the best career

there are always surprises like amare at 9, ak47 and redd in the 2nd, etc...

but that doesn't mean that at draft time there aren't duncans, etc

after all, oj mayo is coming out in a few years, and i would tank for him...

[chillzatl]

Most drafts clearly have a #1 pick laid out. It's rare that you have years like this one, where there just isn't any one stand-out talent. But in all honesty, this year is yet to be decided. Once the workouts hit, we could easily have a clear cut #1. It's just late developing right now.

As for there not being any clear cut #1's with an age limit. That just makes no sense. You look at the #1 picks over the last 10 years, most of them are college players or euro players who are already of age. An age limit would have no effect on them. Duncan would still be #1, Yao would still be #1, AI would still be #1. The big differene is that Kwame wouldn't have been a #1, which he was not anyway. Also, guys like Chandler and Curry would have had to wait, which would have been a good thing.

[Diesel]

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What are you talking about? With an age limit teams will know what they're getting much more so than now. All of the players that would have made the jump will have had 2 years to show if they are ready to play with men or not. That's the main idea behind the age limit in the first place.

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Yeah, but an age limit will also increase the talent coming out in 2 ways.

1. Those players who are getting into the league who are mere prospects NOW will be more fundamentally polished with an age limit.

2. Those players who are jumping right from HS, won't be able to jump anymore. The effect that the jump has on the draft is that it takes talent away from Future drafts.

Just think if some had not have jumped... This years class could have seen Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, and Shaun Livingston coming out with Bogut, Williams, and Paul. That would have made for a stronger draft class don't you think?

[Diesel]

Last yr there was not a clear cut #1.

Everybody thought that Okafor would be #1 up until the last moment.

What I am saying is due to the age limit, there will be even more ambiguity when trying to pick the best player.

For instance, right now, everybody awaits Ogden.. However, what would happen if Gerald Green went to college and Webster went to college and they had fantastic years... Wouldn't you think there would be some ambiguity about who should be #1.

HSers making the jump have made the draft more about potential than fundamentals AND have robbed the draft of credible talent in future years. Putting an age limit in will limit that.

[Lascar78]

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Just think if some had not have jumped... This years class could have seen Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, and Shaun Livingston coming out with Bogut, Williams, and Paul. That would have made for a stronger draft class don't you think?

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Yes it would be stronger, but we would have seen all of these guys play in the NCAA and know their relative worths, more or less. Dwight Howard and Bogut would be 1-2.

[Nicholasp27]

Quote:

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Just think if some had not have jumped... This years class could have seen Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, and Shaun Livingston coming out with Bogut, Williams, and Paul. That would have made for a stronger draft class don't you think?

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first of all, the new age limit would limit players like smoove from coming out cause he's not 20, so he'd come out next year...

second of all, last year's draft would have been weaker if there was no dwight, smoove, livingston, jefferson, telfair, jr, dorell...

that's possibly 4 of the top 10, 5 of the top 12...and livingston would be if not for injury...so 6 of the top 12 players would not have been there last year...

[Diesel]

Hate to tell you this, but had Howard, Smith, and Livingston gone to college, you would have never heard of Bogut... Or at least not as much. He'd get as much press as the guy from Gonzaga...

Bogut dominated the headlines because there was really nobody else to talk about.

[Diesel]

i THINK Howard would have been 20.

Still, you would have Deng and some of the other guys from Lebron's HS class coming out with this class.

Anyway...

the point is, once this change is made, after about 5 yrs to catch up, there will be MORE parity.