Tanking was a hot topic at Adam Silver‘s annual All-Star weekend press conference, with the commissioner vowing that “every possible remedy” is being considered to curtail the practice, writes Joe Vardon of The Athletic.
Silver suggested the solution could involve limiting the number of teams that participate in the lottery each year. It currently includes the 14 teams that miss the playoffs, with the three worst records getting the best chance at the top pick and the odds declining with each spot.
“It’s time to take a fresh look at this and to see whether that’s an antiquated way of going about doing it,” Silver said of the lottery.
A strong draft class is providing extra incentive for teams to lose to improve their lottery odds, and Silver agrees that tanking is already worse than it’s been in past seasons. The NBA announced fines against the Jazz and Pacers this week for failing to use star players, but Silver said that’s not how the league wants to police tanking.
“I don’t think that’s the way to manage the system long term,” he said. “… It will lead to very unhealthy relationships between us and our teams.”
The commissioner addressed several other topics during his session with reporters:
- Silver confirmed that expansion will be discussed when the league’s Board of Governors meets next month, but a vote will not take place, Vardon adds. A final decision will be made at some point this year. There will be no consideration of moving a current franchise to either Seattle or Las Vegas, which Silver cited in December as two of the cities the league is eyeing for expansion teams. Silver stated there’s no set number of teams that will be added if the league decides to expand, and that decision will be made after an investigation of the marketplace.
- Silver confirmed that the NBA’s new league in Europe could be ready to begin play by the 2027/28 season, per Keith Smith of Spotrac (Twitter link). Progress is being made with banking partners as well as organizations that are viewed as potential league members. He emphasized the popularity of basketball in Europe and stressed that the NBA is prepared for a lengthy commitment. “If you are looking for a short-term return, you should probably look elsewhere,” Silver said. “But we plan to be invested for years to build this base.”
- Silver stated that “no decisions have been made” regarding the Aspiration case involving the Clippers, Smith adds (Twitter link). He noted that the investigation is being conducted by an outside firm and said team officials have been cooperative. The Clippers are hosting All-Star weekend, but Silver said that hasn’t affected the timing of a ruling.
Give it to the kings
all silver cares about is $
its no coincidence doncic went to big time lakers for a draft pick & a 12 pack of beer
then mavs with a 1% chance, get the top overall pick
and 20 of 30 teams have the opportunity, after regular season concludes, to win the championship. thats 2/3 of the whole f’ing league dude. what was wrong with 16? its just more games, more ratings, more $.
and the nba cup sucks. nobody cares. more ratings, more $. thats all he gives a sh*t about
and now he whining and complaining about tanking? stfu and gtfo
It is a business. What should he care about?
Something other than money
He should care about his complexion! The man looks like a starved ghoul!
If the NBA cup is drawing more ratings as you yourself state, how can it be that “nobody cares?”
Enough of the rigged lottery stuff. All teams have representatives when they draw the balls. If you think the other lottery teams wouldn’t say anything about in the hopes that one day it’s their turn is completely insane.
1% isn’t 0%. Statistics don’t care how unlikely you THINK something is. In the famous words of one Lloyd Christmas –
“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?!”
The only people who get upset about others calling out the rigged draft (which happened the exact same way when AD forced himself to the Lakers, next year Pelicans get the #1 pick) are LeLakers fans.
Except for that’s provably incorrect as I am not a “LeLakers” fan. I’m sorry that math is scary.
The tanking is bad but imo not close to the number one issue. Biggest league problem rn is clearly the style of play, wayy too many threes and homogenous offenses .
The fact that 40-50% of shots taken are 3s is vomit inducing . This just isn’t basketball. The amount of times I’ll see a guy get to a wide open 16 footer but pass it out for an eventual contested 3 makes my head hurt .
Not expecting any change here of course
I couldn’t agree more. I was an avid fan for decades, then the offense became pick and pop 6 times, and give up open layups for 3s. I understand a lot of it is analytics-driven – and to some extent I like analytics – but it’s been unwatchable for me since this shift to shooting 3s 40-50% of the time.
Argh good old analytics hey. Guys growing up think the three ball is the most efficient shot. Still a lay up (dunk) and free throw, don’t care what the analytic guys say.
The balance between offense and defence is way out of whack.
Yeah it is, big time. I think it’s less that threes are the most efficient shot, but more so that open threes are worth the risk or some nonsense like that. I don’t know, though. Some analytics are helpful, but threes being shot 40-50% of the time and passing up easier open shots is unwatchable.
