The NBA has a tanking problem. It’s had a tanking problem for years. This year, it’s getting worse because the upcoming draft has multiple great players.
Earlier this week, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for failing to play healthy players.
During a Saturday press conference held in connection with the All-Star Game, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addressed the issue at length.
“It’s been part of this league for a long time,” Silver said regarding the practice of not trying to win in order to get a better draft pick. “I mean, back in the 1960s there was a coin flip. At some point, I think it was in the 1980s, we moved to a lottery. That lottery has been changed roughly five times over the years, to try to stay ahead of some of the behavior of our teams.
“The incentives are not necessarily matched here. I think that the tradition in sports where the worst performing team receives the first pick from their partners. When any economist comes and looks at our system, they always point out you have the incentives backwards there. That doesn’t necessarily make sense. I think there was a more classical view of that, in the old days, where it was just sort of an understanding among partners about, in terms of behavior.
‘I think what we’re seeing is a modern analytics where it’s so clear that the incentives are misaligned. . . . Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory? Yes, is my view, and which was what led to those fines. And not just those fines, but to my statement that we’re going to be looking more closely at the totality of all the circumstances this season in terms of teams’ behavior, and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice. And there is a bit of a note, when you see it quality to this, I mean, we spend a lot of time at the league office going back and forth with teams on injury reports, on coaches’ decisions. It’s not a position necessarily we want to be in, but . . . it’s not what the fans want at the end of the day.”
Or do they?
“[M]y caveat is, and this is where teams are in a difficult place, many of you in this room have written, understandably, about our teams, that the worst place to be, for example, is to be a middle of the road team,” Silver said. “Either be great or be bad, because then that will help you with the draft. And so, in many cases, you have fans of those teams. It’s not what they want to pay for to see poor performance on the floor, but they’re actually rooting for their teams in some cases to be bad, to improve their draft chances. So, I think we’re coming at it, I’d say, in two ways. One is, again, focusing on the here and now. The behavior we’re seeing from our teams, and doing whatever we can to remind them of what their obligation is to the fans, and to their partner teams. But number two, as I also said in that statement, the Competition Committee started earlier this year, re-examining the whole approach to how the draft lottery works. And ultimately any changes will require a vote of the Board of Governors. So then we’ll need to go in front of the Board. But there have been lots of different ideas out there over the years, not just necessarily changing the draft lottery odds yet once again, but looking at whether there’s a better system here to try to align incentives.
“I think when the point about this year, when you look at totality of the circumstances, I mean, of course, I’m paying attention to what’s happening, and the perception is, you have a very deep draft class this year, a perception. Who knows whether this will be the reality, but the next two years’ draft classes aren’t as good. There’s no doubt that’s affecting the behavior of our teams. But at the end of the day, I think there needs to — I think all the teams need to step back, the ownership of those teams — and just as a reminder that we’re all in this together, that we want to have fair competition, we want to have fair systems, and to keep an eye on the fans, most importantly, and their expectation that we’re gonna be putting the best product forward.”
For as long as the best draft picks are tied to the worst records, tanking will be a problem in every pro sport — including the NFL. And the punishments imposed this week by the NBA are a slap on the wrist. To truly eradicate tanking, the only solution is to take away the pick the tanking team is hoping to maximize.
Would that be extreme? Yes. Would it be effective? Absolutely.
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