This is not a flex, nor an attempt to drop coal in the NBA\u2019s Christmas stocking.<\/p>\n
Tanking is a real, real problem for the league, which corrodes in ways much more dangerous than just losing games to get the best chance at a top pick in the draft<\/a>. That the NBA recognizes this and knows it has to address the danger emanating from inside the house is commendable. (It is, also, an act of economic self-preservation, of course.) Having gambling and gamblers around multiple teams not trying to win in a given season is a portent for disaster, and the NBA\u2019s attempts to do what it can to make fewer teams run the risk of year-over-year losing shouldn\u2019t be dismissed as show.<\/p>\n But the league, 20 years into its attempts to \u201cfix\u201d the lottery, continues to tilt at windmills.<\/p>\n Trying to make the lottery somehow \u201cfairer,\u201d while at the same time discouraging teams from embarking upon it as a roster-building tool, is a contradiction of purpose \u2014 a fatal flaw in the whole apparatus of letting ping-pong balls determine the fate of billion-dollar franchises, rather than significant investment in infrastructure, coaching and development to make the players you have get better. Standing on your own two feet as an organization, not praying for lottery luck, is a much better predictor of adding difference-makers in free agency and\/or trades, as more great players think your shop is where they want to be.<\/p>\n But you\u2019re either all in and competing for real, or you\u2019re not. And there\u2019s no way to reconcile those two contradictory approaches.<\/p>\n The NBA\u2019s latest reported ideas for reform<\/a> \u2014 freezing future draft pick protections, fixing the lottery teams in place on March 1 and limiting a team from having top-four picks two years in a row \u2014 won\u2019t stop teams from tanking, whether they do so all season long, or via \u201csoft\u201d tanks begun midstream, as teams ground down by injuries or subpar results decide the best play is to live to fight another day, rather than chase the Play-In. This was the method the Philadelphia 76ers chose last season<\/a>\u00a0to keep a top-six spot in the lottery.<\/p>\n If bad teams know they\u2019ll be locked into their lottery positions on March 1, why on earth would they try to do anything to win before then? The tanking would be even more obvious and egregious. The Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz are again terrible this season, but some of their young guys are showing real signs of growth,<\/a> as they get big minutes and gain experience and strength<\/a>. But even those small road marks of hope might be eliminated with the quickness if teams like them had an incentive to shut down their emerging players as soon as possible to ensure more losing.<\/p>\n There is also simple fairness. Now, after the San Antonio Spurs have built themselves into a budding colossus, with three top-four picks in the last four years, including Victor Wembanyama in 2023, you want to turn off the spigot?<\/p>\n This, it must be stated as clearly as possible, is not San Antonio\u2019s fault, or a dig at it for its good fortune. The Spurs were the top-to-bottom gold standard for organizational excellence for a generation. Yes, they went No. 1 when it mattered most \u2014 in 1987, when they took David Robinson first, and a decade later, when it was Tim Duncan. But the Spurs surrounded those Hall of Fame centers with incredible talent and character, and developed a slew of non-lottery players, from Tony Parker to Manu Gin\u00f3bili to Kawhi Leonard, into superstars.<\/p>\n They are doing the same now, with Brian Wright replacing R.C. Buford in the front office as general manager \u2014 Buford is still involved, as CEO of Spurs Sports and Entertainment \u2014 and Mitch Johnson taking over for Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich early last season, following Popovich\u2019s stroke in late 2024.<\/p>\n Wembanyama is the existential base, of course. But the Spurs haven\u2019t just put elite prospects like Stephon Castle (fourth, 2024) and Dylan Harper (second, 2025) around him. They\u2019ve again made internal development vital to their success.<\/p>\n Devin Vassell, taken 11th overall in the 2020 draft, has become a key starter. Keldon Johnson was the next-to-last pick in the first round in 2019. He\u2019s shooting 58 percent from the floor and 39 percent from deep, in his seventh pro season. Julian Champagnie was claimed off waivers from Philly in 2023; he\u2019s played in 177 of a possible 185 games the last two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n And the Spurs have gradually moved up as their talent matured: back-to-back 22-60 seasons under Popovich in 2022 and 2023, then a 34-48 campaign last season, mostly under Mitch Johnson.<\/p>\n The Spurs are 23-7 out of the gate this season, having given the Oklahoma City Thunder three of their five losses including one on Christmas Day<\/a>. They\u2019re fifth in offensive rating; sixth in defensive rating. They\u2019re a growing monster, having reached the NBA Cup finals<\/a>, after beating the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers and Thunder before falling to the New York Knicks in the title game. They certainly look capable challengers to the defending champion Thunder.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll be lying if I said it was easy, \u2019cause nobody likes losing,\u201d Keldon Johnson said Monday. \u201cBut, you know, in the midst of all the chaos and all the down times, you\u2019ve really got to look at the bigger picture, and realize that we\u2019re doing this for a bigger reason. Tough times don\u2019t last. And ultimately, I can tell you, I\u2019ve been a testament to that. I really just lock in and buy into what the Spurs organization, the plan that they have for me. Not only me, but the team that\u2019s here and been here for a couple of years. We just stayed together and locked in, and this year has just been a great year. We\u2019ve been winning and having fun, and playing some good basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n So, the Spurs have been present for their own re-creation. But they also got a lot of assistance. Each high draft pick made it easier for San Antonio to spend future draft capital more easily to supplement the young core now, as when the Spurs got De\u2019Aaron Fox from the Sacramento Kings in a three-team trade last season.<\/p>\n Now, though, the NBA would like to close the door behind San Antonio, leaving teams in the same position the Spurs were in a few years ago in a bit of a predicament, and without the means to improve their rosters as rapidly as the Spurs could. (I\u2019m on record: I\u2019d get rid of the lottery and the draft, and let incoming players sign with whomever they wanted. But that\u2019s not going to happen.)