Get on the phone tonight, Mills! You might be able to deal THJ!

Of course, we know that instead, Mills is all, “See? I was right to sign him!”

You could also move towards the wheel idea Zach Lowe has floated which completely divorces draft picks from your record in every way. Or my preferred solution where every eligible player is just a free agent instead of having a draft at all. But all of those solutions involve to varying extents getting rid of the idea of the draft as an engine of parity. The fundamental challenge is if you care about the worst teams getting the best young players there’s no way to do that without incentivizing losing.

How dumb was the system where teams had to fit their draft picks into their cap space, so that capped out teams would have to cut guys to sign their draft pick?

2. I actually do think this would keep in place some of the redistributional aspects provided by the current system. While Zion might love to play for the Warriors he’s yet to make a single $ from basketball (just kidding – I’m sure Coach K gave him a little taste). Rebuilding teams would naturally have both the most cap space available and be most interested in spending that space on young guys who aren’t going to contribute immediately. Teams trying to compete would rather spend their limited cash on vets (to prevent dumb teams from perennially self-sabotaging maybe every team gets an annual rookie exception $ amount that doesn’t count against the cap so every team would have incentive to spend at least say $3M annually on incoming rookies).

3. The system would be much fairer to young players then the current system which gives them effectively zero self determination for a loooooong stretch when they enter the league. If guys want to sacrifice money to play for a winner from a young age, let them. If they want to live in NY or South Beach, let them.

The problem with this kind of solution is it disregards the competing goal of having the worst teams generally get the best players in the draft. Your system would generally be a reverse of the current system with the strongest non-playoff teams largely getting the highest picks, but with a huge dash of randomness peppered in since teams eliminated near the end would have some wildly skewed records (e.g. if you’re eliminated with 1 game remaining then you either pick first or last depending on the results of that one game – not sure if you see this as a feature or a bug of the system).

However, if you don’t care at all about that redistributional goal – and we can debate whether it’s important or not (I’d say yes, not because it encourages parity as much as because it gives very concrete reasons for fans of bad teams to stay emotionally involved) – you don’t need to dream up some complicated scheme. It’s trivial to come up with solutions that eliminate the incentive to lose – just go to a fully flat lottery where every non-playoff team has the same odds to pick in every spot in the the top-14. Arguably this still gives some incentive to lose to teams right on the playoff bubble – would you rather be the 8th seed and get stomped by GS or be just outside with a ~7% chance at Zion and a ~20% chance to pick in the top 3? – but that’s also the case in your system.

You could also move towards the wheel idea Zach Lowe has floated which completely divorces draft picks from your record in every way. Or my preferred solution where every eligible player is just a free agent instead of having a draft at all. But all of those solutions involve to varying extents getting rid of the idea of the draft as an engine of parity. The fundamental challenge is if you care about the worst teams getting the best young players there’s no way to do that without incentivizing losing.

1. There is still a weighted lottery.
2. The weighted lottery determines all picks from 1 – 14 (not just the top 4).
3. The number of ping pong balls is determined by winning percentage after the team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. Highest winning percentage gets the most ping pong balls.
4. If a team is eliminated at Game 82 (so there is no value for winning percentage after elimination), that team is automatically given the 8th most pingpong balls.

How it would work:

If Team X were eliminated after Game 75, Team X’s winning percentage in Games 76 – 82 would determine its placement in the lottery standings.

If Team Y were eliminated after Game 78, Team Y’s winning percentage in Games 79 – 82 would determine its placement in the lottery standings.

There would be no advantage to getting eliminated early, because that would only increase the sample size of the “lottery season” where the eliminated team would be competing to get the most possible lottery ping pong balls.

And then I have this clear vision in my head of Adam Silver announcing: “And the 1st pick in the 2019 NBA draft goes to……the Cleveland Cavaliers.”

Davis and Durant might be the only reason to give up Zion. One of the two and you’re asking to basically be what New Orleans is right now. And that ain’t good.

Davis is young enough that (if locked up long term) i would rather have him than Zion.

Zion looks really good, but what if he becomes just a Blake Griffin?