Draft Order

[Kevin]

Over the past few days, I've been hard at work compiling the pool of players who will make up the league roster for 2024. I should be ready to post the official position change list, soon followed by the first version of the player add/drop lists in the next few days. But first, a draft procedural matter that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago...

Marc and I tied for third place last season, which means our draft positions for this year should be determined by tiebreaker procedures. The first tiebreaker is recalculating the league standings using only the tied teams. More often than not, that also ends in a tie, in which case a coin toss would be used to determine which team picks higher in the draft order. But in this case, the first tiebreaker did produce an outcome. The Mavericks finished ahead of the Kings in six of the ten categories, deeming them the "winner", but really the loser because "winning" this tiebreaker means picking later. So that would put the Kings in line for the seventh pick in each round with the Mavericks picking eighth.

But then I decided to take a quick glance back at league history to make sure this is the way the tiebreaker has been enforced. I found that it has indeed, with one notable exception: the last time a tie occurred, during the covid shortened 2020 season. The Cougars and Mavericks tied for fifth place. The Cougars finished ahead of the Mavericks in six of ten categories, so they should have been slotted below the Mavericks in the '21 draft. The opposite was the case though. I have no idea how or why this happened. My working theory is that I simply didn't notice that the two teams tied and the Cougars just happened to be listed below the Mavericks in the standings. As you may recall, half the league was within just a couple points of each other in the middle of the standings that year. This was clearly an error on my part though. The Mavericks should have picked ahead of the Cougars if the tiebreaking procedures had been followed properly.

I brought this to Marc's attention a few weeks ago and he was gracious enough to accept my apology and stated that no compensation was necessary to retroactively fix this error. However, I still felt bad about it and had an opportunity to slightly right a wrong since Marc happens to be involved in a tie again this year, with my team also involved no less. So as a bit of a punishment to myself for this error, I'm going to let Marc pick ahead of me every other round. Of course, the first round is the only time a one pick difference is likely to be a major factor. I decided to perform a coin toss to determine which of us would pick first in the odd numbered rounds, and I wound up winning that toss. That gives me the 7th pick in odd numbered rounds with Marc picking 7th in the even rounds. This didn't wind up being particularly great compensation for Marc in the end, but I hope we can consider the matter settled. Sorry again to Marc for this screwup, and thanks for your understanding.

Anyway... back to work on the player pool. You'll be hearing from me again soon.