I've been around the NBA SIM for quite some time now, and been involved in a ton of Progressive, Regressive and other continual-Leagues. Every single one of them has had instances where owners complained about tanking, Lottery odds, "dynasties", uneven trades, difficulty rebuilding, and anything else you can possibly think of. I've been trying to think of a way to minimize or even eliminate most of these concerns. By combining the "best" concepts (IMO) from several different Leagues, I've come-up with something I'd like to get feedback on - the Dual Era Double Progressive Partial Keeper League.

Each season would involve players from 4 NBA seasons. Two back-to-back seasons from two different Eras (EX: '64-'65, '65-'66, '87-'88 + '88-'89)
At the end of each season, each owner will keep exactly 6 players. (not including IR or optionally those with < 500 min.)
Draft order will be entirely random. It will be done using Random.org, by a non-League member or maybe Admin..
Draft picks may be traded for only the next draft, and not between the draft end and the start of the season.

With those rules, it should be a League where every owner tries to compete for the Title every season. It would be harder that ever to win back-to-back, let alone have a dynasty. Some certainly will not like the random Draft order, but that is a HUGE incentive to never tank, plus we have entire Leagues where players are removed from rosters randomly, draft order is 1/2 random, and player seasons are used randomly, that are great. With so much player turnover and so much "new" talent available every season, success one season doesn't have much to do with the next season any way.

I'm certainly willing to listen to input on this. If feedback is positive enough and enough owners seem interested, I'll give it a go.

Seems like this would create more dynasties not less. Everyone has equal odds at the 1st pick?

Posted by benhoidal on 4/7/2018 12:54:00 PM (view original):
Seems like this would create more dynasties not less. Everyone has equal odds at the 1st pick?

Many owners now tank to get 2, 3, or even 4 long-term studs. This creates dynasties. With a random draft order, the chances of an owner getting even two such long-term studs is much less.

If a 70 win team wins the lottery in a draft with say MJ or LeBron, how many owners quit the league? 5? 10?

Posted by benhoidal on 4/7/2018 1:01:00 PM (view original):
If a 70 win team wins the lottery in a draft with say MJ or LeBron, how many owners quit the league? 5? 10?

So you think it's easier to get two long-term studs like together by defying the much longer odds of a 24 team random Lottery than it is to do it in a 6 or 12 team weighted Lottery like most leagues have? No way.

Also remember, each season's draft will introduce 4 NBA seasons worth of new players, so even if someone would beat the odds for a duo like that, the drop-off to the draftees of every other team is going to be 1/2 or 1/4 of what it is now. Additionally, any owner who would be lucky enough to pair 2 such players may only keep 4 other players from season to season, which will make it less likely they can "stash" enough talent for a dynasty.

Remember too, that owner would not be able to continually trade future draft picks for current talent to pair with any pair of studs he may be lucky enough to have.

Finally, those two long-tern studs would be advancing 2 seasons at a time, so would be together for 1/2 as long as most Leagues.

I like the concept, to reduce tanking issues and bad trades and also make dynasties more difficult. My only concern here is the full random lottery. Not so much that I worry luck will benefit a good or great team, but that if you're a bad team and you have a few seasons in the bottom half of the draft you'll bail.

Let me throw a bit of a curve ball that I think could accomplish the same concepts you started with. Salary Cap. For those who've been around for a while you may remember there has been a cap progressive (PCL). All - for this league you can have the same dual double implement the cap to achieve the balance. You've got to find the right cap number so that it's not very restrictive, but also low enough to result in cuts and selective drafting. I think a $50m cap offers enough money to put together a very good team and still will restrict players. $52m is a little high, but would be less conservative and you'd get better teams.

If you went with this idea, I think you go standard lottery. You'd also need to prepare for some possibly interesting trades, with players dealt for cap space. Like IRL, but pretty appealing in my opinion.

What do you think?

Just the simple fact that this is a "keeper" league I think will better distribute the talent throughout the league. I would still have a weighted draft to some degree though.

Posted by jcred5 on 4/9/2018 12:42:00 PM (view original):
I like the concept, to reduce tanking issues and bad trades and also make dynasties more difficult. My only concern here is the full random lottery. Not so much that I worry luck will benefit a good or great team, but that if you're a bad team and you have a few seasons in the bottom half of the draft you'll bail.