<\/p>\n Major League Baseball changed its draft rules in the 2022 collective bargaining agreement with its players<\/a>, introducing a draft lottery that covers the top six picks in MLB\u2019s draft. MLB\u2019s lottery borrowed from the NBA\u2019s reforms, flattening the odds for the top three picks in the draft at 16.5 percent for the top three teams. But, just as the NBA is proposing to do going forward, MLB\u2019s lottery\/draft reform also limited the number of years a team could bite from the draft apple with high picks.<\/p>\n Small-market MLB teams that get money from the league\u2019s revenue-sharing program can\u2019t have a lottery pick three years in a row. And no team that either pays into the revenue-sharing program or is a large-market team can pick in the lottery two years in a row. Any team ineligible for a top-six pick in either category cannot pick earlier than 10th in the first round of the following year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n You can imagine, after the Houston Astros tanked their stars off in the early 2010s \u2014 going 162-324 from 2011-13, and winding up with the top pick overall in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and the second (compensation for not signing their 2014 first-round pick) and fifth picks overall in 2015, and using those picks on key members of what would become a World Series-winning team just a few years later, like Carlos Correa and Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman \u2014 how well MLB\u2019s attempts to now square the circle<\/a> have gone over with fan bases of the league\u2019s worst teams that had to try and build what Houston did, under completely new rules.<\/a><\/p>\n Instead of encouraging teams to compete, wouldn\u2019t locking out teams from consecutive years in the top four just encourage more teams to tank, knowing that teams A, B or C, after being in the top four the previous year, are now ineligible for top-four spots this year? And, wouldn\u2019t that ultimately lead to more good teams getting more high picks, which defeats the entire purpose of a draft based on inverse order of record?<\/p>\n Worse yet, for a league that swears up and down that it wants parity to bore as deep as possible into the league\u2019s marrow: There\u2019s a real, real possibility that the defending champion Thunder could get the top pick in next year\u2019s draft, because of the unprotected 2026 first-rounder from the LA Clippers that the Thunder owns \u2014 yet another Easter egg from the Paul George trade in 2019 that brought Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and multiple future firsts to Oklahoma City. The Clippers\u2019 collapse to start this season has put the Thunder in the unimaginable position of adding yet another marquee talent to their championship core.<\/p>\n And, as an addendum, OKC also gets the rights to Utah\u2019s 2026 first-rounder if it falls outside of the top eight.<\/p>\n No fault of the Thunder; they planned ahead. But is the game served better if, say, Darryn Peterson or AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer goes to the Thunder, adding to their largesse, instead of teams that don\u2019t have a single marquee player to build around and market? If the Wizards, who haven\u2019t had the top pick in the draft since 2010, or the Jazz, who\u2019ve never moved up in the lottery once in the 11 times they\u2019ve participated, or the Brooklyn Nets, who got out of the marquee free-agent business after their team imploded in 2023, are iced out yet again next spring from adding their SGA or Joki\u0107 or Giannis via the draft, what are they supposed to do?<\/p>\n Imagine a wildly successful and popular band \u2014 U2, maybe \u2014 adding Derek Trucks to the band, or H.E.R., because it could, and because it\u2019s already a legendary band, and who wouldn\u2019t want to join it, and because it already has a worldwide following that would gladly accept people who can shred guitars like those two can. Would that make U2 even better as a group, even more influential? Would it be great for the careers of Trucks and\/or H.E.R. to do guitar duets with The Edge? Certainly.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s better for the music industry: an even greater U2, or an already great U2, along with an up-and-coming H.E.R.\/Tedeschi Trucks Band, providing their own sound and growing their own fan bases? What if you wanted to see Trucks\/H.E.R. do their own thing<\/a>, with their own bands<\/a>, rather than just riffing with Bono?<\/p>\n The NBA continues to try to fix the lottery because the lottery continues to fail at what it\u2019s supposed to do \u2014 get teams in and out of it, in short fashion, making room for the next group of teams that need immediate help. Maybe the problem is the lottery, not the attempts at reforming it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is not a flex, nor an attempt to drop coal in the NBA\u2019s Christmas stocking. Tanking is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[7218,64,63,1664,5997,5670,2066,17603,7235,1662,7214,5552,7220,7221,7236,7232,5851,7223,4620,5665,590,7210,1666,5548,12985,9688,7185,4621,5674,10549,85,17602,11898,7211],"class_list":{"0":"post-373212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-boston-celtics","12":"tag-brooklyn-nets","13":"tag-charlotte-hornets","14":"tag-chicago-bulls","15":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","16":"tag-dallas-mavericks","17":"tag-denver-nuggets","18":"tag-detroit-pistons","19":"tag-golden-state-warriors","20":"tag-houston-rockets","21":"tag-indiana-pacers","22":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","23":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","24":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","25":"tag-miami-heat","26":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","27":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","28":"tag-nba","29":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","30":"tag-new-york-knicks","31":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","32":"tag-orlando-magic","33":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","34":"tag-phoenix-suns","35":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","36":"tag-sacramento-kings","37":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","38":"tag-sports","39":"tag-toronto-raptors","40":"tag-utah-jazz","41":"tag-washington-wizards"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}