Make the NBA Draft Lottery a Mini-game
This weekend, Brentford missed European football for next season after they failed to convert an open header in the 100th minute of their final day match against Liverpool. That feels terrible right now, but before this season, the Bees were widely picked as a relegation candidate after transitioning away from their top two goal scorers and manager from the previous season. Instead, they simply kept on doing what they do, matching their highest-ever finish since returning to the English Premier League in 2021-22 and generally having solid vibes. Be resilient and formidable like Brentford. Don’t be expensive and nonsensical, like Tottenham.
This week, I wrote about my wild NBA Draft Lottery idea, my wild MLB roster construction idea, my super-easy lentils preparation, and more. LFG.
GO DIRECTLY TO
- Improving the NBA Draft Lottery
- The San Francisco Giants Have Been a Boring Kind of Bad
- Do Not Ever Let the Casino Into Your Pocket
- I Almost Hit a Home Run
- The Root of Anti-AI Rage
- Lentils: Hell, Yeah
- What Makes a “Top 15 TV Show”
- “The Ten Year Affair”
Improving the NBA Draft Lottery
The NBA is on the verge of changing its draft lottery rules, yet again. Short of doing away with the draft entirely (my preferred course, and something that’s extremely unlikely to happen in our lifetimes), I don’t think there’s much the league can do to eliminate tanking or other forms of draft odds manipulation. After all, if there’s a draft with an order that gives preference to teams that lose more, then teams will always have an incentive to lose in order to improve their draft situations.
I have a far-out suggestion for replacing the draft lottery, which I believe would do at least as much to discourage tanking as the current proposal and would be a far more entertaining television event than the lottery.
I don’t have a snazzy name for it, but I’m thinking of, essentially, a Memory minigame to determine draft order. Put numbers 1 through 32 on cards arranged in an 8x4 grid, but no one can see how the numbers are arranged. Each team will have a certain number of attempts to flip a card, most of them with only one attempt. But the important thing is the number they ultimately get is their spot in the draft order. The worst teams will have multiple flip attempts — pulling a number out of my ass, let’s say the four worst teams have three flips each and the next six have two flips.
Let’s say the first team to go has three flips. The first card they flip is 9. They can choose to stick with this, but they think they can do better than the No. 9 pick, so they turn it back over and flip another card, which is No. 27. They definitely don’t want that one, so they try again, getting No. 5. They will pick at No. 5. It’s probably more dramatic to have a rule that you can’t re-pick a card you’ve already flipped, so it’s a true “hit or stay” decision on each flip, and would also prevent teams from, say, “pocketing” the first card, always picking a second time to see if that card is better, then going back to the first one if it was reasonably good.
The order of which teams flip is pretty important to this game, and though I haven’t run any numbers or asked an expert about this, I’m pretty sure the first team up to flip is not the best spot to be in, so I would make sure choice is an important element. The worst team in the league would get to choose which spot they want in the flip order. Then the next-worst team would choose their spot in the order, and so on.
This would make for great TV, especially if the league enforced a no-communication and no writing things down rule in the flipping room. Incompetence would cause chaos. Even if everyone played according to the book, the worst teams would generally get the best picks, and on occasion randomness would cause a not-so-bad team to get the best pick. Either way, the outcomes would feel more just than they do now because teams would be making choices directly affecting their draft positions. Yes, the choices would be constrained by the rules of the Memory game, but they would be making choices nonetheless.
The San Francisco Giants Have Been a Boring Kind of Bad
My Giants aren’t in last place, as of this writing, which is nice, I guess. They’ve scored the fewest runs per game in MLB, and their two free agent starting pitching additions have been awful, while ace Logan Webb has been plagued with a knee injury, and ostensible No. 2 starting pitcher Robbie Ray has been below replacement level, with a falling strikeout rate and a rising walk rate. Landen Roupp has been a pleasant surprise starter, but we’ll see how he holds up if his HR/FB rate gets back into a normal range. Casey Schmitt is hitting (for now). Luis Arraez is shocking everyone by apparently becoming a well-above-average defensive second baseman after years of terrible defense. Again, it’s a boring kind of bad.
All this makes me think of an exercise I undertook long ago for a couple different outlets: What if a baseball team went all in on defense? The Giants were pretty well-situated for that, since they already had Gold Glove-winning catcher Patrick Bailey (since traded to Cleveland), perennial Gold Glove candidate Matt Chapman at third base, a perennial plus defender at shortstop in Willy Adames, multiple guys who have played center field in the outfield, a home ballpark that suppresses offense, and so on.
