Al is a 4 forced to play like a 5. Okafor is actually a 5. Size difference matters. Bigger, longer... though probably in the Boogie mold, where his standing reach isn't SO big, that it shields him from all shotblockers. I'm actually a little worried about his free throw shooting, but I think he can push it into the 60's with basic practice.
The Official 2015 NBA Draft Talk Thread
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Al is a 4 forced to play like a 5. Okafor is actually a 5. Size difference matters. Bigger, longer... though probably in the Boogie mold, where his standing reach isn't SO big, that it shields him from all shotblockers. I'm actually a little worried about his free throw shooting, but I think he can push it into the 60's with basic practice.
Silver won't let you and LA suffer much longer. He got yall, don't worry.
OK cool, Silver's got your back regardlessWell they do have the 2nd worst record.
You right ...Don't jinx us breh.
Here's how reform would have affected NBA lottery teams
Because they finished with the NBA's worst record at 16-66, the Minnesota Timberwolves enter Tuesday's NBA draft lottery with a 1-in-4 chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick. But that wouldn't be the case if commissioner Adam Silver had his way.
Silver backed a proposal to tweak the lottery process that was voted down by the league's Board of Governors in October. Under that proposal, the teams with the four worst records would all have an identical 12 percent chance of landing the top pick. While lottery reform failed to pass the first time around, with so much attention around the idea of tanking, changes are possible, even probable, at some point in the near future.
Let's take a look at how tweaking the lottery process might affect how talent is distributed, using the past performance of draft picks.
Valuing lottery picks
The first step in understanding possible lottery reform is knowing how to value each pick. Based on the last 15 drafts, here's the expected wins above replacement player (WARP), by my system, for each of the 14 lottery picks over the first four seasons that make up the rookie contract for first-round picks:
To state the obvious, talent in the draft is top-heavy. The drop-off in WARP between the typical first and second picks (20.2 to 16.6) is larger than the difference between the seventh pick (10.2) and the 14th pick (6.7). And those figures actually understate the value of landing a superstar because they don't consider the potential to sign those players to a favorable extension and derive value beyond the rookie contract. That's why the lottery structure is so important, and why there has been incentive for teams to tank their way to a better chance at one of the top picks.
Lottery redistributes value
By creating randomness in which pick non-playoff teams get, the lottery redistributes the value of each pick and decreases the drop-off between teams. To quantify this, we can multiply the value of each pick by the chances of landing that pick by where a team enters the lottery. Here's how that looks for the current lottery system.
Because the worst record doesn't guarantee the top pick, the difference between the worst record and the second-worst in terms of expected WARP is not nearly as large as the drop between the first and second pick. In fact, there's less than one win difference on average between these two slots: 15.9 WARP for the team with the worst record and 15.3 for the second-worst. So much for the handwringing over the New York Knicks slipping from first to second entering the lottery by winning two games late in the regular season.
The biggest drop from one lottery slot to the next doesn't actually occur until a team moves from sixth (12.0) to seventh (11.0). One game separated the Sacramento Kings, who enter tonight sixth, from the Denver Nuggets in seventh.
Failed proposal
Now let's take a look at how the lottery would distribute value if the proposal floated by the NBA had passed in October. Grantland's Zach Lowe tracked down the memo outlining the basics of how the new proposal works. Zach Bradshaw from ESPN Stats & Info flushed out the odds of each team landing each pick under the proposed system. Using those percentages, here's how the value to a team in each spot would compare to the current system.
Essentially, the proposal would take an average of three wins over the life of a player's rookie contract from the team with the NBA's worst record -- slightly less from the teams that enter the lottery in second through fourth -- and redistribute them, primarily to teams that start the lottery sixth through 10th. Intriguingly, the system is about equal for the team that enters the lottery fifth, and it does little to help those from 11th through 14th.
All of that is by design. The league would like to reduce the emphasis on finishing with the very worst record -- which would have helped the Knicks this season -- but doesn't want to make a shot at the lottery more desirable than a playoff berth for teams on the borderline.
At the same time, the NBA's proposal was incredibly punitive to the league's weakest teams. Remarkably, the proposal is actually worse for them than an unweighted lottery for the top three picks would be:
The key takeaway here is that reducing the odds of winning the No. 1 pick is less harmful to the league's worst teams than drawing the first six picks by lottery rather than just the first three. Even though the league's worst team would have just a 7.3 percent chance of winning the lottery under an unweighted setup, as compared to 12 percent under the NBA's proposed reform, the unweighted lottery is still better because the worst team would drop no further than fourth. In the league's proposal, the most likely single outcome for the team with the worst record is the seventh pick.
The future of lottery reform
When a head coach -- in this case, New York's Derek Fisher -- is forced to publicly address fans' unhappiness about their team winning games late in the season, it's time to do something more than the current lottery to mitigate tanking. Since more extreme proposals -- such as abolishing the draft (as my Insider colleague Amin Elhassan favors) or tying each team's pick to another team's record (FiveThirtyEight's choice among reader proposals) -- aren't realistic, the best solution is probably tweaking the lottery odds.
Alas, the NBA's proposed solution proved to be too much too soon for teams that were wary of the unintended consequences. In particular, drawing the first six picks by lottery appears too harsh an adjustment to the system. A slightly smaller change might be able to secure the necessary votes, meaning this could be the last lottery under the current setup.
Lakers will move up to 2 or 3
My sources just told me who's close to the lottery picks
My sources just told me who's close to the lottery picks
Pause.
just don't lose the pick 
Knicks about to get fukked
Breh, I wouldn't even watch the playoffs after that unless there's like a game 7 FinalsHinkie in the cut, that's a scary sight
