BYU Fans, Regular Season Shmegular Season

BYU basketball has been criticized for following an NBA model all season long. They paid for big stars and a big three. They do not play well as a team. They brought in international guys and a former NBA draft pick. They have the NBA coach. They do not give a lot of effort on defense. They have a player who got a DWI.

Challenges of Adopting an NBA Style

These are all the negative things about being an NBA team in college basketball.

Here is the good thing about being an NBA team. The regular season means nothing. Who cares? NBA teams don't and neither should you.

Path to Success: Winning in March Madness

You need to win three games in March. That is it. Right now Lunardi has BYU as a six seed in the West region. They need to beat a team like SDSU and then Gonzaga and then Illinois before they get to a Big 12 team in Arizona. It has been a painful season. You are getting a lot of crap for trying to shortcut your way to success and struggling in the regular season but you are the NBA model. The regular season means nothing. Win three games in the tournament against non Big 12 teams. Get to an Elite Eight. It's not that hard. Close out on a shooter every once in a while. You can do it.

The NBA's Perverse Incentives

In the early 2000s Britain tried to stop narcotic production in Afghanistan.

The Afghans were producing a load of heroin and poppy seed muffins and it was going into Europe making them high and fat. So Britain said to the Afghan farmers hey we're going to pay you to burn up your poppy seed crops. Smart idea by a bunch of well educated honkeys. That will get rid of the drug problem! Paying them to burn the crops they'll stop planting poppy seeds.

But the Afghanis didn't stop planting the poppy. They did the opposite. They were now incentivized to grow poppy crops. They went wild planting more and more. They burned some got the money from the government saved others and sold the drugs. It went crazy. Perverse incentives.

Adam Silver's Dilemma: Rewarding Losing Teams

This is what Adam Silver is dealing with now in the NBA. He's paying teams to suck and doesn't understand why half his league doesn't care to win and they're all high. The anti tanking measures being proposed now are all limp wristed attempts to fix the problem because in all of them there is still a reward for being bad. He can't help but reward bad behavior.

Radical Change: Rethinking Draft Order in the NBA

Disconnect draft order from performance entirely! That's what I say! Do an even rotation. Everyone gets the first pick once every thirty years. It doesn't matter how bad you are you're not getting Big Country Reeves.

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