Tanking is no longer a once in a while thing, it’s become an epidemic.
Lets face it NBA fans: this league is by far the hardest to rebuild a franchise.
The simple fact that there’s very few roster spots in comparison with the NFL, NHL and MLB creates this unavoidable predicament. One superstar can change the fortunes of an entire city overnight.
Look no further than the Cleveland Cavaliers after LeBron James took his talents to Miami.
The Cavs finished with a record of 61-21 during the 2009-10 season. Life after LeBron saw them go 19-63.
A superstar is just worth that much in this league, and there’s no way to get around it.
While it can definitely be argued that implementing a hard salary cap instead of the very Charmin-like soft cap we see right now could change things for the better and bring more parity to play, I suggest you make the tankers think twice about tanking.
The worst place to be in the NBA is middle man. When you’re not an elite team contending for a title, and you’re not one of the worst teams in the league, you sit in NBA purgatory with nowhere to go. You can’t go up. You can’t go down. You sit, along with 10 other teams, in the wasteland of the Association.
It’s very difficult to improve your squad in that position. Draft slots aren’t great and free agency is tough because more than likely you’re up against the cap already because your somewhat competing.
The best, and sometimes only way to rebuild a team is to fully strip it down and start from scratch. We’ve seen it so many times in the past.
How about our defending champion San Antonio Spurs as an example?
More from NBA
- Predicting NBA’s Christmas Day Schedule: Lakers, Warriors highlight slate of postseason rematches
- 3 reasons the Blazers should trade Damian Lillard to the Heat and 2 reasons they shouldn’t
- LeBron James, Giannis, Damian Lillard all want that Mbappé money
- Jaylen Brown signs richest contract in NBA history without a left hand
- NBA rumors: Pistons determined to trade Killian Hayes
During the 1996-97 season the Spurs won a lowly 20 games after winning an incredible 59 the previous season. The Boston Celtics still thought they held the cards to grab the number one overall pick as they finished last that season, but the Spurs won the lottery and drafted one Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest.
Their best player, David Robinson, sat out most of that season due to back spasms, and the entire league to this day feels San Antonio tanked for a shot at Duncan.
Do you see how valuable tanking is? It is so worth the risk.
Phil Jackson and the New York Knicks officially hit the tank button a few weeks ago as they sent Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith packing to Cleveland.
The Philadelphia 76ers have seemingly been tanking for years now.
The problem with the NBA structure is the fact that the only way to build a dynasty is to build a perennial loser first.
Even a bigger problem than that is there is no way to “prove” that a team is tanking. The players are always playing to win the games. It’s the front offices that make it happen.
I’ve seen the craziest suggestions on how to fix the draft lottery problem.
Some say to put a tournament together for those non-playoff teams. Are you kidding?
Some say to just get rid of the lottery all together. Really?
Some say to just punish the teams that are tanking. How?
Players would never want to play in a tournament that has nothing to do with the NBA Championship. It’s completely unfeasible. Getting rid of the lottery would just make matters worse. And like we previously mentioned, it’s impossible to prove when teams are tanking.
The only way to combat tanking is to increase strategy for front offices.
For every transaction a team makes during the season, they should be penalized percentage odds during the draft lottery. This would put general managers in a tricky spot.
On one hand they want to unload guys to increase their odds at the number one pick this season, but on the other they want to unload guys because it’s also in their best interest too for future seasons.
"If you penalize teams for each transaction going towards the lottery, they’d have to strategize and think long and hard before they start upping transaction numbers during that particular season."
Think about it.
When teams are tanking, they usually rack up the transaction numbers. Trades, releases, signing and the like are higher than any other team.
Obviously this wouldn’t effect any playoff teams, but for the possible non-playoff teams, thinking about your total number of transactions for the season would increase strategy ten-fold.
For every player or draft pick that is traded or acquired counts as one. For every player that is released or signed counts as one. For every player that is activated or deactivated from the 12 or 15 man roster counts as one.
The total number will be added up, and the more transactions you have, the more it will hurt your odds come draft lottery time.
The one thing that hurts this system is injuries.
When guys get injured, they’re removed from the active roster and another guy is added. Why should a team be penalized because of the randomness of injuries?
Well, for one, some tanking teams just have their better players deactivated to sit as they come up with a ridiculous injury reason. Adding this into the mix is something general managers would hate to deal with.
Directly challenging the front office is the way to combat team tanking.
Here’s how the draft lottery odds work, using the weighted system:
250 combinations, 25.0% chance of receiving the #1 pick
The league needs to come up with a new mathematical system that hurts team’s chances based on number of transactions a team accrues during the season. The higher the total number, the more it hurts their chances in Draft Lottery.
199 combinations, 19.9% chance
156 combinations, 15.6% chance
119 combinations, 11.9% chance
88 combinations, 8.8% chance
63 combinations, 6.3% chance
43 combinations, 4.3% chance
28 combinations, 2.8% chance
17 combinations, 1.7% chance
11 combinations, 1.1% chance
8 combinations, 0.8% chance
7 combinations, 0.7% chance
6 combinations, 0.6% chance
5 combinations, 0.5% chance
Obviously, the worst team has the best shot of receiving the first pick, and is always assured of a top four pick.
It is best to leave offseason transaction number out of the equation. If this idea were to be implemented, surely some teams would then target the offseason as the beginning of tanking strategy, but it would be quite difficult. The in-season moves is where it hurts most.
Admittedly, I don’t have the formula to implement this system. I guarantee though that if transaction number hurt a team’s chance in the lottery, many general managers across the league would think twice about starting to deplete the roster when they’ve realized their chance of winning that particular season is gone.
It would be a cat and mouse game for the general manager to play with himself.
Pure torture for him, but well worth it in the eyes of maintaining more integrity within the league.