In addition to planning to reform the draft lottery in an effort to deter teams from tanking, the NBA is also interested in expanding its ability to penalize teams who manipulate player availability and rotations in an effort to lose, reports Joe Vardon of The Athletic.
The Jazz were fined $500K in February for what the NBA deemed “conduct detrimental to the league” after they sat star forwards Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarters of consecutive games.
Under the proposed policy changes, the NBA would have the latitude to increase those fines into the millions of dollars, Vardon writes, as well as either moving a team’s draft pick to the end of the lottery or the end of the first round — or taking it away entirely.
The NBA is considering implementing one of three lottery reform proposals presented to its Board of Governors at this week’s meetings, but apparently recognizes that none of those concepts would entirely eradicate tanking on its own. It sounds as if the goal would be to implement more punitive penalties for tanking in concert with those changes to the lottery.
“Without stricter penalties, you could still have crazy behavior,” one league source told The Athletic. “You have to have something in place that is so drastic, a team would actually think twice about tanking. And if a team tries it and gets caught, then the other teams need to see the penalties and realize it isn’t worth it to try.”
This proposal is short on details for now, but presumably the NBA would like to implement an anti-tanking policy along the lines of its player participation policy, which lays out specific guidelines and calls for increasingly harsher penalties for teams who repeatedly violate those guidelines. In other words, any anti-tanking policy would likely start with fines before rising to the level of draft pick devaluation or forfeiture.
The NBA’s Board of Governors is scheduled to meet again in May to discuss and vote on the issue.
Tanking isn’t a problem. The real problem is GAMBLING.
It’s not a problem for the league (for now) because the league still makes money off of it and the cons do not yet outweigh the pros. Tanking is purely a bad thing for the league. That’s the only reason they’re choosing to act.
you’re always so close man
There’s no ‘one or the other’ scenario here. They have a tanking problem *and* a gambling problem. And they go hand-in-hand because gambling is affected when teams bench players in order to throw games.
Both are significant problems, yes. The tanking is internal and should be easier to moderate. Gambling? Tougher.
You have a point, but tanking isn’t anywhere near the problem Silver is making it out to be. I mean, they literally allowed Michael Rubin and the 76ers to patent and market “trust the process” – are you implying that we should retroactively blacklist Rubin here?
“are you implying that we should retroactively blacklist Rubin here?”
I’m game if you are.
“Trust the process” was the lamest and stupidest thing I have ever witnessed in the NBA. Trust it to do what? Win no rings? Cool, the Pelicans/Hawks/Kings/Grizzlies/etc had the same result without branding the rebrand with this idiotic title. That was all Mike from Fanatics work. Idiot crap.
Maybe instead of going all Darth Vader with punitive actions taken against teams in inconsistent ways at the whim of NBA leadership we should turn the whole thing upside down and give the teams with the best records the best draft picks.
Might it create dynasties? Maybe.
…but the current system already creates dynasties.
If you want more teams to focus on winning, you need to reward winning. It is b/c the NBA rewards losing that the problem exists to begin with. You reward losing, you get losing, it isn’t rocket science!
How about a system where the top 2teams in each conference get the bottom 4 picks, and the teams with the best records after that are in the lottery, based on their record (you could even make it flat for teams 5-16, giving them the same % odds, and then a step down for the next 8 teams, then a step down for the rest. This gives you either (1) home court advantage for the first 2 rounds of the playoffs or (2) the same shot as everyone else at a top pick the next year.
Trying to punish teams for tanking while also rewarding them for tanking is just going to continue to make the league a mess of many teams not even trying to win. The competition is poor most nights – b/c of the structure. You need to change the structure entirely and reward winning if that is what you want to see.
I appreciate this way of thinking, but I think a less cynical or extreme way to do this is to just have all teams have equal chance at the #1 pick, remove the playoff barriers. Also do not have a corrupt drawing system. Have the public do it.
Davey is acting like if he had all the power to choose who won the lottery that he wouldn’t just pick the Warriors every year he could LMAOOOOO
I think there does need to be an understanding of keeping a player away from injury to ruin the next season
vs
playing just to play when your team ain’t going anywhere
vs
fans paying to see certain players play
Then there is the gambling aspect was them not playing part of a gambling initiative?
If a team is going to sit a player they need to announce it X amount of days prior to give fans and league understanding would be a better outcome that way gamblers do not have advantage
No punishment other than taking their pick away, or moving it out of the lottery or something will work. The draft pick itself is worth far more than their stupid fine.
This is getting hilarious. What’s clear is that Silver is intent on preserving tanking, but in a harder to detect form while absolving himself of any responsibility for it.
If I were an owner, I would vote against all these proposals. They don’t have a purpose relative to resolving the tanking issue, only to complicate it and give Silver a soapbox. I’d like to end tanking, but if its going to continue, it might as well stay as open and obvious as it is. Who knows, my team might want to do it at some point. The safeharbor template is set. Why complicate things.