An aggressive tanking proposal: The Poisoned Pick
I’ve proposed a lot of anti-tanking measures over the years. There was the ill-conceived attendance-weighted lottery of ’08. I quickly moved on to a tiered system later on before settling on a conference-split lottery last season. The ironic thing is that I have no moral objection to tanking. It remains a perfectly viable team-building strategy, probably the clearest path a small-market team has from the lottery to contention.
But coming up with bizarre rule changes that may or may not solve anything other than making the league more fun is sort of my job. And really, as much as this idea might actually force teams to think twice about tanking, it would just make the lottery way more fun. So, what is this magical fun idea? I call it the poisoned pick.
Essentially, the way it would work is this. Before the typical NBA Draft lottery, a separate lottery would be held. That lottery would involve only the seven teams with the worst records. The worst team would have a 30 percent chance of winning, followed by odds of 22.5 percent, 17.5 percent, 15 percent, 10 percent, 4 percent and 1 percent.
This lottery is held behind closed doors and is not aired. The winner’s logo is stored in an envelope and held until the end of the actual lottery. Immediately following the announcement of the lottery’s winner, the commissioner announces the winner of the second lottery. The logo is pulled out of the envelope. The team he announces has just won the poisoned pick. Now, what does that mean?
This is where things get funky. By winning the poisoned pick, the team in question is forced to alter the contract of their leading scorer. That alteration gives the player the choice to void one year off of his current contract. And the kicker? If that player only has one year left on his contract, regardless of whether or not he was on a rookie contract, that player has the choice of becoming an unrestricted free agent.
So, why are we doing this? Several reasons. Easily the coolest is the amount of drama it adds to the lottery. Imagine every team in the league waiting with baited breath to find out if the poisoned pick would make some star player an unexpected free agent, and more importantly, imagine the look on Dan Gilbert’s face (because you know this would happen to Cleveland) when he realizes his mismanagement of the team just cost his team Kyrie Irving.
Now, granted, it’s rarely going to create a superstar free agent. Most teams with superstars aren’t going to land in the top seven of the draft lottery. Those are the sorts of teams that are likely to have a leading scorer on a team-friendly rookie contract. That makes the penalty far more likely to be punitive financially rather than talent wise. It would simply mean you have to pay your young star a year earlier. However, if you draft a young stud and can’t get out of the bottom seven by his third year in the league, then maybe it’s best for everyone that you have a chance to lose him.
In fact, that’s part of the appeal of this plan. Early in a team’s rebuilding plan, they aren’t likely to have anyone worth losing a year of team control on. They can safely play for a high draft pick without having much to worry about. However, once a team enters their second, third, and fourth year of rebuilding, they likely have more high draft picks on the team they’d be scared of losing team control over.
In that sense, it allows bad teams to get the young studs they need but incentivizes them to rebuild quickly. After all, the longer you’re bad, the more chances you give yourself to end up with the poisoned pick. That incentive can be as small as saving a few million dollars or as large as preventing your No. 1 overall pick of a few years ago from reaching unrestricted free agency after only three years. If you don’t want to risk losing that kind of player so early in his career then don’t be in the bottom seven three years into his career.
Of course, if you want to remain in the bottom seven, that’s your prerogative. That’s my favorite part of the poisoned pick. Most anti-tanking measures simply remove the benefit of tanking. With this plan, the benefits still exist, just with a measure of risk. It forces teams to weigh that risk and make decisions accordingly. If you want to tank for several years in order to stockpile high picks, that’s your choice, just be aware that it may cost you. If you’re afraid of the poisoned pick, then you can change the way you build your team in order to keep yourself from getting it. It adds a layer of strategy to team building that didn’t previously exist. Some teams would manage it well, others would trade their picks for Gerald Wallace because they’re the Nets and it’s just the sort of thing they do.
It’s not a perfect system. Ideally, I’d like to change “leading scorer” to “best player,” but this method would be impossible without an objective and quantifiable way of determining which player is affected. The weighting system is also purely subjective and would ideally use a stronger algorithm to determine odds. Finally, it affects each team differently and may not serve as much of a deterrent to some.
But the system doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s designed to speed up their rebuilding timetables and force teams to reconsider tanking while also adding an extra bit of intrigue to the lottery itself. If nothing else, it makes the entire tanking conversation far more interesting.