As we relayed on Saturday, Adam Silver criticized the practice of tanking during his annual All-Star press conference, calling it “corrosive” for NBA franchises. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst revisits Silver’s comments today, noting that the NBA commissioner referred to the concept of relegation in soccer leagues when he discussed tanking.
“People who are familiar with the operation of other leagues, you understand now why there’s relegation,” Silver said. “Because you pay an enormous price if you’re not competitive. I think, again, for the league and for our teams, there’s that ongoing challenge of whether we can come up with yet a better system.”
As Windhorst acknowledges, there’s no chance that the NBA would consider a system that relegates the league’s worst teams to the G League each season. But Windhorst believes that Silver and the league office would consider instituting anti-tanking measures that go beyond simply adjusting the lottery odds, since those changes have proven to be largely ineffective when it comes to dissuading tanking.
[RELATED: How New Lottery Odds Will Affect NBA’s Race To The Bottom]
What sort of changes could the NBA consider? Windhorst suggests that the teams at the very bottom of the league’s standings could have their payouts from the league-wide revenue pool cut back or eliminated altogether for that season. Alternately, those clubs could be penalized by having their available cap room or exceptions temporarily reduced, Windhorst suggests.
It’s not clear whether the NBA is actually considering possibilities along those lines, but Silver’s reference to a “better system” suggests that the league isn’t necessarily satisfied with the current format, despite the recent tweaks.
With the NBA constantly on the lookout for ways to discourage tanking, we want to know how you’d address the issue. Is the current lottery format satisfactory? Are there changes you’d make to that system? Are there outside-the-box suggestions like Windhorst’s that you’d like to see instituted?
Jump into the comment section below to share your thoughts!
The non-playoff teams are put into a single elimination tournament for the top picks. There would have to be some work-around regarding trading picks prior to the tournament, but that would be a fun week for your team and it could be held during some rest period right before the playoffs start
I get why this would be hard to do with traded picks… but whenever I see this idea it seems like it would be very, very fun.
Or at least it would be very watchable.
I think the new lottery odds are a good start.
Taking teams out of some of the revenue sharing (especially for teams that are in the lottery for multiple years) would also make sense to me.
I think it would be unwise to penalize cap room etc because that would make it more difficult for teams to become competitive again.
I agree, say top 5-7 have same odds and then 8-15 same odds.
I think that money idea is terrible. The small market teams have already had a hard time with the idea of tanking. What would happen is that only big market teams would be able to afford to be at the bottom and tank. While teams like Philly have used their market to tank longer than other teams and small market teams already have to look at the bottom line on how bad they could be, this would give even more of a competitive advantage to the big market teams than there is already.
The real problem with basketball compared to other sports is that you really need to get a star player to have a chance at competing. This means that it makes the most sense to try and draft as high as possible to get a star, especially if you are a market that doesn’t attract stars. This has been made worse because of the super teams. Now it isn’t good enough to just have a superstar player as seen by the Pelicans. This raises the bar for how much talent you have to tank for yo actually compete.
I think the only way to address this is to distribute the star talent more evenly across the league. Since you could never assign stars to teams, the only way I see you being able to distribute stars more evenly is to make it much harder for star players to leave their teams and to form super teams. This is the problem. The league to decide which is more important: reducing the amount of tanking or to allow the players to have as much power and freedom as they do now over dictating where they play. I don’t think they can have it both ways.
They didn’t have this problem in the old days, before free agency, when players were bound to teams for life. Unless the owner decided to trade them. Maybe they should go back to that.
That is my point. Super teams make it so you need to build up a lot more talent before your team can really compete. If you prevent super teams tanking is less of an issue.
Yeah maybe much stronger incentives to resign with a players team in free agency would be better than punishment for teams that can’t win?
Tanking is such a big deal, most franchises would just pay whatever penalty is put up.
A non-playoff single-elim tournament is the fix.
The Knicks are the only sure tanker though. The Suns’ search for a PG has been so hapless that they might be tanking.
But the Bulls fired their coach & sacrificed capspace for immediate veteran help. The Cavs lost their top two after signing one, KLove, to a big contract.
This is a very brief summary but the NBA so far only has about 1.5 tankers. There may be more later, which points to a partial fix:
Establish the draft order around, say, Feb.14, so to eliminate any late backsliding. Allow weak teams to catch fire late in the season without guilt. In other sports, a late surge can carry over and effect change. In the NBA, it means ruining the tank.
The problem is if you are slated to be a 6,7, or 8th seed why not just tank out of the playoffs and into the new tournament where you would be one of the teams who could win it.
