The Last Place Penalty

I got on the Shameless bandwagon this week; binge-watching the first season after more than a few friends recommended it, and I did my standard procrastinating. It's turned out to be clever, and hilarious so far.

I bring this up out of irony because there's something clever, hilarious, and ultimately shameless going on in the NBA right now. As if there were much doubt I'm talking about Tank-a-Thon, Riggin' for Wiggins, Impiid for Embiid, the Royal Fumble, or whatever other name you want to give the backwards race that's consumed so much of the Association.

The Sixers just reeled off 26 straight losses as a means to an end - catching up to Milwaukee (a team who was "supposed to compete" this year) and maximizing their equity in this year's lottery. It made headlines for all the wrong reasons, and drummed up plenty of media scrutiny, but the Sixers can't really be held to blame. Their season is merely indicative of a much larger problem; one that's run rampant amid the mainstream sport most driven by individual talent.

There's two sides to this issue, both legitimate gripes: One being that the NBA places too strong an incentive for front offices to engage in "tanking"; wasting their fans' money and time to get a stronger footing to - as they're paid to do anyways - put a winning team together.

The other is that it's never been easy for small-market teams to attract elite talent, a truth that recent trends suggest may only get worse for teams like the Bobcats, Jazz and Cavaliers. And in the interest of overall competitive parity, it's good that teams who, in theory, perform the worst and attract the least talent, have a means to level the field (by getting their choice of the best new players).

A dilemma's been created by conflicting interests; the NBA is sabotaging itself by either providing too little help for struggling teams (one of the many flaws of the "Draft Wheel" proposal) or, as they have now, fostering a system where losses are assets. Philadelphia's one of several franchises actively behaving counter-productively because league conditions have almost engineered it, the Sixers are just following an unfortunate trend and doing it better than everyone else.

A solution that's far from perfect, but makes more sense than the Wheel's convoluted selection schedule (seriously, the NBA has had enough of The Wheel, no need for another one), may be as simple as one commonly found in fantasy basketball: the Last Place Penalty.

Anyone who's ever played fantasy sports knows how easily a league can be wrecked by managers who abandon a season after combinations of injuries, poor strategy, and lack of interest sabotage their chances of winning. At some point, the person running the team figures the time they'd invest in managing rotations, making trades, paying attention to the wire, etc would be better spent, you know, actually doing stuff, since they can't win anyway.

Many people agree that this ruins the overall quality of a league, much in same way that tanking ruins the NBA's overall product. So, most competitive fantasy leagues feature a "Last Place Penalty"; managers will ante-up extra at the beginning of the year (usually 2x the league's buy-in), covering both their entry and the L.P.P (sort of like your damage deposit on a hotel room). At the end of the season, the league's commissioner refunds the penalty sum to everyone but whoever finishes last, with that money either added to the prize pool or broken up among the other teams.

This (in most cases) incentivizes fantasy managers to not totally throw seasons, and at least try to keep pace with everyone else, promoting season-long competition, especially in head-to-head leagues. By now you see where this is going; if the NBA's current Lottery system operated on these terms, the last place team would be paying no penalty, and getting a larger rebate than anyone else.

A pretty simple way to discourage teams from openly bombing as they have this year, while still giving relief to those that need it through the Draft, would be to incorporate the Last Place Penalty into the Lottery system. This would make teams at least think twice before pulling the chute on a season, and guarantee they wouldn't be as eager to slide in the standings.

The penalty could be anything; maybe the last place team automatically gets the 14th pick. Maybe they're levied a heavy fine, lose their mid-level exception that summer, or have to hire Mike Brown. Anything that outweighs the margin between a 20 and 25% chance at the first overall pick, and prevents careless abandon as a means of strategic improvement. It's one way to at least raise the bar somewhere acceptable, to where the NBA isn't being tarnished as easily as your Yahoo! league.

The Sixers have stumbled awkwardly through most of this season, Shameless-ly, like a waste-cased Frank Gallagher after a bender at the Alibi. Also like Frank, they'll be getting their disability check at the end of the month, and the system's going to keep getting worked until a change is made.

Top 9s: The Tank Brigade

Welcome to the Tank Brigade; where the race for professional basketball's worst record is heating up.

Tanking has never been trendier; a shift induced not only by the massive talent pool in next year's Draft, but by a dynamic historical precedent. Not only does it (with very rare exception) take elite talent to win an NBA title - we're talking at least one bonafide Top-10 guy - but with stars aligning in big cities and taking salary cuts to help their teams dodge the cap, it's never been harder for small market/less established teams to land the best players.

The mentality that competing for a low Playoff spot is the League's worst position has never been so prevalent, leading most teams to shoot for the stars, or lie down in the dirt. While the likes of the Thunder and Pacers battle for the Association's best record, there's a more subtle fight in full force. One for the best odds in a gamble to determine a complete gutterball of a season's ultimate worth.

The very worst team stands only a 1 in 4 chance of landing the top pick on a record-based scale, and even a loaded Draft class like the one upon us can have its busts.The Lottery is still very much a gamble. This is degeneracy at its highest stakes; snuffing seasons and making fans wait on a relative dice roll. In a league where owners spent a lockout griping about "competitive parity" just over two years ago.