True, but that’s a bit harder to solve. There’s no reason the league shouldn’t be able to address the tanking issue. Maybe they won’t be able to completely eliminate it, but curbing it should be quite doable. And the league shouldn’t have to worry as much about pushback from the players, union or, hopefully, the owners.
If you address the play style issue, you’d essentially be changing the game itself, may have to adjust all of the courts, could get pushback from the players themselves who have grown up taught to play the game this way, etc. And there’s obviously no rolling back all of the analytics stuff. Whatever the solution is, it needs to account for whatever the next analytics-based adjustment would be.
I feel like it will get addressed eventually (perhaps insufficiently), but we’re probably a half-decade to a full decade out from anything happening on that front imo.
Solo cambiando que el tiro de tres puntos que sea de dos y que el tiro de dos que sea de tres
Agreed. That and the flopping! That drives me nuts. I know they tried to address that a couple years back and it lasted like 2 weeks and they barely called it. They really need to fix that though. I’d be embarrassed to flop around like a fish out of water like some of those players do.
I’ve watched the game since 1981. Flopping occurred frequently back then, I’m sure it did before and always will.
The flopping issue will probably never be fixed sadly. No way the union would ever go for stronger enforcement. The system is working exactly as intended.
I’m pro-union in general, but this is one of the biggest issues I have with them: they are often short-sighted and tend to not consider any potential impact outside of their members. Yes, that is by design, but sometimes that can have negative societal impacts (police, etc) or, with sports, just a negative impact on the fans and the game itself.
Even with that said, though, if the union were smart it would realize less flopping and other nonsense = more viewership = more money for its members. And, of course, the players would eventually adjust to whatever the new penalties would be, so the most significant losses would only be temporary. But, again, I doubt they’d ever go for such changes.
Whose idea was it to have the 3 point contest first?
That is like have the main event go first…
Who’s idea was it to have it so damn early? NBC should have just given it up this year since they only care about the Olympics. Can’t call it Saturday Night when you start it 2PM on the West, I missed everything but catching last round of dunk.
They could have easily started the show 4PM or 5 like TNT use to.
Right? I missed the whole thing pretty much lmao
Expansion is the last thing the nba needs. Expansion will just water-down the league even more
Do the draft same as the last. Problem solved.
How can any commissioner talk of expansion when 1/3rd or more of his league’s teams are willing to surrender entire seasons to the cause of hapless losing, just to get a chance at the precious little impact talent that comes into the league each year-?
Silver’s statement indicates he really doesn’t get it, and likely never will. The sport doesn’t need another one of his indirect complex remedies to a very simple and self-inflicted problem. Just stop rewarding losing via the draft. Do it, and tanking ends forever. Continuing to lawyer it will just lead to it surviving (usually in a worse state) through the next cycle. Unfortunately, this tends to be a result that bureaucrats like Silver prefer.
If you eliminate the draft the small market teams could never get good players on rookie deals, period. That would be catastrophic. It would be Globetrotters v Generals.
That’s not true; as long as there is a salary cap, all teams would get their share. What is true is that, under the current system, teams that lose on purpose get a monopoly on the generational talent at the top of each draft. That IS catastrophic for the quality of play and just basic fairness. Imagine a league giving away its most valuable assets exclusively to teams that don’t even try to contribute to the product.
FWIW, I didn’t advocate eliminating the draft, although that would certainly be preferrable than the current system. A draft where the order of picks rotates regardless of W/L record is more equitable and better for the sport (even without considering tanking). But it would also eliminate tanking.
The problem with tanking isn’t that tanking is getting small market teams generational talent.. that’s an insane statement to make and one that takes 4 seconds of critical thinking to debunk. These are the 7 worst teams by record over the last 15 seasons:
Detroit, Charlotte, Orlando, Sacramento, DC, New Orleans, and Brooklyn
Which of those teams has “monopolized” the draft?
The actual problem with tanking is that nobody wants to watch games that they know the outcome of before it starts. When 1/3 of the league is either very bad or pretending to be very bad to get a higher draft slot, then the regular season stops mattering. That’s a road to a very quick death
There’s Probably 15-20 dudes coming in this year that I’d consider rotation players or better. The 14th man off the most teams bench would’ve been 8th man or better 15 years ago.
