Tanking redux

I’ve written before about the futility of ending tanking through minimizing the chances of winning the draft lottery, but after hearing the talking heads on ESPN declare tanking to be over after 3 of the 4 worst teams in the NBA got bad draft picks thanks to poorly bouncing balls, I guess the subject is worth going back to.

The Knicks tanked, going so far as trading their only good player, and finished with the league’s worst record.  In any normal system, this would mean they would have the first pick in the upcoming draft.  This is fair; how can poor teams get better unless they get dibs on talented players coming out of college?  Talented free agents don’t want to go to losing franchises (although a lot of people think NBA superstar free agents will sign with the Knicks or the Lakers, two of the worst franchises going right now).

The Knicks, Cavs, Suns, and Bulls had the 4 worst records last year, and they got (respectively) the 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th picks in a draft where experts say there is a huge drop off in talent after the third pick.  The pundits argue that with three of the four top teams failing to get a substantial draft pick, teams will no longer try to lose when they see the playoffs slipping away.

There are two reasons why the revised draft format, which reduces the odds of bad teams getting good draft picks, won’t eliminate tanking.  The first one is obvious: the team with the worst record still has a 14% shot at the number one pick; teams with better records have less than a 14% chance.  Which is better, the 14% chance the worst-record Knicks had, or the 9% chance the 6^th worst Wizards had?  It may not be a one-to-one correlation, but losing more games still gives you a better shot at the glory of a first pick in a draft; the fact that yu subsequently got unlucky doesn’t alter the odds.  The Sacramento Kings just missed the playoffs and had a 0.1% chance at the #1 pick; so, were they better off than the Knicks with their 14% chance because they tried to win and failed?

The second reason is that tanking does not just increase your chances of picking first, but it also decreases your chances of picking 9^th.  The experts on ESPN have announced that there are exactly 3 good draft picks in the 2019 draft; the Lakers at #4 are out of luck.  The NBA draft isn’t like the NFL draft, where you can pick up a Hall of famer like Tom Brady in the 6^th round.  I haven’t done the research, but I suspect few members of the Basketball Hall of Fame were drafted after the first round (of course the NBA draft only has two rounds).  The Football Hall of Fame lists 16 members drafted in the 4^th or 5^th rounds.  Heck, Bart Starr was drafted in the 17^th round.

If you draft outside the top two or three, the best you can reasonably hope for is a low-price role player.  That’s not going to turn your franchise around, so if you aren’t going to make a deep dive into the playoffs, tanking gives you the best chance of drafting someone that will make a difference, instead of someone who will allow you to dump the salary of a bench player.

One could argue that the paucity of talent around in the NBA draft is due to the one-and-done rule, where athletes with natural talent shine after one year in college but players that need development don’t get the chance to hone their skills before being drafted.  When players spent three or four years in college, the NBA draft was a lot deeper.  Heaven knows what would happen if they get rid of the one-and-done rule and let kids out of high school compete in the draft.

So tanking will continue, even if the best a team can do is get a 14% chance at the #1 pick.  This means the worst teams will stay bad, but the NFL has never been about equity (look at all the championships hogged by two teams, the Celtics and the Lakers).  The mere fact that Philadelphia was able to go from doormat to NEARLY making it to the conference championship round will be a model for other teams with no other way to get better.