Two Fish Were in a Tank…
... one said to the other, "How do you drive this thing?"
It seems the topic of tanking is huge with that Nosferatu running the NBA. This week, not only did Adam Silver fine the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers $600,000 combined for "conduct detrimental to the league", he also vowed to enacted anti-tanking rules next season.
Some of the proposed punishments include:
First-round draft picks can be protected only for top-four or top-14-plus selections
Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date
No longer allowing a team to pick in the top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-three finishes
Teams can't pick in the top four the year after making the conference finals
Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records
Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
Flatten odds for all lottery teams
You know what all of those proposed solutions have in common? they all make sure shitty teams have to stay shitty. Speaking as a fan of a shitty team, that just sounds shitty.
Rules against tanking are simply absurd given the current system in the NBA. If you are going to impose these rules, then you need to make about a million other changes to the system first. The current system not only encourages tanking, it basically demands it. What the NBA does is basically in every other business except professional sports. If Microsoft and Amazon did what the NBA does, they would be in court for anti-trust violations so fast their heads would spin completely off... but billionaires can reattach their heads so no big deal.
Let's start with some of the easy ones. How about the draft itself? Could you imagine if your kid graduated as the top AI specialist from an elite college program and Nvidia, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAi, etc could draft your kid and tell them where they have to live? And then after that, they set a cap on how much they can make? I don't know about you but I would get my kid a lawyer immediately. And yet this is what the NBA does every year. And I'm pretty sure NBA basketball talent is a scarcer resource than AI talent. So Silver (ironic name since vampires can't touch silver) you want to be fair? Eliminate the draft entirely and go to an open market like literally every other business in America.
The NBA set up a system that rewards teams for having a high draft pick so much that any team would be irresponsible if they didn't maximize their chances to obtain it. I mean look at the San Antonio Spurs and Victor Wembanyama. As a reward for being bad enough to land the first pick in the draft, the Spurs now have one of the five most valuable assets in the league and they get him at a ridiculously bargain rate for four years. $55 million over four years may sound like an absurd amount of money but he is easily worth 50 times that to the franchise and the league. And then the Spurs get the advantage to signing him for his next five year contract at $50 million per year. Again, that seems absurd but on the open market he would get triple that. So the reward for getting the first pick was a better team and a a billion dollar asset for a fraction of that cost. Can't imagine why anyone would want to obtain that rather than winning five more meaningless games when they are already out of the running for playoff dollars.
And now how about the salary cap? Again this would not be accepted in any other business in America. America is the land of capitalism, the free market and obeying the laws of supply and demand... except for when you are talking sports. There is actually a limit on how much an owner can invest into their business. That would be laughable anywhere else. If any other business thinks they will be more successful if they invest money into the business, you know what they do... they invest more money in the business. But NBA owners are not allowed to do that. So a terrible team can't even buy their way out of being horrible. The only hope for most bad teams, because free agents refuse to go there, is to get lucky in the draft. so I would actually be furious if my team tried to win a few extra meaningless games instead of taking a swing at the best new player at a bargain rate. A matter of fact I have been pretty furious for the past four years as I watched my Chicago Bulls mire in Basketball Hell. Believe me, losing in the play in tournament does not provide nearly enough joy to offset teh fact that the team missed out on the best draft pick. And often, when a team does land that big fish in the draft, then all of a sudden free agents want to come there to play with that elite talent. How many players would love to play next to Wembanyama or Cooper Flag?
If you want more evidence that tanking is 100% necessary, let's look at another sport. My Chicago Bears are on a huge uptrend. Do you know why? Because the Houston freaking Texans did the stupidest thing ever and won the last meaningless game of 2023 football season. That Texans win, which required them to score in last minute of the game and then make a 2-point conversion to win the game, resulted in the Texans falling out of the first overall pick down to the 2nd over all pick while the Bears got the number one over all pick. The Bears turned that pick into... get ready for this... 2023: OT Darnell Wright (No. 10 via trade down) and CB Tyrique Stevenson (No. 56), 2024: QB Caleb Williams (No. 1 overall). 2025: Second-round selection used to pick DL Shemar Turner. Do you think the Texans fans would rather have that 3rd meaningless win or 4 talented players like that?
I rest my case.
If necessary, for those teams that don't have the financial resources to sign available free agents and instead focus on future potential, they can afford to lose and then draft as high as possible in the next draft, thus increasing their chances of acquiring a young superstar on whom they can build the foundation for years to come.
I didn't know it was called tanking, but let's just say that this style of play gives teams the possibility of getting the first overall picks in the draft. A clear example is OKC, since they've managed to build their team through trades, even during a period when they weren't at their best. He also mentions the San Antonio Spurs with Wenbanyama, who is a key player and cheap compared to what they could get in free agency. Also, establishing something like this is complicated because there are teams whose budgets simply can't compete, and they can only improve through the draft.
At present, every sport has become a business and players are bought and then they are told to perform well, but if there are differences within the team, then the players do not perform well. So here I am saying that the money should be reduced so that the team members can perform well. Now the same is happening in cricket too. The team that gets more money goes there
Did you see the recent controversy with the US hockey coach? I can't figure out if it is real or not.
I have not seen it yet. Is it about the too many men in the ice penalty?
No, it was some comments he made about one of the players family. Like I said, it might have been fake news.
Anti-tanking rules or fines are nothing more than hypocrisy when the current NBA system itself encourages franchises to lose for good draft picks. And the examples of the Chicago Bulls or Bears prove that tanking is not a hobby for rebuilding teams these days, but rather the only realistic strategy for survival.
I wish we had sports betting on hive
Honestly, these seem like measures that won't lead anywhere. How can you punish a team for losing if there's no proof they did it deliberately? These fines don't seem necessary to me; they should find another way to make teams more competitive. Since they don't have a large market, their way to do this is through the draft. Furthermore, they need to make good picks because it's pointless to have high draft picks and then make the worst possible selections. For me, the issue of tanking is complicated to address.
The NBA is punishing teams for responding to the incentives the NBA created. If you want to stop tanking, fix the reward system, don't just fine small-market teams for resting players in the 4th quarter.