The NBA wants to fix tanking. The league just isn’t totally sure how.
At last month’s Board of Governors meeting, three different lottery reform ideas were presented. None really landed.
According to ESPN’s Anthony Slater, the reaction around the league was lukewarm. At best.
Each proposal would expand the lottery field to at least 18 teams. One version goes as far as 22. All of them aim to flatten the odds even more for the league’s worst teams.
But these weren’t final plans. More like rough drafts.
And right now, there’s no clear favorite. That’s part of the problem.
There’s a wide range of opinions across the league on how to handle tanking, and not much agreement on what the fix should look like. Some of the more creative ideas — like flipping wins into losses for lottery purposes midway through the season — are complicated and tough to explain to casual fans.
Still, the league knows it has an issue.
As Slater put it, tanking has gone from a “largely ignored side issue to a full-on epidemic.”
The numbers back it up. Blowouts are everywhere. The average margin of victory this season is 13.1 points, which would be the highest ever.
There have already been a record 89 games decided by 30 points or more. That’s not great for the product.
The gap between contenders and everyone else has been especially obvious late in the year. According to John Hollinger of The Athletic, lottery-bound teams that still control their first-round picks have gone just 17-148 against playoff and play-in teams since the All-Star break.
To put that another way? The Bulls alone had more wins against those teams before the end of January.
So yeah, it’s gotten out of hand.
Worse, teams aren’t exactly hiding what they’re doing.
“They’re doing the whole gamut: sitting guys in the fourth, playing analytically bad lineups, drawing up plays for bad shots,” one Western Conference general manager told ESPN. “The creativity is impressive and I don’t blame them. (Losing to get a high lottery pick) is the best strategy to get better.”
But that creativity? Not always popular in the locker room.
“It’s easier to stomach if it’s a young player they’ve just drafted with a future in the franchise,” a Western Conference player said. “But when they’re just bringing in dudes off the street and playing them over you in a contract year? That s–t will piss anyone off.”
The league wants change. Figuring out how to get there is the tricky part.
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