Yeah nah, I don’t really agree with you for the simple fact that these players are competitors, they are trying to win .. they really don’t care about what draft pick their team gets.
The only reason the NBA has a problem with tanking is because ratings and ticket prices drop for teams that choose to do so. It’s not good for the rest of the league. But at the same time its completely unfair to ask a team to scrap and spend for a team with a max 7-8 seed potential and get blown out of the first round of the playoffs or worse yet, miss the playoffs entirely and end up with one of the last lottery picks. Then you end up with a chronic middle of the pack team like the Hawks or the Grizzlies who cant attract a big name talent and whose only hope is to get a steal in the draft without a top 10 pick. But the league is fine with that because it puts on a good show to have them get beat up by established franchises on their way to more titles.
Silver doesn’t understand tanking, never has. For years he denied it’s existence. That’s why his measures will never work. It’s inherently a multi-year “process” and that’s what makes it corrosive, and distinguishable from 1 year capitulations. The league should retain Sam Hinke to design a set of anti-tanking rules.
lol perfect choice.
I don’t like even 1yr capitulations though.
It’s just so easy to establish a February cutoff date, or so entertaining to institute a single-elim tourney. Maybe also, with the tourney going, cut short the ridiculous 1vs8 matchup, which is nothing more than giving an Olynyk an opportunity to pull out the arm of a Love. Heck the #8 team would probably rather be in the top pick tourney anyway, so give the #1 a bye.
It’s a balance of giving draft preference to bad teams and preventing tanking.
But I think you can end tanking if you lottery off the top 5 picks, but prohibit a team from getting the top overall pick more than once every 10 years, a top 3 pick more than once every 5 years or a top 5 pick more than once every 2 years. No more than 3 straight top 10 picks. Playoff teams would fill the open spots in reverse order, allowing teams in the middle a chance to get pretty high. Mathematically, its possible the last playoff team gets the first pick.
Knicks (worst record team) wouldn’t be trying to lose the rest of the season if this were in effect. Too speculative.
I don’t like the February cut-off because it encourages what I most want to prevent, planned tanking from the start of the year. I’d think you’d see more and schedules come into play. Plus, a bad team (or a depleted one) out of the playoffs should be playing their young guys late in the season. Every sport has teams that focus on things other than winning once they’re out of the playoffs. I don’t consider that tanking. Not prioritizing winning vs not wanting to win.
That’s like watching the JV game instead of the varsity game!
Of course that the Knicks are 1 out of only 1 or 2 intentional tankers leaguewide is no solace for a Knicks fan.
Suns, Bulls and Cavs are also certainly tankers, as are Hawks, with some finesse. When the FO doesn’t give young players the easy to acquire veterans they need along side them to develop, that’s tanking. If the Suns got themselves a veteran PG (average one, readily attainable) who could get the ball to Ayton, and out of the hands of Booker, they’d have 5 more wins. When a team takes on bad money to get draft picks (Cavs), that’s tanking.
Love(4/$120), TT, Frye, Smith, GHill, Korver.
Three out, Delly & Knight in.
The FO was criticized in the autumn for having so many veterans. And acquiring bad contracts means more veterans.
Tanking means losing on purpose. Silver is not worried about youth movements, esp after a dreadful start. Nobody is.
Two wins in three games vs true tankers PHX & NYK, tripleOT loss to BRK. With CHI it is a group of 4 by W-L record only.
Cavs/Bulls and Knicks/Suns represent different levels of effort to win. Two have been putzing around, two set up to win and just didn’t.
The money idea sucks…but im not surprised thats the nba’s first impulse. There is always going to be a last place team…wont mean theyre tanking.
Heres a genius idea.
Cancel eligibility for top picks consecutive years. Ex. The number 1 pick team can not get a lotto pick due to record the next year, or a 1-5 pick for 2 years… and so on. So basically you will do that for all lotto teams, making them ineligible for the lottery 2 years running. Higher the pick one year lower the pick the next year.
Takes the romance out of tanking.
Also, the 8 seed should be up for grabs at the end of the season. A mini tournament should be held for over three days between the 8,9,10 seeds. 10 plays at 9 winner plays at 8…the winner of the second game gets the 8 seed.
This also encourages winning over end of season tanking. If a 9 10 11 or 12 seed thinks it can get in the mini tournament over the ladt 20 games we wont see so much sh*t basketball at the end of the season.
I have already cancelled my league pass for a multidude of reasons, but tanking is the primary reason.
