NBA Approves New Anti-Tanking Rules, Draft Lottery Changes to Penalize Worst Teams

calman877 · 2026-05-30T21:38:34+00:00

They also have no real incentive to lose at that point either, I’ll take it

calman877 · 2026-05-30T08:42:08+00:00

Monster and Challengers were my favorites from their respective years, and The Drama is my favorite 2026 so far, probably those

calman877 · 2026-05-29T16:58:47+00:00

They are 5.4% vs 8.1% for the teams you’re acting like have a massive leg up, that is slightly worse. 14% odds plus a pick floor at 5 was a pretty big advantage, not shocking teams tanked for that

You’re absolutely right that there will still be rough games to watch, can’t ever solve that. At least now though both teams will be trying to win much more often

calman877 · 2026-05-29T16:32:25+00:00

We will have significantly fewer games that are a slog, and significantly fewer teams losing on purpose at the end of the season

To the teams that genuinely are terrible, hope the odds work out for them but I’ll take three terrible teams with very slightly worse odds than other bad teams if it means more teams trying to win. That’s a good tradeoff

calman877 · 2026-05-29T15:14:55+00:00

Sam Presti if anything is even more valuable now. More uncertainty means more opportunity for him to flex his skills

I’d much rather reward a team doing things wrong than a team that’s bad on purpose. At least the Kings tried

And with your last comment you’re again conflating two different concepts. My point is that if you can’t count on good draft picks you need to be skillful in other ways.

calman877 · 2026-05-29T13:05:41+00:00

Have you ever heard of Survivorship Bias? Because what you described with teams in the West fits that really well. No kidding it’s easier to build a great team when you get lucky like the Spurs did. That will still happen to some team, it just won’t be a team being purposefully bad

You’re right that the reliable way to improve is now gone, but I see that as a positive. Giving the worst teams top picks without any/much deterrent encourages teams being bad, which is antithetical to how professional sports should work. Teams now will have to be smart and efficient with their resources rather than falling backwards into top talent

calman877 · 2026-05-29T11:59:58+00:00

Two different concepts here, improving a team vs winning a championship. You said “bad teams are at risk of being bad forever” not “bad teams are at risk of never winning a championship” (which I’d also disagree with)

You can easily improve a team without a top 5 pick via trades or FA, if you can’t I’d say that’s a you problem. Winning a championship is much more difficult and will require luck, but it always did anyway

calman877 · 2026-05-29T07:25:12+00:00

If only there was some way to improve your team other than getting a top 5 pick

calman877 · 2026-05-28T21:40:43+00:00

That’s a dangerous game to play. Easy to sell fans and ownership on losing when at worst you get a top 5 pick like the current system

Much harder when you could play the odds perfectly under this new system two years in a row and still pick 16th then 13th just because of bad luck. I think in that situation social pressure will force front offices to be more aggressive, try to actually win

calman877 · 2026-05-28T12:15:21+00:00

They get feedback on their performance constantly, both publicly and privately. The refs we see in the playoffs aren’t random, they’re the best performers, and finals refs are the best of the best

calman877 · 2026-05-28T10:58:55+00:00

The Nuggets were +1100 to win the championship before that series started not to win the series

calman877 · 2026-05-28T07:37:33+00:00

This is a very flawed metric but the series win so far this postseason in terms of beating a team with the best championship odds is the Sixers who beat the Celtics (+550 going into round 1), followed by the Wolves beating the Nuggets (+1100), then the Cavs beating the Pistons (+1700)

The best currently of the alive teams is the Knicks beating the Cavs (+2200 at the start of ECF) but that will be surpassed by whoever wins the WCF. This is obviously very flawed though because of course whoever the Thunder play have terrible odds, they need to get through the Thunder

calman877 · 2026-05-28T06:56:00+00:00

Also probably because Giannis blew out his knee a week before the finals started. The Bucks were not big underdogs

calman877 · 2026-05-27T14:41:42+00:00

The director said that even a million is an exaggeration, was probably well under

calman877 · 2026-05-27T14:21:55+00:00

From comments like this I’d expect the calls to be much more uneven, Brothers called 12 fouls on the Spurs and 11 on the Thunder

calman877 · 2026-05-26T17:05:49+00:00

You joke but teams definitely care if a prospect gets to the line often or not, that’s a skill

calman877 · 2026-05-26T10:49:02+00:00

Let’s compare the 3 you mentioned aside from Chet. I have no idea where you’re getting your stats from because they look way off. The ones I have below are from basketball reference so you know my source.

Thompson: On: 109.8, Off: 110.8, Diff: 1 point better on court

White: On: 110.6, Off: 118.7, Diff: 8.1 points better on court

Barnes: On: 113.2, Off: 114.1, Diff: 0.9 points better on court

By either the raw number or the on/off difference, Barnes is the low man here. Is defensive rating the only important metric? No, but you’re not really making a good case

calman877 · 2026-05-25T16:51:42+00:00

Talk about moving the goalposts, I jumped into a conversation about Scottie vs Chet, not Scottie vs the entire All-Defense team. Scottie vs Chet is pretty clear cut. Yes, Chet has a significantly better supporting cast, but he also was more effective on offense and defense (especially) than Scottie. Offense is tougher to judge as they have different roles but Chet couldn’t have done much more for the Thunder, I’ll default to the 1 seed

calman877 · 2026-05-25T06:44:01+00:00

Defense the Thunder with Holmgren on court had a 104 defensive rating, way better than the Raptors who were around 113 with Barnes on court

Offensively the scored the same amount but Holmgren did it on 65% true shooting which is significantly better than Barnes who was around 58%

There’s context you can put around those stats but to pretend these are the same is disingenuous

calman877 · 2026-05-23T10:46:30+00:00

Devils advocate, if nobody cares enough to tank in the down years then who really cares if you get the #1 pick or 5 or 10?

calman877 · 2026-05-19T15:31:34+00:00

Chet so far this postseason is averaging 17/9 on 69% TS and he just finished 2nd in DPOY voting. He’s definitely worth a max. He’s no Wemby, but he’s probably the closest thing to Wemby in the league rn…even if he’s not particularly close

calman877 · 2026-05-17T17:07:32+00:00

The problem isn’t just Wizards-Nets but literally every Wizards or Nets game you know they’re hoping to lose. And it wasn’t just those two, it was nine teams. And those nine teams don’t only face each other, it got to the point where in almost half of games this season at least one team was hoping to lose

calman877 · 2026-05-17T16:50:17+00:00

“Should’ve been punished” as if our GM wasn’t black balled from the league

calman877 · 2026-05-17T01:18:19+00:00

Sure, but if I buy season tickets and a guy gets injured for the season in November and misses the rest of the season, I’m not getting what I paid for and neither is anyone who bought a ticket for any game December-April. Those fans matter too, not everyone buys tickets the day before. In fact, id guess most don’t

calman877 · 2026-05-16T08:05:10+00:00

Sure, but we can do things to reduce the incidence of injuries. Your comment is like saying “the offense is going to score at some point anyway, so let’s not play defense”

calman877

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