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Are you going to go that same route this week, Fall
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Or what are you going to be teaching the people this week? I am. I'm just going to be mad as normal
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All my big pictures are negative. It's always me complaining about something
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I'm Mr. Complainer. I'm going to be very blunt. There are a lot of things in sports that I don't like, that don't make a lot of sense
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whether it's rules or structure. But there are a few things as dumb as draft pick lotteries in sports
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Draft pick lotteries are absolutely like bottom of. the barrel on the logic scale
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Let's start with what draft pick lotteries are supposed to do. What is their intent
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In all of you watching and following along the home, we're going to be like, oh, they're supposed to prevent tanking
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We don't want teams to just tanking get number one pick. It's really the only objective because there's not any other logical objectives
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but they don't do that at all. They don't do their only objective
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The team that first went to the lottery, or I'm sorry, the league that first went to the lottery
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the NBA, I believe in 1984. this is quite a long time ago because they were worried about the epidemic about tanking
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and they saw teams tank and get a number one pick and then go on to win a title. I think Houston did that, actually
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But it hasn't worked. The NBA has more tanking than any other league ever, and they've had the lottery the longest
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and they were the first to institute this. Famously, Sam Hinky led the tankathon for the Philadelphia 70 Sixers
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where they were fielding a G roster for several years in a row It was so bad he had to be a martyr for tanking The NBA forced him out of his job because of the black mark
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the black eye that the league felt that it was giving them. They've had a lottery forever
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That didn't deter him. And they've tweaked their lottery system a million times
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especially in light of the Sixers. Now the odds for the top three teams are the same
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It hasn't done anything. because at the end of the day, higher picks are still better
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And even if you're not guaranteed the number one pick, you still want to be bad to get better
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picks if you are nowhere near being a contender. Not to mention, there's just going to be naturally bad teams that aren't run well, teams that
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fell on hard times, teams that went all in for a title and whether they failed or not
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whether you're the Lakers or whether you're the clippers, whether it worked or didn't work, you're going to eventually have cap space hell and you're going to have to broom assets and you're
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not going to be very good. I don't think the Lakers are going to be very good anytime soon. I don't think there's many people that argue with that after LeBron James has done
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But it doesn't work to prevent taking, not in any sport. So if it doesn't do its primary objective, it already makes no sense at all because it doesn't
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serve as a deterrent. The problem is it's actually a punishment. You are punishing teams for
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being bad. Look at the pistons. And the reason I bring this up, the reason this topic matters right now
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and it's going to get a lot of people, especially in Detroit, to watch, is because the Pistons just inexplicably dropped a five for no reason at all They not a very good team One of the worst teams in the NBA Last year they had the number one pick That how bad they were And they didn really improve all that much this season
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And they fall completely out of the top three. They thought there was a chance they'd get the number one pick
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They'd get a Pablo Banchero or a Chet Holmgren. But no, they're all the way at five
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They're praying Jaden Ivy Falls. Or maybe they're going to get Keegan Murray from Iowa
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It doesn't make any sense because all you're doing is you're saying
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okay, we recognize that you're a really bad team, but if you get unlucky, we're not going to give you
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the tools that you need to actually rebuild this thing and become a good team. And you look at
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it's not like you can't get value anywhere else. We talked about Golden State earlier on this cast
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Look at where their great players have came from, where they were picked, seven, 12 in the second round
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with Draymond Green. I want to say around 20, 21 with Jordan Poole, right? Like, maybe even these are
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not high draft picks. There's a lot of ways to build a team. It's not
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going to deter tanking. You're punishing teams that actively are really bad. And you're also
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introducing randomness into the sport. And randomness is never good. And you can never eliminate
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randomness. There's always going to be bad bounces, bad officiating. You're always going to get
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lucky or unlucky in the draft. Introducing more randomness in sports that have so much luck factor
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already that doesn't give us a better product. That doesn't enhance watchability. Look at the spurs
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Look at how they got Tim Duncan. The Spurs had injury issues for a single season
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They weren even the worst team in the league I think they had the third or fourth worst record in the NBA They luck into the number one pick and then they get Tim Duncan And then the stores have a spurs have a mini dynasty They were rewarded for getting injured at the right time And then on top of that
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they lucked into the number one pick and were able to get Tim Duncan. How did your lottery system
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help anybody there? What did this do for us? It just doesn't make sense. And I don't like things
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that don't make sense. This is the big picture. We're all about logic. We're all about reasoning
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We're all about doing things the best that we can. There is no perfect system
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And yes, it's a little bit annoying when you watch the Sixers, not even fill seats, not do anything
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not even attempt to field the roster. And they get a bunch of number one picks. But what did the Sixers do with it
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They completely blew it anyway. Who cares, man? I mean, it's, yeah, yeah
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they've been a contender for several years. How has that gone for them? They've had to watch cancers, right
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They had to watch Ben Simmons, who they got number one overall. Look at how that went for them. They ran him out of, they traded him away so that they could get fat washed James Hardin
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How's that gone for them? Watching Hardin take zero shots in the second half of a do-or-die playoff game to go home
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You're never going to stop tinking. It doesn't fix anything. Get rid of lotteries
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They don't make sense. Stop punishing bad teams when it's not doing any good for the league
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You know what you're the other one
