At what point does the league recognize the current lottery system doesn't work? Gifting top picks to bottom teams has resulted in elite players wasting away on teams that, after all the hype, still remain on the bottom. The only example with marginal success is Toronto, which that took a full decade of suckage, five GMs, and dumb luck to acquire a young core of top picks that, despite all that elite talent, are barely a playoff team. The examples of lottery failure are more numerous: Buffalo, New Jersey, Arizona, and of course Edmonton.My preference is for a draft wheel where the picks are predetermined basically forever. No more tanking year after year trying to assemble a team with multiple top picks.
But it will never happen, the league want teams to get back to being good enough to be in the playoff race as fast as possible. That's why they want to reward losing teams, and because they want to avoid teams attempting to suck year after year they made the lottery to lessen that incentive while still helping the teams get better.
It seems intuitive -- good players improve bad teams, right? But the reality is that bad teams are bad not because they're missing a star player, but because they're missing the fundamentals: management, drafting and development. Until a team fixes its foundation, winning a lottery will be like giving a million dollars to an addict.
Want real parity? Forget adding bandaid players. Institute a rotational system for GMs.
As for your draft wheel idea, not sure if I love it or hate it, but props for raising a legitimate alternative.
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