Why doesn't the NBA just End Tanking ?

Just putting it out there...

Deliberately playing to lose is bad for sports, athletes, coaches and fans yet tanking is an artform in the NBA. It sucks wanting your team to win but at some level hoping they lose to secure a better chance in the lottery. So why doesn't the NBA just end this blight on their product.

I wonder why they don't start afresh by drafting purely by equal random lottery for all 30 teams, whether playoff or not, so there's no benefit whatsoever in the draft from tanking. Equal chance sounds fair. The league could continue with random lottery every year, or adjust picks in a fair basis so over time every team gets an equal range of picks of different quality.

For example, divide all teams into 3 groups according to their pick in year one then rotate the order every subsequent year. So the Pels might get a top ten pick in year one, that means in year two they get a second tier pick from 11-20, and in year 3 a third tier pick from 21-30, then in year four they get back into the top ten and all teams rotate in a similar fashion.

That's just one way of doing it but the concept is that over time the process should benefit all teams equally. What do you think ? :huh2:

Makes sense to me

Sure. Same team that wins the lottery also wins Finals. Sounds like a game plan. Let’s give the Lakers a chance to win so it is fair.

Tanking isn't the problem. This "solution" is a terrible idea. The bad teams would be even worse with no hope of getting better.

The biggest problem is not having a hard cap and giving players too much freedom to move to other teams / force their way out. The NBA model is short-sighted. They traded parity for star in big market marketability / super-teams. Which makes $ sense in the short-term, but is less $ long-term and you end up with a less interesting product. Need to move things closer to the way it's done in the NFL IMO.

Tanking has been fixed, but this doesn't solve the talent problem. This year is a very good draft with a very bad FA. In years like this, you'll see a more apparent display of tanking because we are really forced to get better through just one avenue that strictly dependent on losing. When you got really smart organization tanking. Then, you maybe try to spend a little time why teams are tanking. Particularly well run organization like Toronto and OKC.

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Originally Posted by donato

Tanking isn't the problem. This "solution" is a terrible idea. The bad teams would be even worse with no hope of getting better.

The biggest problem is not having a hard cap and giving players too much freedom to move to other teams / force their way out. The NBA model is short-sighted. They traded parity for star in big market marketability / super-teams. Which makes $ sense in the short-term, but is less $ long-term and you end up with a less interesting product. Need to move things closer to the way it's done in the NFL IMO.

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I disagree. The data shows that the next generation isnt really fans of teams, they are fans of players. And if that trend holds, movement and super teams will drive more eyeballs and discussion. Us old men will hate it but that generation wants what they want and the NBA is set up to give it to them

The NBA will need to figure out how to generate revenue from that demographic, as convential TV deals wont cut it. They are gonna have to get creative but future fans wont have message boards about teams. It will be WadavianReport.com - an all things Wadavian Sprewell site dedicated to WaSpe's greatest moments

Penalizing teams for being bad is not going to solve the problem at all. This would just give big markets more power than they already have. If anything, small market teams struggle enough with tampering and national media swaying/shilling for big market teams.

Until there is a relegation system, there will always be tanking. It's that simple.

Yeah this idea is terrible.

It's essentially, as other people have mentioned, a way to ensure that bad teams have a higher chance of being bad for longer, and for good teams to build up an embarrassment of riches.

Bad teams are generally bad for a reason. Sometimes that's not the case and they're just bad out of misfortune or poor timing but if a franchise is bad for an extended period of time it's likely that it's not got very many good players, the coach probably isn't the world's best, and the management may not be good.

So let's say you have the league's worst team, and they get the #1 pick one year and they (being a bad team) draft poorly. Well, that's it for them: their next 3 years are pretty much guaranteed to suck because the next year they're only going to get the #11 pick and then the #21 the year after, and it's not like bad teams are experts at digging out the diamonds in the rough. Besides, the likelihood of diamonds in the rough existing as far as the 20th pick drops if you suddenly have all the league's top FOs drafting in the top 10 in that third year: they tend to recognise higher end prospects. In this system, one bad draft pick derails a re-build for 3 years. The Sixers ''process'' would have lasted about 40 years with this setup.

