10 Feet High

With the NBA Draft Lottery set for Tuesday, I thought we should take a closer look at the major issues surrounding it and propose my solution to fix a system that is obviously broken.

Every year teams with no chance of making the playoffs start tanking with 15-20 games left.

Citing injuries that are invisible to the naked eye, they pull their best players out of the line-up (see Michael Redd and the Milwaukee Bucks), and appear to do everything possible not to win. They might not exactly be fixing games, but watch a Raptors-Wizards game in April and you’ll see what I mean. Undrafted guys from the D-League are all of a sudden starting in the NBA. “Ladies and gentlemen, now your starting line-ups for your Washington Wizards, from Fresno State University, No. 5, Dominic McGuiiirrrreeee!!!” And the worst part of this behavior is that the NBA’s weighted lottery system makes these teams’ actions not only rational but also wise.

Accordingly, the answer is an un-weighted lottery with the first five picks available to all non-playoff teams.

The first obvious question is why there is a need for a lottery in the first place. In every other American professional sports league (not counting the NHL), the worst team automatically gets the No. 1 pick.

The NBA doesn’t do this due to the nature of basketball. Because a basketball team only has five players on the floor at once, the impact of one player is greater, and one superstar can single-handedly alter the fate of a franchise. By contrast, no matter how great a quarterback is, a team cannot win without a solid offensive line. Put Peyton Manning or Tom Brady on the Raiders and they aren’t even close to the caliber of players they are right now. Quarterbacks must be protected to be successful. Similarly, in baseball, Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez might hit you 50 home runs, but their teams still need decent pitching to win. And a great pitcher cannot carry a franchise because he only takes the mound every fifth game. Just ask Tim Lincecum or Cliff Lee about that.

But in the NBA, if you add LeBron James to any roster on the Eastern Conference, you can pencil that team into the playoffs every season. A look of the No. 1 overall picks since 2002 in each league demonstrates the greater significance of the top pick in the NBA:

NBA – Yao Ming (Houston Rockets), LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers), Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic), Andrew Bogut (Milwaukee Bucks), Andrea Bargnani (Toronto Raptors), Greg Oden (Portland Trail Blazers), Derrick Rose (Chicago Bulls).
NFL – David Carr (Houston Texans), Carson Palmer (Cincinnati Bengals), Eli Manning (New York Giants), Alex Smith (San Francisco 49ers), Mario Williams (Houston Texans), JaMarcus Russell (Oakland Raiders), Jake Long (Miami Dolphins).
MLB – Bryan Bullington (Pittsburgh Pirates), Delmon Young (Tampa Bay Rays), Matt Bush (San Diego Padres), Justin Upton (Arizona D-Backs), Luke Hochevar (Kansas City Royals), David Price (Tampa Rays), Timothy Beckham (Tampa Rays).

Before proposing a new scheme, it is important to look at the history of the lottery to help determine exactly what the NBA’s interests are in having it. Originally, the No. 1 pick used to be a coin flip between the last-place team in each conference. But after accusations that the Rockets tanked to get Hakeem “the Dream” Olajuwon first overall in 1984, the NBA created the draft lottery.

More controversy struck a year later when the New York Knicks won the lottery and drafted future Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing. That led to vigorous debate over whether the league rigged the lottery to send Ewing to New York. Additionally, many wondered about the fairness of the system when the league’s worst team, the Golden State Warriors, drew the seventh (and final) lottery slot.

As a result, in 1987, the NBA adjusted the process by having the lottery determine just the top three draft slots. This decreased the incentive to tank, and with the remaining non-playoff teams selecting in order of their finish, the team with the worst record was guaranteed to pick at least fourth.

In 1990, the NBA changed the format of the lottery again. This time it introduced a weighted system to give the worst team the best chance at the top pick. There were 11 non-playoff teams that season, so the team with the worst record had 11 chances and so on down the line. Starting in 1994, the chances were weighted even more in favor of the teams with the worst records. As these changes have been made, the heavy weighting has once again provided huge incentives for non-contending teams to tank in hope of the worst record.

A professional sports league’s first interest in any draft system is competitive balance. The need for it is more than just common sense, as it maintains legal relevance as well. Because a draft is by its very nature anti-competitive (think about it, a player loses all bargaining leverage by having a single team acquire his rights), such a system would be a violation of the anti-trust laws.

The courts have concluded that the unique nature of sports makes a draft pro-competitive because it promotes on-field competitive balance among the teams. Without a draft, the smaller market teams would be unable to survive. Any new draft lottery system would need to maintain this competitive balance.

However, as the NBA explicitly acknowledged following the Olajuwon incident, it’s imperative for the league to have a serious interest in maintaining the integrity of the game by eliminating the desirability of tanking. As the 2007 season demonstrated, when a true franchise player is believed to be available in the draft, the current lottery system fails to discourage teams from tanking. Why? Because the last place team still gets the most lottery balls - even though they may not get that No. 1 pick (whether they might waste it on Greg Oden is irrelevant at the time).
This past season, Gilbert Arenas suggested that it was in his team’s best interest for him to remain sidelined to allow the struggling Wizards to finish last with the hope of getting the first pick this summer.

In devising a new system, the NBA must also remember to consider the interests of its most important constituents. And who can be more important than the fans? A real fan should never have to root against his team. But let’s face it, this has become a common way of life for the followers of the NBA’s bottom feeders. After the All-Star break many fans begin to realize their team has no shot at making the playoffs, and go from losing sleep over losses to actually celebrating their team’s demise. Fans realize that the worse their team performs, the better player it will likely get in the draft. During 2007, I couldn’t bear to watch Sonic games because rooting against them made me sick.