They should do that the PHWL does, once a team is eliminated from the playoff race, they basically need to continue winning in order to get the #1 pick. So it’s like a “new season” among the non-playoff teams. So if a team gets eliminated early, they have a head start.
Then there would be a huge incentive to get eliminated early, which just moves the problem to a little sooner. Teams would tank in January and February and THEN start trying to win, knowing that if they get eliminated early they still have games against teams trying to be eliminated.
There is no solution. High draft picks are too valuable given how good and cheap rookies are now. Teams will twist themselves to fit any scheme the league comes up with.
Bottom 8 have a play in tourney for #1 pick. You’ll have to roster a competitive team.
We do this in one of my dynasty leagues.
I definitely prefer it to the traditional system, but I think the better solution would be to play for best lottery odds. That way a poorly timed injury, variance, etc., wouldn’t completely kill a team’s chances of a high pick.
Obviously, folding this into the regular season would be tough, especially for teams whose playoff fate would not be decided until the last minute. I think you’d basically have to operate it outside of the regular season, but then again that would overlap with the play-in/playoffs and the league would never want to distract from the main event. And the summer is a no-go for various reasons. So I’m not sure how it could really work.
Plus, the problem with including only the bottom-8 is 9-10 would have an incentive to tank to get into that tourney, and you might even have a few otherwise play-in teams decide it would be better to get in on that action than get blasted in the playoffs. Tough to address that particular issue.
Considering all of the above, the best realistic version of this idea I can come up with currently is:
-Play-in+ teams are locked 78 games into the season
-For the playoff odds tourney teams, the last 4 games would consist of the single-elimination tournament games and would include all of the remaining teams
-For the play-in+ teams, the last 4 games would still count toward the standings and they could vie for seeding, etc
-The play-in teams who ultimately miss the playoffs would be included in the lottery but have the same flat lottery odds equivalent to the last place finisher in the tourney. You could also give these teams a supplemental 2nd round pick considering they would not be able to participate in the playoff odds tourney.
-Implement other lottery changes such as the same team not being able to get a top-4 pick three years in a row or a top-1 pick more than once in a three-year span
Beyond that, I’ve already proposed my own tanking solution here a few times in the past which I think would work well enough, but it’s interesting trying to brainstorm some alternative options as well. And from the league’s perspective, I think a draft pick or pick odds tourney would be a draw for teams that normally would bring no excitement at that point in the season (and fans who don’t care about the general playoff races)
This is a nice idea honestly. Can even weave it into the regular season, or replace the useless “mid season trophy”
As a fan I don’t care about tanking. Every year you have bad teams. What do expect them to do. But to play for next year. You play young guys, new guys to build for next yr. And a top pick is part of that. We just have to accept that as part of rebuilding.
It’s the perennial loser that is annoying. And it should be most annoying to their home fans. If you stay a loser. You will hurt your product. And your standing as a pro team. The NBA can punish them . With no all star gms. And no prime time television scheduling. Plus Sterling can just make sure they don’t get a top pick. Simple really …..
Relegate bottom x number of NBA teams to the new European league…before any draft.
Again, tanking exists because of talentless, directionless, front offices filled to the brim with nepos and useless rich guys. The best way out of it is this:
1. Make every team select a franchise player out of their current roster
2. Redraft the entire league, running it through every type of ai and analysis machine or whatever so that every team is at least on paper, equal to each other. Do this every 5 or so seasons.
3. Go to full, regular lottery drafting
4. Then we get full parity, with only injuries deciding everything.
HAHAHAHAHA
He’s gotten to the point where the only way to fix the Warriors is to completely redraft the NBA but has to have the caveat that they keep Curry.
There has never been so much cope brought forward by one person. Kind of impressive tbh.
This is the most ridiculous idea I’ve seen promoted. The most obvious reason is what it does to the fan who builds up allegiances to their favorite players. But we could talk about contracts or impact on GMs and owners or team values… take your pick. There are dozens if not hundreds of reasons why this is a bad idea.
I don’t know you that well but I’m guessing you are a warriors or Bucks fan and want the league to bail out the complete mismanagement of talent on those teams.
Do you prefer Adam Silver’s idea? Where there is no draft at all and all those players just become free agents?
Barely any players play more than 5 years on any 1 team anyway.
Easy fix:
Toilet bowl playoffs
One and done ncaa style for the draft order. Give the winning teams players a 20 million purse so teh veterans try.
Magically over night, being 17th will be the new tanking goal.
Ta da
Easy and fun.
Reward trying to win.