But who knows..maybe the league is really so incredibly mismanaged and blind they think they can have their wwe narratives, pre-determined finals, fixed games, fake records, terrible rule changes (which make it even easier to fix games) lame, thinly veiled political decisiveness….and no one will notice.
Guess what Silver…we notice…attendance and viewership is dropping.
Fix or contract….im all for watching euro leagues if the nba implodes btw.
This is really complicated, but cause you don’t want to punish teams for legitimately rebuilding. I think stronger financial punishments for shutting down essentially healthy veterans is a start. The new lottery odds was a good start, it’s only a start though. A progressive reduction in revenue share would probably be fair and powerful, perhaps for each concurrent year a team sits as a bottom tend team they lose 25% of their revenue share upto the point that they lose all of it until they get back into the playoffs.
See what you’re saying, just think penalties for losing will hurt small markets the most. There will always be bad teams….thats not the problemimo.
The problem is playing to lose.
Taking away the incentive to lose means overhauling the lottery.
Agree with the shutting players down, but i see that as a symptom, not a cause. The cause is tanking, this year for Zion….next year…wiggins, oh wait…
Develop the g league, fix the lotto.
The money idea sucks…but im not surprised thats the nba’s first impulse. There is always going to be a last place team…wont mean theyre tanking.
Heres a genius idea.
Cancel eligibility for top picks consecutive years. Ex. The number 1 pick team can not get a lotto pick due to record the next year, or a 1-5 pick for 2 years… and so on. So basically you will do that for all lotto teams, making them ineligible for the lottery 2 years running. Higher the pick one year lower the pick the next year.
Takes the romance out of tanking.
Also, the 8 seed should be up for grabs at the end of the season. A mini tournament should be held for over three days between the 8,9,10 seeds. 10 plays at 9 winner plays at 8…the winner of the second game gets the 8 seed.
This also encourages winning over end of season tanking. If a 9 10 11 or 12 seed thinks it can get in the mini tournament over the ladt 20 games we wont see so much sh*t basketball at the end of the season.
I have already cancelled my league pass for a multidude of reasons, but tanking is the primary reason.
But who knows..maybe the league is really so incredibly mismanaged and blind they think they can have their wwe narratives, pre-determined finals, fixed games, fake records, terrible rule changes (which make it even easier to fix games) lame, thinly veiled political decisiveness….and no one will notice.
Guess what Silver…we notice…attendance and viewership is dropping.
Fix or contract….im all for watching euro leagues if the nba implodes btw.
Oh yeah and a hard salary cap for all teams.
There you go geniuses.
And raise the age to 21 for the nba. G leaguers 18 on two way contracts until 3 years in the league, with the number of games in the league increasing each year ex. 40, 50, 65 which can be used in the playoffs. When they hit 21 full season, new contract.
Better, smarter basketball.
Of course the lotto system would need to be more detailed. Below is strictly based on picks from record, not trades.
Ex. 2020
Teams 1-5
2021 no lotto player
2022 no 1-5 player
6-10 teams
2021 lotto player only eligible 11-14
2022 no 1-3 player
11-14 teams
2021 lotto player 4-14
2022 no 1st player
Rights for picks that can not be translated to lotto players but can be sold for cap space (if all teams are on a hard cap with a high minimum) or traded to the bidder of the lotto teams choice for players.
So basically lets say the wolves are in the lottery 2020, 2021 and 2022…that sucks.
In 2020 they get the first pick, thats great!
In 2021 they cant claim a player, but they can sell for cap space or trade the pick for players which they could also do in 2022.
This allows them to acquire players or cap space to get free agents. The team they trade with loses cap space or players but gets a young player on a rookie contract.
Here’s the kicker after year 3 in the lotto teams will be penalized by a heavy lotto tax for any transactions they make via lotto picks, so teams looking to just deal picks will not have much opportunity after 3 years in the lotto.
The lotto tax would be an extra percentage paid to the nba on any extra cap space gained or on top of any acquired players contracts.
Is this so hard?
No, no its not.
I feel like they should spend more time fixing the conferences and making sure the best teams make the playoffs not Charlotte and Detroit. It hurts the NBA more having all the good teams in the West. Right now there’s little incentive for New Orleans, Minnesota, or Sacramento because they’re not good enough to compete with the top Western teams. Put them in the East or make it all 1 conference and you open up those playoff spots.
Im torn on this…in theory i agree… but it wouldnt stop tanking at all.