Let me throw a bit of a curve ball that I think could accomplish the same concepts you started with. Salary Cap. For those who've been around for a while you may remember there has been a cap progressive (PCL). All - for this league you can have the same dual double implement the cap to achieve the balance. You've got to find the right cap number so that it's not very restrictive, but also low enough to result in cuts and selective drafting. I think a $50m cap offers enough money to put together a very good team and still will restrict players. $52m is a little high, but would be less conservative and you'd get better teams.

If you went with this idea, I think you go standard lottery. You'd also need to prepare for some possibly interesting trades, with players dealt for cap space. Like IRL, but pretty appealing in my opinion.

What do you think?

1st of all, thanks for the thoughtful post. If you have a Salary Cap, do you also have a Salary Floor? If so, can't that Salary Floor be exploited by an owner loading-up with minutes and little talent?

Posted by cjok1051 on 4/9/2018 3:36:00 PM (view original):
Just the simple fact that this is a "keeper" league I think will better distribute the talent throughout the league. I would still have a weighted draft to some degree though.

The more I hear (here and via site-mails), the more I don't think 24 owners would go for totally random drafts.

Literally ever other way I can think of determining Draft order leaves reason for tanking on some level. Anyone got something that doesn't?

Have the teams that don't make the playoffs draft best-to-worst, rather than worst-to-best.

In other words, the non-playoff team with the most wins drafts first, the non-playoff team with the least wins drafts last (but before the playoff teams).

This way, every team has incentive to win, rather than incentive to lose.

The teams with a shot at the playoffs want to win to make the playoffs. The teams that figure to miss the playoffs want to win to improve their draft position. Every owner will play his best lineup every game.

Never played in a League with such a draft system, but I have seen it discussed before. Biggest issue with that would be that even now some owners will tank to fall out of the playoffs if their League has a 12 team Lottery. If they'd have much, much better odds of getting the #1 pick, they'd be much, much more inclined to do so. This is the sort of "new" thinking I love seeing though. Thanks for posting. Keep'em coming guys.

No lottery with above proposal.

Posted by splat58 on 4/15/2018 9:17:00 AM (view original):
No lottery with above proposal.

Understand that. I'm saying I've seen owners who didn't think they could win it all, intentionally drop from the 13-16 range into the 10-12 range so they could have a chance at the 1st pick, so I'm pretty sure I'd see owners dropping from 13-16 to 10-12 if a top 3 pick was a guarantee.

Posted by all3 on 4/15/2018 9:23:00 AM (view original):

Posted by splat58 on 4/15/2018 9:17:00 AM (view original):
No lottery with above proposal.

Understand that. I'm saying I've seen owners who didn't think they could win it all, intentionally drop from the 13-16 range into the 10-12 range so they could have a chance at the 1st pick, so I'm pretty sure I'd see owners dropping from 13-16 to 10-12 if a top 3 pick was a guarantee.

this would happen like crazy. If you don't think it would, you're not one of the many, many owners who this whole idea is targeting. If I wasn't in competition for a bye slot, or there was a team that I flat out knew was better than mine, I would purposefully try & position myself to be #13.

I think this is a bad idea.

I'll weigh in more later.

Posted by all3 on 4/9/2018 4:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jcred5 on 4/9/2018 12:42:00 PM (view original):
I like the concept, to reduce tanking issues and bad trades and also make dynasties more difficult. My only concern here is the full random lottery. Not so much that I worry luck will benefit a good or great team, but that if you're a bad team and you have a few seasons in the bottom half of the draft you'll bail.

Let me throw a bit of a curve ball that I think could accomplish the same concepts you started with. Salary Cap. For those who've been around for a while you may remember there has been a cap progressive (PCL). All - for this league you can have the same dual double implement the cap to achieve the balance. You've got to find the right cap number so that it's not very restrictive, but also low enough to result in cuts and selective drafting. I think a $50m cap offers enough money to put together a very good team and still will restrict players. $52m is a little high, but would be less conservative and you'd get better teams.

If you went with this idea, I think you go standard lottery. You'd also need to prepare for some possibly interesting trades, with players dealt for cap space. Like IRL, but pretty appealing in my opinion.

What do you think?

1st of all, thanks for the thoughtful post. If you have a Salary Cap, do you also have a Salary Floor? If so, can't that Salary Floor be exploited by an owner loading-up with minutes and little talent?

We didn't have a floor and I can't remember if tanking was a problem and if we did anything about it. You could have one though, however if you want to tank i feel like you could still load up on bad players with high minutes. I personally have never worried too much about tankers