TFD: A modest proposal to fix the NBA draft lottery system

We talk about tanking in sports. Most teams deny they do it because it's not polite or competitive to say you are trying to lose. Rather, they just do everything in their power not to win — like, say, go with a youth movement, rest veterans and, when particularly desperate, make sure scads of good players are ultra-cautious when dealing with injuries. Don't come back to soon, fellas. Take your time.

We talk about tanking as it relates to the draft. We talk about it in the NFL, though in that case it's harder to prove — and harder to improve by leaps and bounds with just one good player. Tanking might be an issue there, but unless you end up drafting a once-a-decade quarterback, it probably won't do you a ton of good to pick No. 1 instead of, say, No. 3.

We talk about tanking in the NHL and MLB a little, but in both of those sports prospects often take so long to develop that it's hard to say there are sure things at the end of the losing rainbow.

The league in which tanking really seems to be a problem — be it in perception, reality or both — is the NBA. It's a sport where one star player can completely transform a franchise (see: Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and maybe, just maybe, Andrew Wiggins, all number one picks). It's a sport of finely tuned athletes, guaranteed contracts, tendinitis, sprains, strains and pulls. It's easy to hide guys on the bench and invent injuries. It's easy to go young. It's easy to lose.

Almost too easy.

And the incentive, as noted above, can be great. Now, the lottery ensures that teams don't just get to draft players in the reverse order of their finish (unlike the NFL and MLB, which do go that route), but it's not enough of a disincentive to keep teams from at least giving the appearance that they are intentionally losing. The Timberwolves, as long as they lose tonight, will pick no lower than No. 4 in the draft as the team with the worst record in the NBA. They will have the best chance at landing the best prospect, and regardless they will get a great prospect.

Giving the worst teams the best new players is a very fair notion. If college teams did this, the top recruits would go to the worst teams in the Big Ten and so forth. College sports have no such competitive balance. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and it takes a special set of circumstances to break decades of history.

Here's how it works. Take each team's number of losses. Subtract 41 (41-41 represents a breakeven record in the NBA). Then square the result. That's how many ping pong balls a team gets. (OK, one more provision: A team gets a minimum of 10 lottery balls, including if it has a winning record).

Once you get past the math (which really isn't that hard), the intent is to keep teams from trying to get the worst record by making the difference between one win or loss in the standings not that meaningful. It works this year because the Wolves, Knicks and 76ers are so close together.

In general, though, it still offers incentive to lose. In fact, it offers greater incentive to lose. The year that Charlotte was 7-59 (the labor-shortened year of 2011-12), it would have had nearly a 40 percent chance of getting the top pick under this system. So you're saying to teams: don't just lose. LOSE MORE. Tankers would go all out. You might have teams winning 7-10 games a season as the norm. This solves nothing. It only makes things worse by increasing the lottery odds of the really bad teams and decreasing the odds of the marginally bad teams who might actually be trying to make the playoffs and win.

As such, I have a different proposal. It's one I've thought about for way too long. It's also probably crazy, but it's time. Here is what I would do to try to eliminate tanking:

16 teams make the NBA playoffs, and 14 do not. At the end of the regular season, the 14 teams who didn't make the playoffs engage in a series of one-game loser playoffs to determine lottery order. Here's how it works:

Each No. 1 seed gets a bye. The 7 plays the 6, the 5 plays the 4 and the 2 plays the 3 (going against tradition in which the best would play the weakest in order to keep like teams grouped together in this case and not give an undue edge to the best of the worst).

Then the winner of 2 vs. 3 plays the 1; the 7 vs. 6 winner plays the 5 vs. 4 winner. Then those winners face off. Then the conference winners face off to determine the losers' champion.

All of these are one game, single elimination. Assuming arena availability would be there, all of the games are on the home court of the higher-seeded team (the one with the worse record). All of it is solely to determine lottery order, not draft order, and the current breakdown of odds would essentially remain in place.

The tournament champion gets the most ping pong balls (25 percent). The runner-up gets the second-most (19.9 percent). Those who lost in the finals in each conference split the difference of the third and fourth best odds (13.8 percent each). The four teams who lost in the conference semifinals — by virtue of getting a bye the teams with the worst records in each conference would at least get this far — would split the existing odds of the 5-8 spots in the lottery (5.5 percent each); and the six teams who lost in the first round would split the existing 9-14 odds (0.9 percent each).

For order purposes, the teams knocked out at each stage would still be slotted from worst to best record (for example: the 9-14 teams, if none got lucky and jumped into the top 3 of the draft during the lottery, would pick in order of worst record to best record; the worst would pick 9th and the best would pick 14th).

Basically, the 3 or 4 worst teams would still likely pick in the 5-9 range even if they didn't win a game in the loser playoffs or get lucky in the lottery. But they wouldn't be guaranteed the higher picks they are now. As such, they could still improve but they wouldn't have the incentive to stink.

It also would make it more possible for fringe playoff contenders to improve. Wolves coach/President Flip Saunders recently said, "In this league, you either have to be real good or real bad. If you're in the middle, it's tough to improve."

He's absolutely right, and that's absolutely unfair. But if you miss the playoffs by a game, steamroll the losers' bracket and suddenly have a 25 percent chance at the No. 1 pick and a guarantee of picking no lower than fourth … that can change your fortunes in a hurry. (And no, a team wouldn't tank to barely miss the playoffs in order to get a high pick. If you have a chance to make the postseason, you go for it because anything can happen once you're in).

It would make it slightly harder for teams that are legitimately bad to improve, though it wouldn't make it impossible. Lottery odds guarantee nothing (just ask the Wolves). Maybe it's asking a lot of teams to play as many four games after an 82-game season, particularly if your roster is comprised of impending free agents who don't care about your future . But: 1) how much fun would those games be? and 2) If you're in the real playoffs, you might play 20-plus extra games.

Maybe it's a lot of work just to determine lottery order. But if this was happening this year, the Wolves would get a first-round bye in the West and then have a conference semifinal matchup against the winner of the 2 vs. 3 game (Lakers vs. Kings) at Target Center. And outside of KG's return and maybe Wiggins' debut, that game would be the single most-anticipated Wolves game at Target Center this season.