The NBA has a serious tanking problem. While there are plenty of teams to root for this season, including the defending champions in Golden State, this season will also include a lot of ugly stretches for the other side of the standings.
This year, more than ever, those teams have an extra incentive to throw games and be as bad as possible to increase the odds of landing Victor Wembanyama. But, according to Adam Silver, they should think twice before employing that strategy for themselves.
NBA Commissioner Reveals The NBA Pondered Sending Teams To The G-League As Punishment For Tanking
In a story for ESPN, Silver sat down with reporters and broke down his thoughts on tanking. He even revealed some of the punishments he considered to prevent the practice.
(via ESPN):
Speaking of a concept in European soccer, Silver told employees that the league has thought about relegation as a potential solution to ensure the worst-performing teams are incentivized to compete. But the commissioner then said relegation would be “destabilizing” to the NBA.
In such a scenario, Silver told employees, relegation would essentially mean demoting the worst one or two teams to the G League while promoting the best team or two from the G League to the NBA.
“It would so disrupt our business model,” Silver told employees. “And even if you took two teams up from the G League, they wouldn’t be equipped to compete in the NBA.”
In an effort to help reduce tanking, the NBA flattened draft lottery odds in 2019, so now teams with the three worst regular-season records each have a 14% chance of winning the lottery. (Before that, the team with the worst record had a 25% chance, the second-worst team had a 19.9% chance and the third-worst team had a 15.6% chance.)
For a talent like Victor Wembanyama, it makes sense for bad teams to try and increase their odds by shooting for a bottom-three record. It happens every year to some level, and it can be fine to a certain degree.
But when so many teams in the league are expected to consider adapting the practice at the same time, it really jeopardizes the quality of the season for the fans, especially those who pay to see some of these games live.
As far as solutions go, sending NBA teams to the G-League is probably not the way to go, but it shouldn’t be long before the NBA finds something else to try. While tanking will likely always be around at some level, it’s only a matter of time before the trend is neutralized in a big way.
