Listening to the end of the Lakers vs. Sixers game on the radio on the way home from work for a Lakers fan the other day meant laughing with delight as the Lakers, up by two near the end of overtime, gave up an offensive rebound on a free throw, leading to a game-tying bucket by the Sixers with 12.8 seconds left and the Lakers taking the ball down the court, choosing to forego the use of one of their timeouts.
What happened next defies all logic and reason. Wayne Ellington dribbled down court. He got to the elbow and was double-teamed, which spoke volumes for how terrible the talent level on the floor was. He spun, was about to go up for a shot, and then spotted Jordan Clarkson underneath the basket all alone for the game-winning layup. If you watch the replay, two things should jump out at you: 1) Nerlens Noel (6’11”) is guarding Jordan Clarkson (6’4”) instead of guarding Ryan Kelly (6’11”), while Ish Smith (6’0”) for Philly guarded Kelly (no, this didn’t occur because of a switch on a screen, it was idiocy by design); and 2) Nerlens Noel inexplicably ran away from the cutting Clarkson to cover Kelly behind the three-point line, leading to the aforementioned layup. In Noel’s defense, it looks like there might have been a designed switch that Ish Smith whiffed on, but still, complete idiocy.
If you read the previous paragraph and are wondering why we spent ten minutes dissecting a play in a Lakers/Sixers game, it is to demonstrate to you how much Lakers fans want the team to lose so that they can keep their Top-5 protected pick in this year’s NBA Draft. Lakers fans watched March Madness with joy picturing Duke’s Okafor, Ohio State’s Russell, or Kentucky’s Towns in purple and gold. If the Lakers’ pick falls outside of that top 5, adios draft pick. And this draft is arguably more loaded than the drooled over 2014 NBA Draft. 2016? Not so much.
This all has led us to an awful realization: The NBA has created a dynamic where if a fan really understands how the league works, almost half of the league’s fans are rooting for their teams to lose in order to secure a better draft pick in the lottery and hopefully, a better future. How is that a good system? There is even a site called nbatanking.com. We’re not kidding, look at this!
So the million-dollar question is: How do we fix this? There have been a lot of suggestions but all of them seem to go too far in undoing the tanking syndrome (e.g. eliminating the lottery and making the draft order random year to year). We believe that bad teams should have a semblance of hope, but on the flip side, we do not want to reward outright gawdawfulness. In English soccer, the bottom three teams in the Premier League are relegated to their version of the AAA minor league while the top three teams in the AAA minor league are promoted to the Premier League. We are not proposing such a system with the NBA and the D-League, but it just goes to show you that you don’t have to reward every team, every season. There can be a punishment for putridity of play. (Yes, we know that clip is from the 2013-2014 season, but in our defense, it is not like Philadelphia has made any attempt to get better. On the contrary, they keep purposefully making themselves worse in order to stockpile top-5 draft picks on their roster.)
Our answer is simple. Rather than awarding the top odds for the lottery to the last place team, award it to the teams that finish in the middle of the non-playoff pack and go out from there. In other words, the teams that finish 7th and 8th to last in the NBA get the best odds for the top pick. Teams 6th and 9th from last get the next best odds, then 5th and 10th, and all the way down to the teams finishing last in the league and the first team out of the playoffs having the worst odds to win the lottery. We also would change the percentages to decrease the discrepancy from best to worst odds. Currently, the worst team in the NBA has a 25% chance at the top slot and a 64.3% chance at a top 3 pick. The 14th worst team has a 0.5% chance at the top pick and a 1.8% chance at a top 3 pick. Here is how my chart would look as far as odds go:
| Order of Finish Out of 30 NBA Teams | Chances at #1 Pick in the NBA Draft |
| 30 | 3% |
| 29 | 4.25% |
| 28 | 5.25% |
| 27 | 7.5% |
| 26 | 8.75% |
| 25 | 10% |
| 24 | 11.25% |
| 23 | 11.25% |
| 22 | 10% |
| 21 | 8.75% |
| 20 | 7.5% |
| 19 | 5.25% |
| 18 | 4.25% |
| 17 | 3% |
How would one go about tanking in such a system? You can’t tank all season because it doesn’t do you any good to be utterly inept. The tanking you might see with our system would only occur in the last couple of weeks for teams that thought they would make the playoffs but fell too far out of the hunt. This year, that would be a team like Phoenix, but even still, you wouldn’t see a competitive group like that completely tank and even if you did, without their top few guys, they’d still field a pretty good team. Additionally, because there is not as much of a gap between picks in terms of % chance at the top lottery slot, there is less of an incentive to tank.
Look at the current NBA standings. The Suns would have to try and get down there to the Pistons’ level which is pretty impossible at this stage in the game despite the Suns’ five-game losing streak. No, you’re more likely to see the Suns trying to figure out which guys mesh together and end the season on a high note.
More importantly, you’d have the horrible teams playing super competitive games trying to get out of the cellar and closer to the better odds that come with finishing at the median of the lottery teams. Further, the cellar-dwelling teams’ fans would actually be rooting for their teams to win instead of rooting for them to lose. Their games would become compelling, draw better crowds, and produce better season-long products. In other words, their home games would become almost akin to the English Premier League games at the end of the season when the bottom three teams are attempting to avoid relegation.
So there you have it, our solution to tanking. You know you would be enjoying this season a heck of a lot more if you’re a Lakers fan who could cheer for the Lakers to get to that middle of the lottery pack instead of ignoring their games or rooting against them. Or do you like a system that keeps better-equipped players on the bench while the Robert Sacres of the world get all the playing time?
A big thank you for your article.Really looking forward to read more. Cool. Flatau