A team doing this would probably keep Rafael Devers at first base, with plans to bring along Bryce Eldridge at 1B/DH when he’s ready. That team also would probably still sign Harrison Bader to play center field, plan to move Jung Hoo Lee to a corner, and keep Drew Gilbert as a backup to all the outfield spots. That team might give Tyler Fitzgerald or Christian Koss another crack at the everyday second base job, since both have been strong defenders despite (charitably) uneven hitting, and wouldn’t even consider signing Arraez.
The biggest move for this team would be finding a new left fielder, by either jettisoning Schmitt, having Heliot Ramos DH a lot more, and either rolling with Fitzgerald out there or signing someone new — assuming Schmitt had minimal trade value before the season — or by trading Ramos, which you’d think would be hard to do because you’d have to find a team willing to trade defense for offense and feel like they’d come out ahead. Isaac Collins got traded from the Brewers for a relief pitcher, so perhaps that would’ve been an interesting conversation, though I think Ramos having more service time would’ve complicated that discussion. Would Houston have traded Jake Meyers? It’s not so easy finding a good fit. I also assume teams have internal measures that differ from public measures, further complicating the possibilities.
The point of doing all this, though, would be to maximize winning by leaning into a team’s established strength and creating positive knock-on effects for less money than trying to sign Kyle Tucker and calling it a day. Perhaps the money saved from signing Arraez, Adrian Houser, and Tyler Mahle all could have gone to Framber Valdez. Perhaps the pitching staff would be emboldened with a strong defense behind them, more willing to pound the zone in the knowledge that balls in play will be caught.
I’m not sure they’d be better than what we’ve seen so far, and they certainly wouldn’t be as morbidly exciting as, say, a Rockies team that completely eschewed defense and signed all lumbering sluggers, but at least it would be a direction.
Do Not Ever Let the Casino Into Your Pocket
I haven’t been keeping up closely with the Brendan Sorsby debacle, but the short version is that Sorsby, a prominent college football quarterback, developed a gambling addiction that came to light after he signed a big deal to play for Texas Tech, his third college team. The latest is he’s apparently suing for eligibility to play this season.
My big takeaway, however, is that gambling apps are a nightmare. Even as Sorsby developed into the caliber athlete deserving of a multimillion-dollar contract, he allegedly placed more than 10,000 bets, repeatedly risking his eligibility.
Casinos seek to keep gamblers spending money. Putting a casino app on your phone just makes it easier for them to get their hooks in. Setting aside just how much “entertainment” you get from betting on sports or the Oscars or whatever, why would you make it easier for a predatory industry to prey on you? Don’t!
I Almost Hit a Home Run
I play on a slowpitch softball team where I think I’m the oldest regular by about five or six years. I’m limited in the field due to a bum throwing shoulder, but I’m proud to still be a strong contributor at the plate, albeit without much power. Not much power until last week, when I got a hold of one and sent it on a gentle arc into the evening. For a brief moment, I thought it was headed over the fence, but the left-center-fielder drifted back and caught the ball with his back against the chain links.
I’ve hit softball home runs before, but not since 2017, which was the last year I played before switching back to baseball for a stretch. Nowadays, I’m pretty much a singles hitter, with enough line drive power to keep outfielders from playing me shallow.
That near-homer gave me a shot of euphoria, but when I got back to the dugout, a sort of serenity kicked in. Though I felt a little disappointed, I was also fully aware that this was not a sign that I should try to hit home runs. This past spring season was probably my best since picking up slowpitch again, I think because I found my swing’s mechanical groove at the same time I got in a mental groove, so I was able to effectively shoot line drives through and over opposing infielders.
As tempting as it is to try to just put a little more oomph into my swing and crank a couple over the fence — especially given that my time is running out on physically being able to do that at all — my better strategy is still, probably, to focus on hitting the ball hard through the infield. Home runs — even in a league where we’re limited to three per game — are almost always better than singles. The math is pretty simple. However, I, personally, probably maximize my contributions and my team’s chances of winning if I do not try to hit home runs.
But it would still be pretty sweet to get one.
The Root of Anti-AI Rage
If you’ve seen recent incidents of speakers at commencement ceremonies getting booed by students for touting artificial intelligence software, I wouldn’t blame you for suspecting that there’s a generational gap on whether AI is “good”. There may well be one, but I believe it’s not inherently tied to age, but to class identity.
When it comes to AI, the vast majority of young people have experience with it as either a freely-chosen consumer product or as enterprise software mandated by bosses, whether those are work bosses or academic bosses. Very few of them have been in management, and so very few have been in position to command someone else to use it.
That is, anti-AI rage is rooted in a worker identity: people who know economic precarity, whose labor value is tied to the quality of what they make, who see themselves as lifelong workers and not future managers, or some combination of these.
