The Anti-Tank Draft: The “Wincentive” System

Amateur Drafts for sports leagues are broken and we will fix them.

Most of us sports fans have had a team in the running for the top 5 picks in their team’s respective draft. If you’ve not had a team be so bad they could get the top overall pick in their respective draft, Congrats. Losing games isn’t fun but even worse is being in a position where you’re rooting for your team to lose. The current approach of entry drafts is to put the best amateur players on the worst-performing teams. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense, but the incentives get weird when Front Offices and fans have an interest in the team performing poorly and losing games.

Rooting for your team to lose is one thing; Front Offices are in a position to look at the calendar and decide they are comfortable with writing off a season and waiting for a particular player in the hope the team loses enough games to draft a specific player. As a Dolphins fan, I am very familiar with the “Tank for Tua” campaign and even more familiar with the penalties levied against the team. The Dolphins have a DT holding out right now, how good would a Mazi Smith pick look right now (taken 6 spots after the Fins forfeited selection)? For the record, I want Wilkins to get paid. Top-end depth would be less of a concern. No, I’m not over this penalty and for Tom Brady of all players. Moving on…

The important word spoken by McAfee is “integrity”. Everyone should be trying to win when they are on the field. I believe players want to beat the guy in front of them. I also believe players want to build stat lines for their next contract. I believe coaches are hard-wired to win games. The fans in the stands and at home don’t buy jerseys of the players who fumble the ball or miss tackles, they buy jerseys of the guys scoring touchdowns and making interceptions. All of these parties have their core interests aligned with winning games.

We are left with Ownership and the Front Office with conflicting incentives. As Pat McAfee said in the video, the Head Coach of the Dolphins, Brian Flores, alleged that the Owner, Stephen Ross, offered to pay for each loss in an effort to improve the team’s draft position. The NFL ran its own investigation and found that Stephen Ross did express the idea that “draft position should take priority over the team’s win-loss record.” Whether this happened or not isn’t important, the fact that “wins don’t matter” floats around in the murky cloud of team management makes me sick and that needs to be removed from the incentive package.

So what is the solution?

Incentivize Winning

We want teams to build rosters that win games. We don’t want the rich to get richer. Therefore, giving bad teams good young players is a good idea.

I think it’s a better idea to give the best young players to the teams that increase their win totals over time. Using this as the main mechanic, this new draft system will use the change in winning percentage from one season to the next as the way to determine draft order. The higher the change from one season to the next, the higher in the draft order. I’m a reasonable human being; I’ve rooted for teams that inexplicably underperformed or had a season full of injured players.

Therefore, In the interest of smoothing out the effects of an off-year or a catastrophic injury bug, the final draft order will be a sum of 5 seasons for MLB, NBA, NHL, and 4 seasons for the NFL. This range is determined by the average career length, and the average career in MLB, NBA, and NHL is around 5 years and the NFL is just over 3 years. Let’s take a look at a slice of the NBA Draft so you can see what it looks like. I’ve left out where they are in the order for spoiler reasons and to give you incentive to go look at the full sheet.

Link to the full sheet with simulated draft orders for all 4 major North American leagues (data from Aug 18th, 2023)

The image above shows a portion of the NBA draft under the new system. This sample is taken from the middle of the draft order but the stories abound for all of these teams. The Lakers made a huge jump in winning percentage in ‘19-’20 but the following season, the Lakers gave up half the benefit gained towards draft order. What I like about this draft system is the positive gains for one season can be negative in future seasons. This is one of the built-in incentives for teams to keep winning. There are drawbacks when a star player retires or leaves in free agency and new plyaers have to carry the burden of a negative delta. Winning and losing cycles are part of fandom and the existence of sports teams. There are incentives we will get into in another post. We will also look at some specific team stories. I really want to compare the top and bottom of a draft order and look for solutions for teams like the A’s when ownership seems completely disinterested in fielding a decent team.

However, I really wanted to get the system in front of you today. Let’s get the discussion rolling, look for gaps and find some solutions.

Ping Pong Balls are for Table Tennis and Other “Pong” Type Games, Not Drafts

I feel like my teams get burned by draft lotteries. I say that and the draft lottery delivered Cale Makar to the Avalanche. The draft lottery also put Connor Bedard on a division rival. Regardless of recent history, here is a video I’d like you to watch, and the important part is the beginning when the NHL Commissioner is talking. It’s really the first 30 seconds, just to get the flavor. If you want to know what corporate meetings are like, this is close to the feeling I get when I’m in my meetings. Anyways, subject your eyes to this pain and I’ll catch you in the next paragraph.

The league is clearly concerned with trying to establish this is on the up and up. Why is the commissioner of a league holding up day-of copies of known newspapers? Does the NHL hold up paper printouts of PowerPoint slides when they have staff meetings at the NHL offices? The point is that the integrity of the process is important to the league. This new system removes any need for these measures. The draft order is determined by the actions of the teams on the field and the Front Office building a better roster.

To be clear before moving on, I don’t think the draft was rigged, but the whole process feels so corporatized, lawyered and janky that there is no room for fans to feel comfortable with the look and feel of the lottery draw, so let’s just get rid of it!

So there it is, post any questions or clarifications in the comments. We will get into the downfield ramifications of a system like this. If I were commissioner for the day in all these leagues, I would set a launch date 5 years in the future so teams could adjust their rosters to fit this system. I feel like leagues would want a system like this because it takes the story and the eyes away from operational systems and puts the onus on winning games. When winning games is no longer the priority, get out, and retire.

CHR;)