A few weeks ago, someone on one of the ESPN talking head
shows asked whether the Golden State Warriors should consider tanking after
receiving the news that their main star, Stephen Curry, would be out of
commission for nearly three months. One wag replied that there was no
need for them to tank, they were going to be awful and would lose a lot of
games without trying to tank.
This is why I am not THAT concerned with the idea of teams
tanking in order to gain a higher draft position; teams that engage in tanking
are just accelerating that natural order of things. The truth is that
tanking usually takes place in the front offices of teams, trading away assets
in exchange for future draft picks or other bags of magic beans. The
players that are playing the games are not tanking but trying as hard as
possible to win; they have just had one hand tied behind their back by
management.
What I think is a bigger problem than tanking is what in the
NBA is called “load management.” Several other talking heads on ESPN have
opined, in predicting the eventual identity of the Western Conference
representative in the NBA Finals next year, that either the LA Lakers or the LA
Clippers are the most likely candidates, but that neither would end up as the
top seed in the playoffs. That is, the best teams in the conference would
deliberately lose games and end up with a lower seed in the playoffs, all in
the name of assuring that their star players were healthy for the playoff run.
Load management is not a bad team trying to be worse; it is
a good (or great) team trying to be mediocre for the sake of an
advantage. Speculating that the Nuggets or the Jazz will capture the top
seed in the NBA West only to subsequently lose to the Clippers or the Lakers in
the Conference Finals because the team from Los Angeles will do a better job of
keeping either Lebron James or Kawhi Leonard injury-free over the course of an
82-game season is fundamentally an affront to the playoff structure.
Tanking means that teams that would normally lose 50 games
in a season will lose 55 or 60 and then get a top 5 pick in the draft.
The marginal impact on the team’s fans is relatively small and ultimately
rewarded (possibly) with the foundation of future success. Load
management means that players paid many tens of millions of dollars will not be
displaying their skills to fans who have paid large amounts of money to see
just that. It is gaming a system that in which gaining home-court
advantage in a seven-game series is inadequate compensation for achieving a higher
seed.
As
I have said before, the only way to stop tanking is to remove the incentive
by making the draft order dependent on a lottery and not the number of games
lost. Of course, that also makes it more difficult for poor teams to get
better because they don’t have access to better draft picks.
Similarly, the way to reduce (suppress) load management
would be to give higher seeds a nearly insurmountable advantage in the
playoffs, which would then require every team to work as hard as possible to
win as many games as possible. Having four home games instead of three in
a round of the playoffs is hardly enough incentive to have Lebron James play in
70 games instead of 60 during the regular season.
But if the higher seeds had insurmountable advantages, what
would be the point of having playoffs? Baseball achieved a neat trick of
letting wild cards into their playoffs but
giving them a slight disadvantage in them having to use their best pitcher
in the play-in game rather than the first game of the first series. The
only thumb on the scale basketball has is home court advantage and giving the
higher seed more than 4 home games in a seven-game series is so excessive lower
seeds would probably decide to tank rather than be an 8 seed.
I see tanking as a self-correcting problem, at least if the
team that tanks is reasonably competent and drafts well. If they aren’t
competent, then they aren’t really tanking they are just perpetual
losers.
Load management is not a self-correcting problem and resting
heathy players during the season just because you don’t mind getting a lower
seed robs fans of the ability to see great players and skews the competitive
balance. Teams should work as hard as possible to be the one seed because
being a three seed would significantly lower their chances of making the
Finals.
My favorite Damon Runyon quote is, “Remember, the race is
not always to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that’s the way
to bet.” But when it comes to the NBA,
it may be better to bet on a team that loses more games in the regular season.
