As this season’s NBA Playoffs begin, it is very apparent there’s a large talent gap throughout the league between the few elite teams, the middle class, and the ever-growing group of bottomfeeders. Despite a season in which we saw numerous records broken and amazing individual performances, this year’s Larry O’Brien Trophy is all but guaranteed to be taken by the likes of the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, or Cleveland Cavaliers. Parity is something that is greatly lacking in today’s NBA despite the league housing countless all-star level players, and is something that needs to addressed before the league becomes a constant three or four team show.
The driving force behind this talent discrepancy problem in the NBA is the recent movement of “tanking” that has been undertaken by multiple NBA front offices within recent years. The ideology of tanking is that you take advantage of the NBA’s flawed lottery system which decides where non-playoff teams select in the yearly draft by intentionally losing games throughout the year, especially post All-Star break. Intentional losing is accomplished by teams giving a large amount of minutes to inexperienced young players who are yet to get their feet under them in the NBA, as well as avoiding signing and trading for more talented veteran players.
The movement of tanking in today’s NBA essentially began with former Philadelphia 76er’s general manager, Sam Hinkie taking the franchise in the 2013 offseason. He began the taking process by trading the team’s all-star point guard Jrue Holiday to the New Orleans Pelicans for a first round draft pick (which turned into promising young center Nerlens Noel who was later traded to the Dallas Mavericks) and later waiving center Andrew Bynum, a former all-star center who sat out the previous season due to injury. Hinkie would continue the tanking the process through 2016 when he was eventually let go by the 76ers. In this time period however, the 76ers went a combined 47-199, easily the worst mark in the NBA that time period and became the laughing stock of the league.
Despite the intentions of building up young talent and draft picks through this tanking process, the 76ers only once earned the first overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft where they took Australian forward Ben Simmons, only for him to sit out the whole 2016-17 season with injury. The other significant draft pick under Hinkie was Cameroonian center Joel Embiid, who sat out two years with injury after being taken 3rd overall in the 2014 NBA Draft. Embiid was extremely productive in his first on-court season in 2016-17 but only managed to play 31 games before being shut down for the season due to injury.
Tanking has been undertaken by multiple other franchises in recent years such as the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Brooklyn Nets, and Minnesota Timberwolves to name a few. All teams tank in hopes that the yearly draft lottery favors them and gives them a high selection. The draft lottery is currently a flawed system with all 14 non-playoff teams having varying chances at each draft slot. Teams with the worst record have a higher chance of earning the first overall pick but even then, the team with the worst overall record only has a 25% chance of earning that giving all the other teams incentive to try and tank given that they also have a decent chance at earning that pick.
The NBA should implement two major changes to the lottery to try and stop the tanking epidemic taking over the league. First, the lottery should be changed so that only the bottom four or six teams have a chance at earning the first overall pick in a new super lottery so to speak. The remaining eight or ten non playoff teams would have a separate lottery to decide their drafting positions, allowing for teams who just miss the playoffs to possibly earn a high draft pick, allowing for better teams to inhabit the league.
Additionally, lottery position shouldn’t be decided by position by record but rather by the date when each team is eliminated from playoff contention. Currently teams looking to win the lottery bench their best players down the stretch to worsen their record, thus producing some of the worst basketball of the season, an injustice to the fans who support them yearly. By deciding lottery position by date of elimination, that would allow for lottery bound teams to try and win their last stretch of games and play their young talent in an attempt to get them invaluable NBA experience.
All in all, the league isn’t likely to change the current NBA draft lottery system anytime soon, given that commissioner Adam Silver came out and said that star players resting was the league’s number one problem right now. The NBA is a star driven league so it makes sense they would prefer for the focus to be on the league’s best teams and players. But it’s a huge injustice to fans all throughout the league when nearly a fourth of the league is tanking on a year to year basis in hopes of lucking into the next LeBron James or Michael Jordan. Hopefully sometime soon, the NBA will take some sort of action to fix this tanking problem, and give every a team an incentive to do what they’re actually meant to do, try and win.