I have read enough coders explaining how chatbots help them that I’m willing to keep an open mind about how they may be useful in certain contexts, but I also think that bosses in businesses outside of software and coding who tout AI are doing it because it’s pretty much tuned to mirror and affirm the Boss Experience as many experience it. From a boss’s point of view, what is their job if not giving orders in semantic language to an entity that then does the work? Wouldn’t it be great if you could do that on a computer for 1/1000th the cost of hiring a person to take your orders?
Workers simply don’t have that perspective or motivation, and so often experience AI adoption as a burden or imposition — even before answering the question of whether any of the various tools offer enough upside to be worth the apparent downsides.
So, whenever someone says something along the lines of “AI is going to change how we do that job” or whatever, consider: Is that person speaking as a boss or a worker? Would they be able, themselves, to do the job they want AI to replace?
Lentils: Hell, Yeah
Get on the lentils train. Most Sunday nights, I cook a pot of lentils following this base recipe and it provides the main serving in my lunches for the week, plus a few extras for my spouse. That recipe tells you how to make everything fresh, including rough mirepoix. II prefer to get premade mirepoix from the grocery store because I don’t enjoy chopping vegetables to that degree. I also get the pre-peeled garlic cloves just because it’s way easier than peeling and separating fresh cloves. And I use dried Italian seasoning instead of chopping fresh herbs. It all tastes delicious.
Here’s my basic process. It took a few cycles to figure out how much salt, herbs, and water worked for me. I suggest you give yourself the grace to figure that out, too.
Heat a big metal pot over medium heat. When hot, add several glugs of olive oil and let it heat up. When hot, add my package of mirepoix (it’s a lot — two cups?) and 10-15 cloves of garlic. Add salt (I’m generous), ground black pepper, and dried Italian herbs. Stir and cook until the onions, carrots, and celery are softening and the garlic is starting to smell. Pour 5 3/4 cups of room temp water into the pot. Add your 16oz bag of dried lentils. Stir until well mixed. Put the burner on high and heat until boiling, then immediately turn to medium-ish low and simmer, uncovered, for 25 minutes. As soon as the 25 minutes are up, either serve or scoop into whatever portions you like and refrigerate.
I usually eat it as-is, but will add different varieties of hot sauce as the spirit moves me.
What Makes a “Top 15 TV Show”
A few weeks ago, a prompt went through my BlueSky circles: “Name your top 15 TV shows ever, gut instincts only.” The “gut instincts” part appealed to me, so I played along, and came up with this list:
- The Simpsons
- The Americans
- The Good Place
- Mad Men
- Breaking Bad
- Catastrophe
- Ken Burns: Baseball
- How To With John Wilson
- Bluey
- Station Eleven
- Northern Exposure
- Better Call Saul
- Taskmaster
- Heated Rivalry (S1 only)
- Friday Night Lights
There are a few shows I subsequently realized I would have included had I truly contemplated which TV shows are most meaningful to me, or, excruciatingly, that I would have judged are the most important to English-language audiences writ large. I don’t expect you to care which shows I choose for this list, but I have been wondering why I left off “Andor” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“Andor” is the one that surprised me most, since it demanded my attention and took up so much of my reflection time last year. I believe it’s a dramatic masterpiece and a miracle that an explicitly anti-fascist story made for the Star Wars universe is the vehicle for that masterpiece. Perhaps because it’s Star Wars, and therefore a part of the larger whole, I don’t remember it as the singular work I think it is when I consciously assess it.
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” may be easier to explain. I have easy access to every show I initially listed*. By that, I mean I can watch them at home, as I choose. “Mister Rogers” is not available in the same way. A limited number of episodes are on the PBS Kids app, and some are on Amazon Prime (last I checked, anyway), but I’m pretty sure that there’s no way to watch all the episodes through a single subscription. There may not be a way to buy all of them in any format. And that’s enough separation from my viewing habits that I simply haven’t thought about it in forever, even though it’s obviously one of the greatest American TV shows.
*”Northern Exposure” is not on streaming, but I obtained DVDs.
“The Ten Year Affair”
I read “The Ten Year Affair,” by Erin Somers, in less than a week. I had reservations as soon as I realized it would be about relatively well-to-do white people who live just outside New York after having spent their young adulthood in the city, but my reservations were swept away by her sheer control of the story.
If you read it, your tolerance for upper-class ennui will be tested, so if you have low tolerance, be forewarned. Perhaps I was so taken because the main characters are right about my age, totally normal men and women who are assholes in a way I instantly recognized.
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Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: "memory game" by Jay Kaye. Used under CC BY-ND 2.0 license.)