Easy fix: instead of expansion, create a second division were teams can be relegated to
Not quite so easy. Owners spent billions buying these teams. Springing this on them would tank team values and the NBA owners and league would be stuck in litigation for decades
The TWolves ownership mess would be minuscule by comparison.
Owners bought a product that was agreed upon.
Here’s how you get rid of tanking… stop having a weighted lottery. Make every team have the same odds for each pick no matter the standings.
Not fair to the bad teams? Too bad, stop sucking
too fair to the good teams? Why are you punishing them for being good?
In business and life if you fail you fail. Rou pick yourself up and try harder. Stop giving handouts. Stop rewarding bad play. Stop rewarding tanking.
Or have it rotate.
Charlotte has had an NBA team for 35 yrs. In that time they have had 29 lottery picks. And 2926 will be 36 yrs and 30 lottery picks. Tanking hasn’t worked for them.
Thunder tanking isn’t what got them a title. They had more draft talent in OKC in KD and Russ era. Their best moves were SGA trade, Caruso trade, IHart FA signing. So you can cry all you want about tanking. It isn’t the tanking that works. It’s talent evaluation and development. Who are the consistent tankers. And what have they done. Spurs tanked for Robinson and Duncan. Yet it was Ginobili and Parker late picks who put them over top. Team building is not about tanking. Its about getting that one or two players you can build around. But there are no guarantees if you don’t know talent. Or know how to develop talent.
Exactly. Which is why it is so pathetic when a team pulls their starters in the 4th to intentionally lose a game. Have some self respect. A little bit better odds in the draft ain’t going to save you if you are training your players to lose. I would say not my problem, except I have to watch my team play these losers. It sucks.
The Spurs were already a 50 win team when they landed Duncan.
They were 20-62 when they drafted Duncan. Your Sony had the Japanese basketball …
They were bad cause players went down with injuries. And Celtics, Grizzlies had worse records. And they still didn’t have Ginobili and Tony. And they lost Elliot to injury. Was never the same. Spurs did what you are suppose to do play for next year.
Looked at that 1997 draft. Terrible draft class omg. Never knew it.
Tanking got them everyone but SGA. They couldn’t have done the Caruso trade without an abundance of picks and they couldn’t have signed Hartenstein without having a young cheap roster.
I think you are reinforcing the point. They used all the tools, drafting, trades, signings and internal development to build a winner. Plus they never pulled players from games to intentionally lose. Then you look at NOLA or Charlotte who year after year get high picks and never put it together. Or look at Indiana, who never had a high draft pick but did put it together. This idea that if we throw away 4 seasons we will all of a sudden be a great team is garbage. High picks are no replacement for a well run organization. At the end of the day, good organizations will figure out how to be good no matter the rules. So why are we giving the worst organizations the best players? Why is a professional sport making losing an essentially part of the game?
You’re right. The Thunder didn’t pull players, they’d just sit SGA for multiple games every season when it was time to tank.
Thunder got SGA for 2019-20. Since then they have had 5 lottery picks —— 2021 – Giddey #6, traded 2022 #2 Chet, #12 JWill, 2024 #10 Wallace, 2024 #12 Topic.
Only Chet was an OKC lottery pick that helped. JWill was a Clippers pick. Giddey was traded for Caruso. So again it wasn’t the tanking that got them picks or talent. It was trades and talent evaluation. Only Chet and Wallace is an OKC pick that helped. Wallace a bench player. They found talent outside the lottery to fill team. IHart was a FA. Thinder was built on tanking. Tanking is only a guarantee to a loser mentality. And creating players who learn to steal money. So Jazz can tank forever for all I care. They will never win till they give the name back to N.O.
Cursed lol.
I agree with you that the Thunder built through trades, but tanking played a small part and was def part of the strategy. It’s the reason they got Chet and Giddey. Just because they weren’t the most important pieces doesn’t mean the Thunder didn’t tank.
They had a playoff level team, got rid of Paul and Horford and sat Shai several games in the early 2020s. Go look at the game logs.
Teams in that situation have to go young. I don’t blame them. That team couldn’t win a title. I am not even opposed to tanking in general so long as teams play hard with the guys on the court.
Trades were a bigger deal, for the Thunder, because of how they executed them… but tanking was definitely part of the strategy.
