Philly Front Office

The NBA is having a serious bullshit problem. Everything about the NBA is based on the assumption that the fans, the teams, and the players are idiots. The fans are supposed to pay to see their team blatantly try not to win. The teams are not supposed to take advantage of losing to benefit their draft position. And the players are supposed to act like everything is normal when their own organization is actively rooting against them. This is all bullshit.

Almost everyone loves the game of basketball, but the NBA product is terrible right now. People want to blame the barrage of 3 pointers or off court issues, but that’s mostly just ignorable noise. If the play is good, people will watch. The play is not good.

The root of the problem is that too much of the NBA simply doesn’t matter. For the most part, the teams you predict to be good are good and the teams you predict to be bad are bad, rendering almost the entire regular season pointless (injuries not withstanding). We know who is trying and who isn’t from the jump. Players don’t play, people don’t watch, and it’s a 6-month slog until the playoffs. Sure, we get some good performances here and there, but that same player probably won’t play the next night. What happened? The NBA is taking a few too many things for granted. Namely, putting together competent basketball teams.

The NBA draft lottery has been around since 1985 when the mythical frozen envelope brought Patrick Ewing to the Knicks. It was introduced to stop teams from racing to the bottom since draft order was based solely on reverse standings. Despite the total randomness of the original system being designed to prevent tanking, the next 40 years of changes have gradually undone this and brought the league right back where it was. The current lottery format delivers quite possibly the worst NBA product possible. Wait, if the lottery was introduced to stop tanking, how come they changed it? Because owners had a meltdown when the 1993 Orlando Magic had one chance to win the lottery and won it. Why have a lottery at all if a team winning is something you try to prevent? It’s more bullshit.

Sam Hinkie and the Process glorified “tanking” and made it mainstream, even if Hinkie himself was sacrificed for the idea. He obviously wasn’t the first though, considering the need for the lottery itself and teams like the 96-97 Boston Celtics shamelessly losing for the chance to draft Tim Duncan. What was once taboo is now out in the open and considered a viable team building option. But seriously, why is this still allowed?

I don’t mean tanking, all the power to teams who use the rules to their advantage. As the system is, you’d be dumb NOT to employ a tanking strategy. The lottery system we have in place necessarily rewards losing. Sure, they tried flattening the lottery odds to stop teams from tanking, but that had no effect. Teams at the bottom still have the best odds to draft higher. They almost got the right idea, but couldn’t bring themselves to do anything more than a half measure.

We need to go back to the Patrick Ewing days and get rid of lottery seeding all together. Maybe we don’t have envelopes, but why shouldn’t every non-playoff team have an equal stake in the party? All 14 picks, up for grabs, totally random. Same odds. Same motivation. If you finish 10-72, you have the same odds to draft #1 as the team who went 41-41 and just missed the playoffs. Either team could draft 1st, 2nd, 10th…whatever. Complete mayhem in the lottery.

Oh but that’s not fair to the really bad teams!

This is not a real argument anymore. Teams are not bad accidentally these days, they are bad on purpose. They don’t bid on free agents and they trade their good players simply to make a less competitive team. Whether it is before the season or during, half the teams employ this strategy. Many teams are even heavily invested in a multi-year process of being actively terrible, gaming the system to the detriment of nearly everyone else. You can’t even blame them because it is very obviously a good idea! A team would be dumb NOT to take any possible competitive advantage.

For as much as everyone vilified the Sixers years ago, what teams are doing now is considerably worse. The Toronto Raptors are equal parts holding out able bodied players pre-game while also sitting starting lineups in crunch time of winnable games. For a team and a league with a history with gambling, this is inexplicably being ignored for the point shaving that it is. The Utah Jazz sit Lauri Markannen despite no discernable injuries. The Washington Wizards started the year with the worst roster you have ever seen. So again, are we all supposed to be idiots? Are fans in attendance supposed to ignore their best players on the bench? Are the players on the court supposed to listen to a coach is who is actively trying to lose? It’s a mockery. Why should this be rewarded???

The real problem is that teams have taken it too far. They are trying to be truly terrible, rather than just bad. If a team cannot count on a high draft pick, it disincentivizes the race to the bottom. If a player is really hurt, they can sit out, but they won’t be held out just for a competitive disadvantage. Coaches won’t intentionally cripple lineups to hurt their ability to win. You can try to win the game without fear of damaging the team in the future. Players will play, and teams can be okay with being in the middle again.

This is what the Process shed light on, the worst place to be in the NBA is the middle. You aren’t good enough to truly compete, but also not bad enough to get a high draft pick. What are you supposed to do with that? There is no reward in that position. You are just stuck. Lottery reform changes that. A team does not have to be scared of being in the middle anymore. Teams like the Hawks and the Bulls are considered dumb by NBA standards because they keep hopelessly trying. Should this type of noble team building philosophy really be penalized?

The season started with five or six teams with no ability or desire to try to win: Utah, Washington, Charlotte, Brooklyn, Toronto and probably Portland. By the halfway point, New Orleans and Chicago had joined the list. With around 20 games to go, Philly, San Antonio, and maybe Miami threw in the towel completely. That’s 11 teams not even attempting to be competitive. Sure, some of them are still winning, but that’s more due to player pride and other teams being even worse.

Some teams would obviously still be bad, but they wouldn’t be this bad. Without Embiid, the Sixers are a lost cause, but instead of sitting players who could play, they could get them on the floor with no fear of screwing up their lottery position. Losing is one thing, but throwing away games is completely different. Do you think I want to root for my team to lose?

The NBA needs to stop assuming everyone is an idiot and stop the bullshit. We all know what is going on and we don’t like it.