NBA Where Tanking Happens

[KG Living Legend]

 Funny title on ESPN.com  Rod Throne said "it's definitely a strategy"

 
The NBA's president of basketball operations, Rod Thorn, acknowledges that losing games in the name of better draft picks -- commonly known as "tanking" -- is "definitely a strategy" for front offices.

"I don't look at it as tanking," Thorn told ESPN.com during an interview for TrueHoop TV record on the Friday of All-Star weekend in New Orleans. "I look at it as I don't want to be at this level here. I may have to get worse to be good. It's definitely a strategy and more and more teams are looking at it."

Thorn says "more and more teams are looking at" trading away players as a way to improve. "We're not very good right now," he says, explaining teams' thinking, "but in a couple years we're going to be pretty good if we get lucky in the draft."

The 2014 draft is projected to be one of the best in years with a half-dozen or more prospects -- Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid among them -- with All-Star potential. While the draft lottery randomizes the draft among non-playoff teams, all in all each loss improves a team's likelihood of a high pick. Teams like the Bucks, Magic and 76ers, for instance, have cap space they could use in trades or free agency to improve the roster right now, but none are expected to make moves to maximize wins now.

NBA vice president of basketball operations Kiki VanDeWeghe, like Thorn a former NBA general manager says this approach fits with widespread NBA thinking: "Be up. Be down. But don't be in the middle. That's the thing that I think fans need to realize. Guys are trying to win. General managers want to win. I've been through a season where we didn't win many. Rod also. It happens to everybody. That's miserable. Nobody likes that. You want to win games. But really the one thing I want to point out: It is a strategy."

In the first major press conference of his tenure as commissioner, on Saturday, Silver addressed tanking by saying "my understanding of tanking would be losing games on purpose. And there's absolutely no evidence that any team in the NBA has ever lost a single game, or certainly in any time that I've been in the league, on purpose. And, to me, what you're referring to I think is rebuilding."

But Silver appeared to define tanking as something players or coaches might do -- evidently giving a pass to the general managers Thorn and VanDeWeghe discussed. "If there was any indication whatsoever that players or coaches somehow were not doing their absolute most to win a game, we would be all over that," said Silver. "But I don't believe for a second that's what's going on. I think we have the most competitive players in the world, the most competitive coaches, and I think they're doing everything they can to win games."

Silver did, however, suggest the league is considering changes to address tanking: "The very purpose of the lottery is to prevent there from being an incentive to lose games. And so to the extent that incentives aren't entirely aligned, we'll look at the lottery again. We have adjusted it several times over the years, and we'll adjust it again if necessary. But we'll see. We have a competition committee, that's one of their mandates, to continue looking at that. But I'm not overly concerned right now."

[BballTim]

  To me this is much ado about nothing. The Celts have won just under 35% of their games. There are 6 teams in the league below 35%. I checked the last 4 or so seasons and there were 6-8 teams below that level every year. Where's the tanking?

[Fafnir]

The worst team in the league was trying to win and made win now moves in the offseason. *shrug*

[LarBrd33]

Tanking exists.  Danny Ainge tanked the season in July. 

Players/coaches don't tank. 

[Fafnir]

Tanking exists.  Danny Ainge tanked the season in July. 

Players/coaches don't tank.

If you define tanking as not maximizing the short term win total then OKC is tanking every year they aren't sending out picks to get a random role player at the deadline.

Players and coaches have certainly tanked in the past, see Mark Madsen's make it rain game.

[Nerf DPOY]

I believe there are rosters assembled with an added benefit being that they'd lose a lot of games, but I think the "tanking" tends to get exaggerated. There are teams with no incentive to tank, like the Knicks, who are struggling to get any separation from the bottom of the pack. Some teams are bad just because they're bad.

[BballTim]

Tanking exists.  Danny Ainge tanked the season in July. 

Players/coaches don't tank.

  Tanking by trading away a sf that's averaging 13/5, a pf/c that's averaging 7/7 and a backup sg going for 4.5 ppg?

[Mr October]

Tanking exists.  Danny Ainge tanked the season in July. 

Players/coaches don't tank.

Exactly. 99% of the tanking is done at the management level, if not a higher percentage. As Thorn said, you don't want to be a middle team. You want to be a contender, or a "rebuilding team".

Management will trade off talent for picks, even if it leaves big holes in the roster. They will also sit injured players for an extra long time, as there isnt the same kind of pressure to win night to night.

This is how the nba is structured, due to the cap, the limitations on trades, and the impact that a single all star has on a team. It is what it is.

In the MLB or NFL, you can still have a shot at the championship by building with non stars. You don't have to have 2 of the best 25 players, or 1 of the best 10 in your sport.

Now every once in a while a coach gets on board. Hello ML Carr and Doc Rivers in 1998 and 2007. Hot players find them selves sitting in the 4th quarter on occasion, or players play outside of their normal positions for extended stretches.

[fairweatherfan]

I believe there are rosters assembled with an added benefit being that they'd lose a lot of games, but I think the "tanking" tends to get exaggerated. There are teams with no incentive to tank, like the Knicks, who are struggling to get any separation from the bottom of the pack. Some teams are bad just because they're bad.

Yeah, it's the NBA - even if you're bad, you're still pretty good.  Combine that with the grind of the season and even a team stripped of most of its talent can beat a contender on any given night.  Plus, all those "win-later" teams are gonna be playing each other, so somebody's gotta win those games.

Then there are teams like the Knicks, Kings, and Cavs, who seem to be genuinely trying to win now but have the unfortunate disadvantage of their organizations being hot garbage.

[Mr October]

To tank means to fail. The celtics were set up to tank their way down the standings.

The lakers are tanking, the bucks are tanking, and so on. These teams are failing to win games, and the owners aren't going berserk at these failings because a golden player is waiting for them in the top of the draft.

[D.o.s.]

Have you guys heard of this new thing called tanking? We got Hakeem with it. It's pretty sweet.

[rondofan1255]

Tanking can also reward you with Jeff Green!

[action781]

  To me this is much ado about nothing. The Celts have won just under 35% of their games. There are 6 teams in the league below 35%. I checked the last 4 or so seasons and there were 6-8 teams below that level every year. Where's the tanking?

Excellent point.  Its hard to really sell this idea of tanking when tanking is entirely numerically based and the numbers don't back it up at all.

When you push the threshold down to a 30% win pct, we still have the same number of teams under that this season (3) as last season.  There were SIX teams under .300 in the 2010-2011 season during which Kyrie Irving and Derrick Williams were fairly mediocre level prospects as far as top picks go.

[action781]

In addition to my above comments, I think with all the media attention to "tanking" lately, the management/ownership of teams (except Philly) are very worried about being labeled as a tanker and trying to avoid that attachment.

[LooseCannon]

You can make tanking a bad strategy (which I think it almost always is), but you can't prevent teams from following a bad strategy.