Memphis Grizzlies: The Impact Of Marc Gasol’s Season-Ending Injury

No Incentive To Tank

Whenever a team lacking superstar-caliber talent loses its best player — especially one who holds things together on both ends of the floor — it’s easy to resort to tanking as the go-to strategy. Why not let the ship sink in a lost season, capitalize on a year of bad fortune with a top draft pick and regroup for next season?

Not so fast.

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For starters, the Grizzlies have a 32-23 record despite Big Spain’s absence for the last three games. They currently sit at fifth in the Western Conference standings, three games ahead of the Dallas Mavericks and Portland Trail Blazers, 4.5 games ahead of the Utah Jazz, five games ahead of the Houston Rockets, eight games ahead of the Sacramento Kings and 10.5 games ahead of the New Orleans Pelicans.

Those are just the teams that still have a prayer of climbing into the playoff field, which means it’d take a massive nose dive to drop Memphis into respectable lottery territory. The Grizz have already won far too many games to tank with teams like the Denver Nuggets (22-35, 11 games back) and Minnesota Timberwolves (18-39, 15 games back), let alone outright dumpster fires like the Los Angeles Lakers (11-47, 22.5 games back) and Phoenix Suns (14-43, 19 games back).

Even if the Grizzlies were in position to tank, however, and even if we ignored the fact that the 2016 NBA Draft class is a crapshoot beyond the top two prospects (Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram), there’s another major problem: tanking holds little incentive for a team that will likely lose its first round pick if it falls into the lottery.

Thanks to a salary-shedding move in 2013 to get Marreese Speights, Wayne Ellington and Josh Selby off the books, the Grizz sent a first round pick to Cleveland in exchange for Jon Leuer. That pick is protected 1-5 and 15-30, and was moved to the Denver Nuggets in the Kosta Koufos trade.

In other words, if the pick lands in the 6-14 range, which is likely where it’d end up if the Grizz slipped out of playoff contention, Memphis loses its first round pick this year. That might not be the worst thing in a shallow draft, especially bearing the front office’s recent drafting woes in mind, but it’s still not advisable for a franchise heading for a major rebuild soon.

Next: Making The Playoffs