Fantasy Basketball Draft Order Should Never Be Determined By Worst Record In The Prior Season
The method to determine draft order in fantasy leagues is often overlooked when reviewing league settings prior to joining a fantasy league. Every major sports league follows a relatively similar process to determine draft order that revolves around the teams with the worst record in the prior season getting rewarded with the most draft capital. This league setting is often an afterthought for commissioners, and carried over to fantasy leagues without considering the implications for why this method might be flawed.
It’s no secret that tanking is a big problem in the NBA right now, and that same problem could be amplified even further in fantasy leagues if “worst team picks first” is enabled. Once a team is mathematically eliminated from the fantasy playoffs, it would be foolish to continue setting your lineups at all as the losses pile up with 0s on the scoreboard week to week. Rules can be implemented to ensure lineups are consistently set, but it’s extremely difficult to implement a rule that prevents managers from filling their lineup with players that have no business being rostered in the place of an empty starting spot to ensure the losing continues.
Something like this could happen as early as 4-5 weeks into the season if a disgruntled manager decides to fully punt their season away after several losses to open the year. There are roughly 20 regular season weeks in a fantasy basketball season. Making the playoffs can come down to something as simple as having to play one of these tanking teams at the beginning of the season before the tanking started against a much stronger team, while the opposing fantasy manager gets to cruise to a 7-2 (or 8-1/9-0) victory as they get the luck of the draw with the privilege of facing them in one of the final weeks. There is already enough luck in fantasy basketball. Let’s not add another element of luck that is easily preventable.
The element of scheduling luck factors into NBA playoff positioning as well, but the impact is much more miniscule. 82 real life games vs ~20 fantasy matchups translates to each matchup meaning significantly more. Furthermore, on any given night in the NBA a group of “NPC” outcasts on two-way contracts can scrape together an upset win against a legitimate contender. This just does not happen in a fantasy context when the tanking team is either not setting their lineup at all, or filling it with bench warmers and role players that have no logical reason to be rostered in a standard league.
Allowing the worst team to pick first doesn’t make sense in a redraft league when you consider why that method was implemented in the first place. It’s logical to allow the worst team to pick first in the NBA to give them a chance to improve, but in a fantasy context where rosters are reset every season, I don’t see a reason to carry this over outside of pure sympathy for weak managers. This is a completely different story in dynasty leagues, but even then, dynasty leagues should have a strict draft lottery process to prevent tanking in that league format as well.
The solution is to allow draft order to be randomized by the fantasy platform the league is hosted on. I am also bothered when commissioners use a random name/number generator that can easily be manipulated and ran through multiple takes before the commissioner decides on a draft order they like. Let a neutral third party set the draft order and be done with it.
