Andrew Wiggins, left, and Jabari Parker, shown in the 2013 McDonald’s All-American Game in Chicago earlier this year, are expected to be two of the biggest prizes in a deep 2014 NBA Draft. But should teams be rewarded for trying to lose? (Wikimedia Commons/Tony the Tiger)
As the NBA prepares for the 2013-14 season, a.k.a. Tankapalooza for roughly half the teams in the league given that the 2014 NBA Draft looks to be one of the richest and deepest fields of incoming talent since the iconic 2003 entry proceedings brought us LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade (sorry, Darko Milicic) within the first five picks, it’s worth at least revisiting the idea that the idea of tanking—intentionally putting a team on the floor that is so weak that its chances of actually winning basketball games is greatly diminished—should not be a goal.
In the spring of 2012, a University of Missouri doctoral candidate, Adam Gold, presented an idea to the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at MIT that would penalize teams for tanking by assigning the draft order based on how well a team does once it is eliminated from playoff contention.
The theory behind this idea is pretty solid: The worst team in the league will be eliminated first and thus will have the most chances to win games in order to strengthen its draft position.
Gold’s study found that from 2005-11, NBA lottery teams won at a 37.4 percent rate prior to being mathematically bounced from playoff contention and just 32.4 percent afterward. So the teams headed into the lottery were almost 14 percent less likely to win games after they were officially out of the playoff picture.
Gold looked at what was the most recently completed season at the time of his presentation at MIT, the 2010-11 season. The Sacramento Kings had played 62 games at the time they were done and were 15-47. Based on their play up to that point, one could project a 5-15 finish. The Minnesota Timberwolves were 15-48 when they were eliminated and could be expected to go somewhere in the 5-14 or 4-15 range the rest of the way.
But what actually happened is interesting. The Kings finished 9-11 while the Timberwolves went 2-17. The other post-elimination records were:
- Charlotte Bobcats: 2-2
- Cleveland Cavaliers: 7-10
- Detroit Pistons: 4-3
- Golden State Warriors: 4-4
- Houston Rockets: 1-1
- Los Angeles Clippers: 5-6
- Milwaukee Bucks: 3-1
- New Jersey Nets: 1-9
- Phoenix Suns: 3-3
- Toronto Raptors: 2-9
- Utah Jazz: 3-3
- Washington Wizards: 6-8
As it turns out, the Clippers won the lottery, with the pick going to Cleveland, although the Clips had just the fourth-best chance of gaining the pick under the current system.
The actual draft order as determined by the lottery was:
- Los Angeles Clippers (pick to Cleveland)
- Minnesota
- New Jersey (pick to Utah)
- Cleveland
- Toronto
- Washington
- Sacramento
- Detroit
- Charlotte
- Milwaukee
- Golden State
- Utah
- Phoenix
- Houston
As determined by Gold’s system, the draft order would have been significantly different, at least at the top:
- Sacramento
- Cleveland
- Washington
- Los Angeles Clippers (pick to Cleveland)
- Golden State
- Detroit
- Utah
- Phoenix
- Milwaukee
- Minnesota
- Toronto
- Charlotte
- New Jersey (pick to Utah)
- Houston
Basically, what is happening is that—in an environment that is selling the excitement of live competition—teams are being engineered by management to intentionally lose. And somewhere along the way, fans have become OK with this, actually rooting for their teams to do poorly in order to have a better chance of landing that potential franchise-changing superstar.
The problem is that when it comes to rebuilding, it becomes more difficult to tell the difference between a team that does it smartly and well and a team that happens to get a lucky bounce of a ping-pong ball after positioning itself to get as many of those precious balls as possible.
Honestly, running an NBA team shouldn’t be as much about luck as it is about skill. And the worst part of the culture is that even iconic franchises such as the Boston Celtics are all but forced to play the game. Because losing can ultimately help you win, general manager Danny Ainge pressed the detonator button on the core of a team that had made six straight playoff trips, reached two NBA Finals and won a championship because, well, in order to get better you almost have to do that.
The initial goal of rewarding the worst teams with the best picks is admirable: Competitive balance. Competitive balance is ultimately good for the league. Thirty teams with at least a fighting chance is, at least on paper, better than four or five dominant clubs and 25 fighting for table scraps.
However, doesn’t that last sentence sound pretty much like the NBA for the last, oh I don’t know, forever?
Competitive balance is a fine end-game goal, but with evidence out there that some teams just make chronically bad decisions and get a lucky bounce. The incentives are out of proportion. Wouldn’t making games meaningful for the non-playoff teams down the stretch make for a better product in the end? If you were a fan of, say, the Philadelphia 76ers, what would be more entertaining? Rooting your team to lose to those Celtics on April 14 at the Wells Fargo Center because the Sixers are (hypothetically) in a tight race with Boston to finish rock bottom?
Or would it be better as a fan to want the Sixers—presumably already out of the playoff picture—to possible clinch the top pick in the Andrew Wiggins Sweepstakes by beating the hated C’s?
The answer, at least to me, seems obvious.
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