NBA commissioner Adam Silver is great at solving problems that aren’t really problems, but this time he may have killed one of his better ideas in the process.
The NBA has once again tried to address tanking, which is an issue that is fairly low on fans’ lists of problems in my experience. Most fans are smart enough to understand why their team is tanking and think the shot at a superstar in the draft is worth a lousy game against the Jazz late in the season that no one would have cared about anyway.
It’s not like the tanking teams would have been good, so we’re really talking about the difference between some team winning 17 games and 22. Whoopee! Bring on those Wizards vs. Nets games! I am sure tickets are already sold out.
Meanwhile, I open social media every morning and see endless complaining about flopping to the point that there are whole accounts and movements dedicated to it, but crickets from the NBA.
I hear FAR more fan complaints about not being able to watch the games, or the prohibitively expensive multitude of streaming services fans have to subscribe to in order to watch the team in their home city. Not a word on that, though.
I don’t want to get too deep into why I think the NBA cares so much about this (gambling *cough IT’S ALL ABOUT GAMBLING *er, ummm, I mean INTEGRITY, yes, the integrity of the sport. This rant was brought to you by FanDuel) but these new lottery rules could have an unintended effect.
NBA tanking will just shift to the middle and could kill the play-in tournament
Adam Silver has not won over many fans of late, but one thing he did in his reign that people seem to like is the play-in tournament. It adds a few exciting games at the end of the season and has seemed to encourage teams in the 7-10 range to really try to make the playoffs outright.
With flattened odds benefitting teams in the middle the most, why would any 10 seed care about making the play-in tournament when missing it would give them the same odds for the #1 pick as the worst team in the league?
Would Philadelphia, Charlotte or Orlando really have cared that much if losing one game and missing the playoffs gave them a shot at AJ Dybantsa? There is currently some incentive (financial and competitive) to make the play-in and take your shot, as it wouldn’t make a meaningful difference in the lottery odds, but this new system could easily remove that incentive.
I’m all for trying new things, and who knows, maybe this will work, and if not, It’s only a three year trial, but it’s just as likely to have a different set of teams tanking and a team that won 45 games getting the number one pick.
We’ll see it if it works, but if not, Adam Silver may have destroyed the one thing fans seem to like about his tenure and made it nearly impossible for bad teams to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
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