Looking for statisticians to help create a draft lottery

[BeefSandwiches]

I am trying to create a fair system for a draft lottery in one of my leagues. Here is the situation - we have two new owners in a keeper league - one of which is taking over for a team that made the playoffs last year while the other owner who left was terrible.

Normally, the teams that did not make the playoffs (4) are slotted in the first four picks of the draft based on last year's record and other tie-breakers. The other six teams who made the playoffs were slotted based on how they finished the year along with other tie-breakers.

Now that we have two new owners, there are only 5 returning playoff teams and I want to have a lottery to determine the first five picks with the worst record having the most chances for the #1 pick.

Below is a link to an article about how the NBA lottery works:
http://www.hoopsvibe.com/nba/nba-draft/ ... 23146.html

1) Does anyone know how the breakdown is determined? I want to create a similar breakdown for five teams (but not 1000 total).
2) How should I handle the new guys since they don't have a record from last year?

Any help is much appreciated.

[knapplc]

I think you're making this too complicated. You have two choices, in my opinion:

A) Put the teams in the draft in the order you normally would. This is a Keeper league, so the team that made the playoffs (and hence would have a lower seed in the draft) should compensate for his lower seed with better Keepers. The team with the higher seed should have worse Keepers, and even though he inherits a worse team he compensates for it with a better seed. In my 12-team keeper league that’s how we’re doing it.

B) Create a lottery system just like the NBA and re-seed the non-playoff teams, which is what you’re asking help with here.

Personally, I would do option A. If you want to have a Lottery for seeds I would give the four teams descending orders of probability like the NBA does like this:

You have 10 chances. The team with the worst record gets 4, second gets 3, third gets 2 and last gets 1.

That’s about as easy as you’re going to get.

But seriously, do option A. If you try to get too creative I think you’re just going to tick off the owners.

[Kilroy]

I think you're making this too complicated. You have two choices, in my opinion:

A) Put the teams in the draft in the order you normally would. This is a Keeper league, so the team that made the playoffs (and hence would have a lower seed in the draft) should compensate for his lower seed with better Keepers. The team with the higher seed should have worse Keepers, and even though he inherits a worse team he compensates for it with a better seed. In my 12-team keeper league that’s how we’re doing it.

B) Create a lottery system just like the NBA and re-seed the non-playoff teams, which is what you’re asking help with here.

Personally, I would do option A. If you want to have a Lottery for seeds I would give the four teams descending orders of probability like the NBA does like this:

You have 10 chances. The team with the worst record gets 4, second gets 3, third gets 2 and last gets 1.

That’s about as easy as you’re going to get.

But seriously, do option A. If you try to get too creative I think you’re just going to tick off the owners.

Yep. go with A.