Dr. Tankslove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Process

[Photo: NBA]

All-Star Weekend. Brand new format. What’s the topic of conversation in the NBA? Well, at least before the story about Kevin Durant’s burner Twitter account broke, it was tanking. See, Adam Silver is very upset about tanking. Front Office Sports:

“Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory?” Silver said. “Yes, is my view.”

Silver’s comments come two days after he fined the Jazz $500,000 for sitting Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarter against the Magic in a game in which they led at the end of the third quarter. The Jazz have a top-eight protected pick in June’s draft that would go to the Thunder if it falls to ninth or lower.

Silver also fined the Pacers $100,000 for sitting Pascal Siakam after an independent physician determined he could have played in a Feb. 3 game against the Jazz in which the team ruled him out due to injury. 

In the announcement of the fines, Silver condemned the teams’ behavior and said the league is looking to “implement further measures to root out this type of conduct.”

So what can be done? Back to FOS: 

The NBA has altered the draft lottery over the years, flattening the odds of the bottom three in 2019 from a 25% chance at the No. 1 pick to 14% in an attempt to curb tanking. In December, ESPN reported that the league is looking into new ways to further prevent it, including teams not being allowed to have a top-four pick in consecutive years, locking lottery positions after March 1, and altering pick protections to top-four and 14 and higher.

The NHL does something similar to the first suggestion, with teams unable to move up in the draft more than twice in a five-year span. An important difference in the NHL, though, is that if a team was slotted in at #1 before the lottery and wins the #1 pick or slotted in at 2 and wins pick #2 (their lottery is only for the top 2 picks), that does not count towards the 2 in 5 years limit. The NBA idea doesn’t work that way and I think that would be for the better. Locking lottery positions on March 1 is an interesting idea but I don’t know how you implement it given the existence of the play-in tournament. Limiting protections to “top 4” or “lottery” is something that would solve some problems and should definitely be done. 

However, flattening the odds the way they did has only resulted in more teams getting in on the tank. Options here:

1. Eliminate the lottery, draft in reverse order of record. Eliminates some tanking, but in some draft years, turns the bottom of the league into Super Ultra Tankapalooza.

2. Eliminate the lottery, draft order is set by number of wins after being eliminated from playoff contention. Will that lead to teams trying to tank early to get eliminated and give themselves the most chances to get wins? Yep. Will they be able to flip that switch like that? Probably not. Will someone eventually get a high pick because a star player got hurt and then was able to come back after the team was out of the playoff race? Yes, but that you just have to live with.

3. Keep the lottery, but unflatten the odds. The bottom of the league is still going to tank, but it makes less sense for more teams to do so.

4. Totally flatten the odds. No incentive to tank when the worst record and the 10th-worst record have the same odds for the #1 pick. Does it incentivize missing the playoffs? Sure does. Will it lead to teams who aren’t that bad getting top picks more frequently? Also yes. The latter you just have to live with, just as you have to live with some amount of tanking depending on where you stop drawing the lottery balls, unless you do the whole non-playoff order via lottery. As for the former, podcaster Andrew Sharp has an idea: 

 

• “Teams in seventh place or lower, in both conferences, are all entered into the NBA lottery in May.
• Each of the 18 lottery teams has the same odds.
• The lottery determines the top five picks.
• Picks 6-18 are then determined by record, with the worst teams getting the highest picks.

That’s it!

That system pulls in playoff teams, broadening the pool of lottery entrants and further randomizing the outcome, while also limiting the incentive for, say, an eighth place team to tank out of the playoffs for a chance at a top five pick. Every lottery team gets a 6.25% chance at number one, and losing games in the meantime does not move the needle one way or the other.”

Love it, as long as this is called the Jerry Reinsdorf Rule. 

Are any of these solutions perfect? Nope. And therein lies the lesson here: you’ll never eliminate tanking. The NFL and NHL have it, too, and it’s not going away there, either. The dynamics are different in MLB because of how their whole system works, but they’ve got a problem that’s even worse than what Adam Silver is dealing with and it’s not the Dodgers spending a gorillion dollars. That’s a separate column, but the issue there is owners being fine with their teams nor being competitive as long as they continue to rake in boatloads of money. 

But, to be fair, who doesn’t like boatloads of money? The NBA does. That’s why they want to put the best product possible out there and stop teams from sitting guys for bogus reasons. (Well, that, and the fact that there are other boatloads of money being wagered on these games and more boatloads being spent on advertising by the folks taking said action.) The desire for boatloads of money is why every team has multiple alternate jerseys, with a new City edition every year. It’s the reason play-in exists. More games, more TV dollars!

It’s in that spirit that I present the “We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat” Tournament for the #1 Pick:

 

Teams are seeded by the number of wins they have after being eliminated from playoff contention. Seeds 11-14 are the play-in losers and, since that number will be 0 for them, get seeded in reverse order of their record. Winner picks #1, runner-up picks #2, and there’s a game for the #3 pick. Picks 4-14 are in reverse order of record among teams who didn’t place in the tournament. Does this end tanking? No, not really. It might help a little, but as we’ve established, you’re never going to get rid of tanking altogether. Would this be fun, though? You bet it would! There’s only one place that could handle a tournament like this. We both know what is, so let’s say it together on 3.

Ready?

1, 2, 3 – Cancun!

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