Why Tanking is No Longer the Perfect Strategy for the NBA

Why Tanking is No Longer the Perfect Strategy for the NBA

Tanking is when an NBA team intentionally lose games in order to get relatively high draft picks for the next season. Just like how a minority of  the lower income social class intentionally stay poor to get health insurance benefits for free, in addition to how actors intentionally set negative societal examples to attract public attention. NBA managers sometimes use an intentional strategic move to “give-up” on the competition and in return, obtain advantages in the long-run. I believe using tanking as a strategy is detrimental to an NBA team and system because it destroys team chemistry, loses fan support, and has been proven quite ineffective.

In basketball, one plus one can either be greater than two or less than two, because the total strength of two players is not exactly the sum of the two players’ offensive and defensive power. (+,- system) Something that cannot be measurement by metrics, but can be easily neglected is team chemistry. A team can have two average role players who can understand one another's game fluently, who in part, could realistically outplay two stars who do not get along. When team chemistry is cherished and  high, players care more about team victory than personal individual stats and accomplishments. Imagine a team of players who have incredibly high and shared momentum towards competing for a championship but are consequently told to intentionally throw away games for perhaps a freak of nature college athlete the following year. Players will gradually care less about the record of the team and more of their individual metrics, because their higher management would be angry if they went on a winning streak and held it consistently, breaking intentions. Some star-caliber players in a tanking team happen to be against tanking because becoming intentionally bad as a team also negatively impacts individual player’s stats. Players who do not want their stats affected will turn away from competing with players of an opposing team and start competing with their teammates by trying to outscore them. The most representative example is the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2018-2019 season. When Jimmy Butler, an all-star level player paired up with young stars Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, people thought the 2017-2018 Timberwolves are in the distant conversation of winning the championship. After not living up to the potential and only making the eighth seed in the playoffs that year, the Timberwolves managers clearly realized and decided to take a step back this previous season and try to tank, ultimately becoming sellers at the trade deadline in February.  This strategy quickly created significant conflict between Towns and Butler, causing the Timberwolves to trade Jimmy Butler, who hoped to continue to compete for a championship in an environment where winning is placed above anything. This also caused the Timberwolves newly drafted SG/SF Josh Okogie, to develop in an environment where winning wasn’t established as a priority.. All of these negative consequences of tanking suggest that even if the tanking team is able to draft an amazing player, the team’s breath-taking atmosphere can thwart the development of the young players and the team may never finish or recover from a rebuilding process.

A significant reason why teams should not suggest tanking is based upon fan support. Take the New York Knicks for example. They are quite seemingly sick and tired of being well, sick and tired. Their draft lottery placements have always been lower than expected, and their management just recently signed four power forwards in free agency, with the only exciting addition being Duke guard RJ Barrett. While many fans had dreams and expectations of pairing Kyrie Irving with Kevin Durant and Zion, that quickly developed into Taj Gibson and Reggie Bullock, leaving thousands of die hard fans aggravated for this seasonOf the students that we interviewed, 62.5% (blue slice) are against their favorite team tanking and 37.5% (red slice) are in favor. We can see that most students, regardless of how bad their favorite teams are, do not want their teams to stop competing. They would rather see their favorite team give everything in to try to climb 

Lastly, a team shouldn’t simply not tank because the strategy is no longer as effective following the draft rule change. In the past, teams are substantially more likely to get the first pick with the worst record. However, following the 2017-2018 season, the NBA modified the draft lottery rule so that the worst three teams have an equal 17% chance of receiving the coveted first overall pick. Since this newly constructed rule has been implemented,  most teams understand that being last and lowest seed in the regular season is not and will never be anymore guaranteeing the first overall choice to that desired fan baseTherefore, tanking is not the perfect strategy as it was repeatedly proven ineffective, hence the New York Knicks year after year.

NBA team should always consider competing as the first option regardless of how bad or socially criticized their current team roster is.Although several teams will always pursue this path, nothing is guaranteed anymore relative to regular season records, unlike football.