In addition to these people, let’s not forget about the fate of fantasy basketball owners, which maintains monumental importance, at least for me. Perennially injured stars like Gilbert or Redd playing half a season ruins millions of fantasy squads every season. It’s beyond awful when your top point guard changes from “Hibachi” to Beno Udrih halfway through the season. It has gotten to the point where during a fantasy draft, I actually have to balance the risk of picking a player on a great team (who might sit out the last week of the season to rest for the playoffs), with the risk of picking a player on a lousy team, who might not play beyond February with some sort of swine-like ailment.

Don’t believe in tanking? Think I am being over-dramatic? Just take a peek at the 05-06 season. Consider a March box score from the Minnesota T-Wolves. They had Kevin Garnett, but their four other starters were Trenton Hassell, Mark Blount, Ricky Davis and Marcus Banks!

But don’t worry, Justin Reed – a former 2nd Round pick no longer in the league, came off the bench to score 14 points in 28 minutes. No, you did not misread that. Justin Reed did play 28 minutes in an NBA game. In case you’re wondering, Minnesota finished the year with the third worst record in the Western Conference and was “awarded” the sixth pick. The Wolves took All-Star Brandon Roy and traded him to Portland.

When the Oden/Durant sweepstakes took the NBA by storm during the 06-07 campaign, several teams notoriously tanked to try and get one of the top two picks. Memphis had the worst record and shut down Mike Miller. And the Bucks prematurely ended the seasons of Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva, while benching Michael Redd in the fourth quarter of a game in which he had 34 points after three.

The Celtics were most guilty, though, having finished with the second worst record in the league, at 24-58, losing eight of its last ten games, and sitting out Paul Pierce and his bum elbow. During a home loss late in the season, head coach Doc Rivers left his starters on the bench for much of the second half while his reserves blew an 18- point lead to an abysmal Charlotte team which won just 28 games all season. Ironically, the C’s didn’t get either Oden or Durant, but things obviously worked out nicely for them.

The NBA must also consider the television networks’ interest. For local TV, it becomes pretty bad when Walter Herrmann is your starting three man, which was the case for Charlotte two years ago. Tanking is less of an issue for national TV because networks avoid scheduling bad teams in the first place. An exception would be this year’s Wizards, who were booked for national appearances but back-doored into tanking with the legitimate injuries of Gilbert and Brendan Haywood. However, a less obvious point is that the desire for competitive balance (in the sense of the worse team getting the best collegiate player) is not necessarily in the network’s best interest.
On the contrary, it can actually become good for national TV when a team that is close to making the playoffs improves and becomes good through the draft. For example, in the modern draft era, only two teams have really beaten the odds to get the No. 1 pick: Orlando with Penny (traded Webber) and Derrick Rose in Chicago. Do you really think the NBA is upset about that first-round series against the Celtics? Me neither. Such a series is clearly good for both the league and the game.

The last group to consider is the team owners. An owner of a small market team has a huge interest in ensuring that the worst teams have a shot at the best players because it is the only way that such a team will ever truly land a marquee talent. Lets face it, LeBron is not taking Herb Kohl’s phone call in 2010, and the same goes for Sacramento, Minnesota, Charlotte and Memphis. In truth, the only chance small market teams like the Bobcats have of landing an Amare Stoudemire type talent is by winning the lottery, which makes it the draft extremely important.

With all of the above considerations in mind, it becomes blatantly obvious that there is no perfect solution. However, the current system has failed in meeting both of the NBA’s two key concerns. As shown in the 2007 Tankapalooza and through Gilbert’s comments this season, the incentive to “cheat” is too great when a true franchise player is in the upcoming draft. Additionally, the current system has failed to offer any real measure of competitive balance. The same teams continually find themselves drafting in the top ten.

Since 2004, the Bucks, Wolves, Sonics (Thunder) and Grizzlies have all drafted in the top 10 three times. The Bulls have done so four times, and the Bobcats have done so every year. Clearly, in the case of the Bulls we see a team beginning to improve.

The Thunder have a ton of young talent but are several years away, while the Bucks, Wolves and Grizzlies are light-years away, and who knows when the Bobcats will start winning.

Thus, I am proposing a non-weighted lottery for all non-playoff teams for the first five picks in the draft. This eliminates the tanking problem because no team is going to throw a game to ensure itself the sixth pick (which is the lowest pick that the team with the worst record will end up with). And I do not foresee teams purposely avoiding the playoffs to ensure themselves a one in fourteen chance at the number one selection. Obtaining playoff experience, revenues, national exposure, etc are too great, even for a team with no real chance of getting out of the first round.

The current system is supposed to reward the worst teams by creating parity in the long run – but how are you providing that parity? By allowing bad teams to essentially throw games at the end of the season, the integrity of the game is completely lost. This fails to even mention the juiced up ticket prices.

My proposal would greatly help small market owners and their teams compete with larger franchises, improve local television ratings, and not force disgruntled fans to root against their beloved teams after the All-Star break. And of course, the lives of fantasy owners would be made much easier when deciding between what should be a no-brainer pick - Monta Ellis or Randy Foye.

Basketball purists or not, we cannot allow teams to fill rosters with D-League players in hope of getting the top pick every June. As a whole, an un-weighted lottery would help create balance in the association and redistribute the power of major market teams across the rest of the NBA. The best part about sports is having competitive balance and ensuring that all the franchises have an opportunity to compete for a championship. Let’s get back to that.