My point of using the Thunder was to show. They didn’t just tank every yr. Only Giddey, Chet, Watson were lottery picks from their tanking. They did it thru accumulation of picks. And a few good trades. They still have extra picks today. But they weren’t going for a top three pick every year. Like Utah, Charlotte, Sixers, Nets. I’m hopefully showing. That it takes more than just tanking. Caruso, SGA, IHart imo are more important moves. They weren’t done thru tanking. They got most ofbtheir pucks. From taking on bad contracts. Tanking in most cases hasn’t worked. You have to onow talent.
I am saying tanking is part of the business. I’m not complaining about it. Teams that constantly tank. Only hurt themselves. So I don’t see a problem. And we all know Silver can fix the outcome he wants in draft. One pick, top pick isn’t making you a contender. Even tanking every yr isn’t. You are just building a loser team. Guys get paid to lose. That’s what you are building. It’s all about knowing talent and what to do with it.
@chuck
That is a complete fantasy you made up in your head. OKC had 2 losing seasons after KD left and they weren’t until Russ and PG got moved. The “abundance of draft picks” was handed to them along with SGA by a team trying to win it all. What does tanking have to do with that?
They made 2 top 10 draft picks. 1 top 5. OKC did not build this team by tanking. Stop lying to yourself.
Teams have been building teams through tanking for years!! Now that the Spurs are built up, Silver wants to do something about it! Stacking the Lakers and fixing the draft has been done for years, Cooper Flagg rings a bell! Silver and the NBA product is a watered down joke! The players are softer and really doesn’t know how to play the game anymore. Instead of expanding the number teams how about reducing the number of teams and consolidating the number of teams! It’s all about the money and Silver doesn’t want teams like the Thunder having super teams! If it doesn’t say LA, Boston or New York he all of sudden has to do something! Fix the game and reduce the teams! Do away with the gimmicks of play in and a championship in season tournament and please do away with the all star game. Professional sports is becoming a joke!
Yeah good teams have used high draft picks to get talent. But why are we making those teams be bad first to get a high pick? The most egalitarian method for distributing picks would be to rotate who picks 1,2,3, etc each year, or some kind of league wide lottery. Why are we accepting that being bad is the only way to get high picks? Why not make it more egalitarian instead of propping up bad teams? You can still trade for picks, you can still be better at evaluating talent than other teams and etc. Plus you know a good pick is coming your way at some point. Just because we have for a long time made being bad on purpose a part of pro sports doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. College sports doesn’t give special advantage to bad, and yet bad teams find ways to turn around their programs. Why do we do it in the pros?
Saw an article a while back about a brainstorming session in the NBA and one of the ideas that came up was widening the court. That’s got real potential. If they widen the court by 4 feet, they could extend the 3 point line by a foot, and by 2 feet in the corners. The flat sides in the corners would be smaller, and the corner 3 would only be 9″ less than the outside 3, instead of the current 21″ less. It would reduce the number of guys taking that shot, and open up the long 2pt shots. They can even test it in the G-league for a year or two.
Except they would lose 1 row of seating on either side of the court, so that idea is probably DOA.
If you want to STOP tanking here’s how:
Contracts are based off the salary cap and projections right? They should also be based off games played. Players can opt to insurance for injuries. But if you want the whole max you play the max. This way, players want to earn their money not sit out games.
Next: team penalties for tanking should be as stiff or more stiff than luxury tax penalties. They don’t want to pay even when they win so why would they want to pay more than they would to win just to have a bad team?
Drafts, if you’re tanking you lose your picks and are sent to the back of the draft for selections. Not the back of the round, the back of the draft.
I feel like they should just penalize tanking teams not with money but draft picks. Move them down 1 spot for the first strike, out of the lottery on the 2nd, and they lose their first round pick on the third strike. If you lose the pick for tanking they can’t tank for the top pick and the best players really will go to the worst teams.
IMO, there are 4 solutions that are all better than what we have today. Although I get more frustrated by the selective concern from Silver than anything. His actions damage the integrity of the nba more than the teams.
1- lottery teams have a single elimination tourney. Winner gets best odds in the lottery. Their fans would likely support it
2- last two play in losers get guaranteed a top 4 pick.
3- all lottery teams get same percentage of balls
4- if you get a too 4 pick one year you can’t the next. Best you can do is 5
No matter what they do, even keeping it the same, is better than going after one team when so many do it. The agreement amongst the owners will likely get challenged in court if Silver keeps this crap up. Too much evidence that the Jazz are not historically the worst culprits.
And no, I am not a jazz or pacers fan