Because the teams that need the best players the most wouldn't be able to get them. While you want to avoid tanking, remember that the whole purpose of the draft is to help legitimately bad teams get better. The reason it's not a more popular proposal is because it's a moronic idea with more flaws than you can even begin to describe.
Leaving aside the ad hominem attack, let's enumerate some of these flaws.
1. A draft playoff would not help bad teams get better.
It's trivially easy to set up a system where the worst team gets a bye to the final, guaranteeing them a 2nd pick at worst. Exactly like the current lottery.
It's also trivially easy to give the second-worst team a bye to the semi-final, and the third-and-fourth worst teams a bye to the quarterfinals, thus guaranteeing them worst picks of 4th, 7th and 8th, respectively. (Or even 3rd, 5th and 6th.)
Teams that are better than 4th worst are not much different from one another, but suddenly have chances to work their way to better picks by actually winning games.
Let's move on to the next:
2. Players would have no incentive to play in such a game.
What incentive is there for players to play out the last 30 games of a season when it's evident that they're not playing for the Cup?
But ok. Let's throw in some sugar. 25 players on a roster. At $50 average ticket price for 15,000 fans, that's $750k. Take a third of that for the venue. The remaining $500k goes to the winner of each game, so $20k for each player for each win. That's more than the losers of a first round series take home in bonus money, BTW. More than 15,000 fans? More money on the table.
Any other evident flaws, cptjeff? Consider it an intellectual exercise -- the education of a moron.
