playing to be bad

The old saying when I was growing up was, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”  Never has that bromide been less relevant than today.  Now a days you either try to win, or you try really hard to lose, but no one cares about playing the game.

Doug Whaley, the GM of the Buffalo Bills recently lamented his team’s quality at quarterback by saying they were “almost in QB purgatory” because they never finished so poorly as to warrant a top two draft pick where they could acquire a quality quarterback.  So being mediocre is bad, it pays to be really, really awful and lock up a high draft pick.

Really?  Quality quarterbacks are all taken by the third pick?  Tell that to the Seattle Seahawks, who selected Russell Wilson in the second round.  Tell it to the Oakland Raiders, who used their #1 pick on Jamarcus Russell.  Colt McCoy was a #1 pick; Tom Brady was picked #199.  So Whaley is seriously arguing that Colt McCoy, once his career is over, will be considered more successful than Tom Brady?

Whaley’s rumination that it pays to be deliberately bad has been wholeheartedly adopted by basketball teams.  The phenomenon of “tanking” has been epidemic in the NBA in recent years, with the team from Philadelphia not only tanking, but basing their first round picks on what rookie will help them the least so they can get a first round pick again the following year.  Under their philosophy, they should have the next 10 #1 picks in the draft and come in last every season; that would be success.

The league’s response to tanking has been to dilute the draft process, so instead of being assured a #1 pick a team only has a better chance of getting a #1 pick.  The problem with this strategy, as I've written before, is that bad teams still get rewarded with better odds of a high draft pick, while teams experiencing an off year sometimes get a shot at a college player who can transform their team.  So the Sacramento Kings can be terrible for ten years and never get a really good draft pick (save for Boogie Cousins, and his status as a transformative player is still a work in progress after five years), while the LA Lakers can be one of the league’s premiere teams for several decades but get a #2 pick when they fall on hard times.

The recent baseball trade deadline was a study in psychology, with the Tigers deciding to blow up the store and trade major players like David Price and Yoenis Cespedes for prospects, while the Toronto Blue Jays, with nearly the same record, going all in and acquitting not only Price but also Troy Tulowitski.  Only four games separated the two teams in the standings, but one decided to sink to the bottom while the other decided to aim for the top because anything is better than staying in the middle (okay, their respective divisions played a role, since the Tigers are in the competitive AL Central while the Jays reside in the mediocre AL East).

Can anything be done to prevent teams from deliberately trying to tank in order to be better at a later date?  Clearly the NBA’s strategy of not guaranteeing a losing team the #1 pick is not working.  The only hope is that newer GMs that are better versed in statistical analysis will realize what a crapshoot the drafts are and place less emphasis getting a high draft pick.  Yes, high draft picks work out occasionally, as when the Colts picked Andrew Luck, but that is an exception.  Since 1990, only two NFL number 1 draft picks have appeared in more than 4 Pro Bowls: Peyton Manning and Orlando Pace.  Picking #1 is not a recipe for success.

Of course basketball is different than football or baseball as rookies can have more of an impact.  But even there the impacts are often overstated.  Jim Boeheim, basketball coach at Syracuse, once questioned the efficacy of teams tanking for college prospects who were not of the same caliber as, say, LeBron James.  Now that most college hoopsters are one-and-dones, there is little suspense over the talent level available for pro teams debating whether to tank.  Also, a college player with one year of experience is less likely to be an impact player than four-year college grads used to be.

Maybe this is the result of parity; the bottom and the top aren’t that separate in most sports, so that makes it easier to decide whether to sink or aspire to what passes for greatness.  With the second wild card team in baseball, mediocre teams have a reason to believe they can win even if they are below .500 in August, but only if they pick up a #1 starter at the trade deadline.

The final responsibility is that of the fans.  Never accept your team telling you “there is a process” as an excuse for losing.  But wait; both the Cubs and the Astros are succeeding after years of relying on a process of developing prospects.  Ahhh, never mind.