Secondly, as I mentioned, just as bad teams tend to be bad for a reason, good teams tend to be good. By and large (not always) a good team given a top 5 pick will pick a player who ends up at least working well for their system and roster, if not ending up as one of the best players in the draft. This is just a way to ensure that every 3 years Golden State gets Luka Doncic. Now dynasty's don't last a couple of years until their core ages out, they last (at least theoretically) forever, as good teams are constantly guaranteed fairly high draft picks to continue bolstering their resources and/or trading off high value picks to bad teams to scoop their antsy stars.

As for how it discourages tanking, my question is: does it?

Honestly, while we all know there's some tanking going on here and there through the league, at a certain point it becomes incredibly difficult to tell when a team is tanking vs when a team is just bad. Are we going to punish the numerous actually bad teams and harm their chances of realistic improvement (for a lot of terrible teams, basically the only way to add a star is the draft) because every year there's one or two teams playing the system? That's a way to ensure that your bottom tier teams never improve.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Yeah this idea is terrible.

It's essentially, as other people have mentioned, a way to ensure that bad teams have a higher chance of being bad for longer, and for good teams to build up an embarrassment of riches.

Bad teams are generally bad for a reason. Sometimes that's not the case and they're just bad out of misfortune or poor timing but if a franchise is bad for an extended period of time it's likely that it's not got very many good players, the coach probably isn't the world's best, and the management may not be good.

So let's say you have the league's worst team, and they get the #1 pick one year and they (being a bad team) draft poorly. Well, that's it for them: their next 3 years are pretty much guaranteed to suck because the next year they're only going to get the #11 pick and then the #21 the year after, and it's not like bad teams are experts at digging out the diamonds in the rough. Besides, the likelihood of diamonds in the rough existing as far as the 20th pick drops if you suddenly have all the league's top FOs drafting in the top 10 in that third year: they tend to recognise higher end prospects. In this system, one bad draft pick derails a re-build for 3 years. The Sixers ''process'' would have lasted about 40 years with this setup.

Secondly, as I mentioned, just as bad teams tend to be bad for a reason, good teams tend to be good. By and large (not always) a good team given a top 5 pick will pick a player who ends up at least working well for their system and roster, if not ending up as one of the best players in the draft. This is just a way to ensure that every 3 years Golden State gets Luka Doncic. Now dynasty's don't last a couple of years until their core ages out, they last (at least theoretically) forever, as good teams are constantly guaranteed fairly high draft picks to continue bolstering their resources and/or trading off high value picks to bad teams to scoop their antsy stars.

As for how it discourages tanking, my question is: does it?

Honestly, while we all know there's some tanking going on here and there through the league, at a certain point it becomes incredibly difficult to tell when a team is tanking vs when a team is just bad. Are we going to punish the numerous actually bad teams and harm their chances of realistic improvement (for a lot of terrible teams, basically the only way to add a star is the draft) because every year there's one or two teams playing the system? That's a way to ensure that your bottom tier teams never improve.

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You totally disregard the Big Market / Small Market Imbalance. Until or unless there is a Hard Cap incorporated in the CBA, nothing will change and small markets will be devoid of matured talent (see: Baron Davis, Chris Paul (when he left NO), Anthony Davis, Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, etc). Small markets will grow the talent and large markets will reap the benefits.

What would half our fans have to root for then?

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Originally Posted by As I See It

You totally disregard the Big Market / Small Market Imbalance. Until or unless there is a Hard Cap incorporated in the CBA, nothing will change and small markets will be devoid of matured talent (see: Baron Davis, Chris Paul (when he left NO), Anthony Davis, Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, etc). Small markets will grow the talent and large markets will reap the benefits.

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And yet, the same people who have a problem with this probably have no problem with how college football has been destroyed for half the fans in the country by the P5/G5 BS.

College football is a different animal. Different teams have different budgets / advantages, and the players get to choose where they want to go from the get-go. Not a good comparison.

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Originally Posted by donato

College football is a different animal. Different teams have different budgets / advantages, and the players get to choose where they want to go from the get-go. Not a good comparison.

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Its an excellent comparison. Because ever since they branded the schools as P5 or G5, they basically labelled the G5 as "bad teams". In so doing, the media narrative has caused kids to believe it, and therefore only want to play at "P5" schools, widening the talent gap. Now, they've pushed the envelope further by allowing a one time transfer without sitting out. Basically, G5 schools grow the talent, then the P5s come along and reap the benefits, which makes the talent gap even wider. Same reason we lost players like CP3 and AD is why G5 schools will lose a player that has one good season to a P5.