Simple fix. Reverse the odds for the lottery teams. The team with the best record that misses the playoffs would get the best odds at the #1 pick. Second best gets second best and so on. The worst team would end up around pick #13 unless they beat the odds. I have never understood the NBA’s desire to put the best incoming players on teams unlikely to matter for their first 2-3 years. Putting Zion on the Hawks won’t make them a playoff team immediately. Putting him on the Clippers or the Wizards or the Lakers would.
Teams need to stop being rewarded for being bad. Let them get their late lotto picks and build something. Once they build it to a 30-35 win team, THEN they should get a shot at a high pick to put them over the top.
It would end tanking forever. And it would also end those teams that get stuck in late lottery limbo forever.
I kind of like this…smart, simple.
The only thing i see is teams playing for the 9 not the playoffs.
I really like the 8,9,10 mini tourney for the last seed idea anyway… so i think the draft has to be less incentivised.
The clips who looked good got rid of harris, may drop outof the playoff race. Under the 9 seed is first idea, thats pretty much the same as tanking
But its still better than the current system imo.
Maybe it should go
5 seed lowest odds
6 2nd lowest
7 3rd lowest
8 4th lowest
9 best odds
10 2nd best
11 3rd best
So 12-15 place in both conferences have equal shots at the 15-22 slots
Actually 8,9,10 should have equal (best) odds, then be forced into the mini tournament for the 8 seed.
All 3 teams will be fighting for the playoffs and their odds will stay the same.
New system!
Lotto with mini tournament for 8,9,10 seeds
8,9,10 in the mini tournament for the 8th seed as detailed above.
8,9,10 all have same, best odds at lotto
11 4th best
12 5th best
13 6th best
14 7th best
15 8th best
Seeds 7,6,5 have 4th best odds (same as 11)
Seed 4,has 5th best odds (same as 12)
Seed 3 has 6th best odds (same as 13)
Seed 2 has 7th best odds (same as 14)
Seed 1 has 8th best odds (same as 15)
And we’re done.
Incentives to make the playoffs is huge. Incentives to drop is ver small considering the playoff brackets. Relatively easy to understand.
You’re welcome nba.
Oh
And stop withthe horse sh*t narratives.
Edit
Seeds
1,2,3 same 6th best odds
4, 5 same 5th best odds
6,7 same 4th best odds
8,9,10 (with tourney) 1st best odds
11,12 2nd best odds
13-15 3rd best odds
Okok im done.
No…. but im not
1234 same 4thth best odds
567 same 2nd best odds
8,9,10 (with mini tourny for 8 seed) 1st best odds
11,12,13 same 2nd best odds
14,15 3rd best odds
There!
Just blew a gasket
Make the 1st 2nd and 3rd place odds relatively close with a slightly bigger gap for the 4th place odds.
Why not completely get rid of tanking by using the simplest way. Keep the lottery the way it is, but flip the order in which the odds are determined. That way, the teams closest to the playoffs without making it have the best odds at the top pick, whereas. If any team picks in the top 3, and their record doesn’t improve, they draft any their final league standing that year and don’t get a shot at the lottery.
But is it really the leagues fault some teams just can’t get it together? Let’s look at two teams the past 3 1/2 years the Suns and the Nets. In 2015 the Suns were 39-43 and just missed the playoffs while the Nets were 38-44, got the 8 seed and lost in the 1st round. Then both teams decided to rebuild, The Suns with all their picks and then some(Heat picks for Dragic for ex). And the Nets with none of their picks. Suns draft DBook,Bender,Chriss,Josh Jackson,Ayton and Mikal Bridges all in the lottery. They are 11-48 this year and IMO aren’t really tanking they just can’t win. The Nets had to trade whatever they could for late 1sts and 2nds. Traded Mase Plum for RHJ, Thadeus Young for Caris Levert, Brook Lopez for Dlo, Bogdanovic for Jarrett Allen and taking on Demarre Carroll’s contract for Musa and Kurucs. They are 30-29 and sixth seed. Did the Nets tank? Well they sucked that’s for sure but Boston had all their picks and had no incentive to lose.
To me it’s all about the GM and owner. GMs should be replaced (like Hinkie) if teams continually suck and owners should be taxed similarly to being taxed when over the cap repeatedly. Have a Lottery “Repeater” tax that gets more excessive every year the team is in the lottery. GMs replaced after 3 consecutive years in the lottery.
If that doesn’t work and a team is in the lottery for 3 straight years, The player on the rookie contract from the 1st year in the lottery will be unrestricted instead of restricted. For example, if Devin Booker didn’t agree to that max extension, he’d be free to go anywhere he wants. Just an idea or 3