I'm not going to give you free $ you can hedge elsewhere

or put it another way, if you're trying to lose every single game, why would you sign a guy who is 39% from three on volume? kind of a negative freeroll. certainly the kind of player who could run hot in a random game and steal one win and hurt lottery odds.

The NBA Futures idea is so much better than everything else it's crazy.

Would create tons of drama and storylines, not only greatly reduces the incentive to tank but actually frequently INCREASES the incentive for bad teams to win games (If the Bulls own the Mavs pick and the Mavs own the Bulls pick, then when they play they're both greatly incentivized to beat the other team).

Also levers up the importance of smart front offices with good analytics

I am a complete Noob Sports better. Only place I've ever made any sports bets is on two plus two or in person. Wouldn't even begin to know where to hedge that bet.

I'll take Bucks/Celts, you get Raptors/Heat

That's a fair bet. None go finals and it's a push.

I don't really bet on 2+2, but some relatively fair proposals imo would be:

1) I take Cle, you take your pick of 3 other East teams, at even money, my 1 team vs your 3

or

2) I take Cle, you take Tor, I give you 2-1, other teams are a push

Those are close enough to fair for friendly small wagers imo. But there aren't really great bets to be made for either side, it would just be for convenience, when you can lineshop and get decent bets online on your team to win the East. I'm mainly just spitballing for fun.

I would do this, never made a bet on 2+2 though. What's the usual method of payment?

PP or crypto for me

dont use venmo

All the cool kids are using venmo.

This is definitely interesting, but I don't think it reduces tanking as much as a flatter lottery would.

1) It only incentivizes you to win vs one other team whose pick you own, which is only 2-4 games/season.

2) It theoretically means you care less about tanking in a particular year, because you don't own your own pick, so you don't care about trying to lose. But that would only be true if a team only cared about that year and that year alone.

Many tanking teams are tanking for several years, until they accumulate enough assets, e.g. Philly Process. In that case, teams would still want to tank, because they would then get to choose the team for the following year where they are most likely to get the most ping-pong balls. There's still massive incentive to tank, when it can increase your odds from say 2.8% for the 8th worst team vs 25% for the worst team.

3) That 25% is the massive incentive for tanking, even under this Futures proposal. A flat proposal like the one I mentioned where the bottom 8 teams all get 10%, drastically lowers the incentive to tank, to a much greater extent.

The "downside" would be that it does not help the truly worst teams as much, but imo all 8 worst teams are bad enough that they are "worthy" of the help of a high draft pick, and there's no need to truly offer the very worst team such an incentive vs the 2nd-8th worst teams, when the cost is the massive tanking that we've been seeing.

Lottery idea

Keep the same flat odds the NBA is going to start using next year.

Divide the season in to 3. Let's say New year's, the ASB and end of season. 33% of lottery equity is determined at each of the 3 points in the season.

why can't fruit be compared

this changes everything

76ers should definitely trade for Frank at the first opportunity

this is clearly why the Knacks have signed Trey Burke for the rest of the season.

My lottery idea:

How about a post-season lottery tournament, where the lottery teams compete March Madness style, with the winner given best lottery odds, runner-up 2nd best, and so forth (or take it a step further and determine actual draft order this way)?

This would also discourage tanking, as teams would be seeded based on their season-end records, and therefore have incentive to win in order to earn the highest seed.

I'll be the first to admit that I am not the biggest fan of women but OMG Lauren Holtcamp or whatever is a ****ing terrible referee and she is super aggro too. It is kinda ureal to watch

Lauren Holtcamp is a stunning beautiful woman.

What do people think of "Players only" on TNT?

It seems pretty bad with the announcing. Someone like Brent Barry just is not qualified to do PBP. Seems awful to listen to.

Saying it's pretty bad is being generous. It's horrendous.

Not to mention it's 32-12

good thing The Challenge starts in 20 mins

Charder is lit

$100 US on PP, quote to confirm.

ya booked

The idea of the lottery (as is) is to give the worst teams in the league the best chance to draft the best new players. (Arguably it doesn't work, but that's the idea.)

Your suggestion gives the team who comes (~)17th in the league the best chance to draft the best new player and the team who comes last in the league the likelihood of drafting the 14th best new player.

But why stop there? Why not give the top pick to the team with the best record overall, the second pick to the team with the second best rec... .....

NBA lottery idea:

1. Seed non-playoff teams in order of BEST record against the other non-playoff teams. There would/could certainly be tanking against the teams certain to make the playoffs, but non-playoff teams playing against each other will try to win and not tank.

2. Tiebreaker is BEST record against playoff teams. So there could be an incentive for a non-playoff team to win late in the season against a playoff team if it appears that they would have the same record in (1) above as another non-playoff team.

Simple to understand and implement. Continues to reward bad teams with high picks, and reduces the opportunity to open tank. And non-playoff teams probably lose to playoff teams anyways, so the net effect is low.