Some franchises are more or less banking on a lottery miracle, while others have set themselves up nicely for whatever they net in this Draft to join a promising foundation; stockpiling other assets and clearing cap space.

So here are the NBA's Nine worst teams as of today, ranked from worst to first in order of how well they've managed through this whole "Tanking" thing:

9. New York Knicks
Woops.

So this season hasn't been great for the Knicks; the kind that's swiftly gone from alarming, to laughable, to downright tragic.

Their presence here is dubious for any number of reasons, from their Playoff ambitions and gaudy payroll, to the future picks they stupidly dealt, crippling their rebuilding effort. The Knicks will have no first-round pick this season, or in 2016; saved by the Stepien Rule from burying themselves deeper.

They've also traded a slew of second-rounders, to make sage, competitively-priced acquisitions like Andrea Bargnani. This was a total dud of the contract that the Raptors were just praying to unload on some GM who, like most of America, had mostly ignored them and didn't know just how bad Bargs was. Then along comes New York, offering to give them three draft picks, along with cheaper, shorter-term deals, to take him off their hands.

They literally yanked their own safety net before nose-diving down the East standings, and now face an offseason of many questions, with no idea where to begin on an answer.

8. New Orleans Pelicans 
The Pels bought up their own stock prematurely, and currently owning the NBA's second-longest losing streak, are cruising towards an early summer, likely with no redemption in sight.

Like the Knicks, they mortgaged their Lottery equity for current assets, figuring their team to be better and the pick much lower. Sure enough, as soon as you could say "Point Guard Injury Epidemic" and "Tyreke Evans was a waste of money", the Pelicans tilted the scales of the Jrue Holiday deal heavily.

Unless they luck out and land in the top-5, Philly will get the Pels' first-rounder, ironically in exchange for the very player whose absence (along with Ryan Anderson) made this pick become so attractive.

So far, we've learned that Tanking is mostly sub-optimal strategy when you've given away your Draft picks and are among the worst teams by accident.


7. Sacramento Kings
That so much of Sacramento's next season lies in Rudy Gay's $19million player option is a mildly terrifying predicament, especially for a rebuilding team that gave up a bunch of expiring deals for him.

Working in their favor is that Gay has been playing arguably the best ball of his career, able to dominate the rock and shoot with no conscience on a team with low expectations. This might lean him towards putting himself on the market now while his stock's high; locking up another deal before he's dealt to a stricter team ('Rudy Gay's Expiring Contract' would be the most-floated piece in trade rumors next year) and his shot selection becomes an international punchline again.

With Boogie beasting, and a reasonable cap scenario long-term, this could be a solid team in a few years if the pieces come together properly, but so far the movement under new owner Vivek Ranadive has been mostly lateral.

6. Utah Jazz
The Jazz have done an outstanding job of clearing cap room and producing a 2013-14 on-court product that would surely suck enough to get a high Lotto pick.

The problem for them is they may have done it too well.

This team has few attractive pieces, with Enes Kanter, and to a lesser extent Derrick Favors, failing to make much of a leap in their expanded roles, and meshing poorly together as a tandem. Trey Burke will remain, as will Gordon Hayward (for a year, at least) but it's hardly enough to convince the kind of talent Utah's banking on to come spend most of their year in a trendy, must-visit NBA locale like Salt Lake City.

I'm predicting a Jazz offseason that exemplifies why not all cap space is created equal, and leaves them short on the Free Agent Haul.

5. Boston Celtics
The Celtics' season has been somewhat confounding. The two apparent objectives this year were: 1) Trade Rajon Rondo, and 2) Lose as many games as possible. The former didn't happen, and the latter only did after a counter-productively hot start under Brad Stevens.

The good news is that Stevens was an ace hire, and that several Celtics pieces - most notably Jared Sullinger - have seen a spike in value, both to the team and on the trade market. The bad news is that they still have to pay Gerald Wallace $20million over the next two years, and the continuing Rondo uncertainty makes their future very hard to define.

4. L.A. Lakers

The Lakers' range of possibilities for next season is extremely wide:

They currently have over half their cap next year (roughly $35million) invested in two guys who've each played less than ten games this year. That said, the latest round of Steve Nash retirement rumors seem more well-founded than in the past, possibly shaving $10m off the tab.

Since a very large chunk of their roster is off the books this summer, the Lakers (if Nash does hang 'em up) could have safely over $30million in cap space, along with a decent-at-worst Lottery pick.

How all that potential comes together is obviously a tricky variable; TinselTown has always been a favorite destination for big names, but there's no telling just how willing Player X will be to team with Kobe or commit to a rebuild.

With such a large window, the Lakers are sure to come back reloaded, but they only have to rewind their franchise one year to see how throwing a bunch of talent together can be an unmitigated disaster.

3. Milwaukee Bucks
John Hammond is a genius.

I don't say this in any facetious regard; I really think the guy's a mastermind. Last summer, the Bucks were staring an obvious rebuild in the face, with senile owner Herb Kohl demanding that the team stay "competitive" (read: pick in the late Lottery or get swept by Indiana/Miami).

Instead of condemning them to middling mediocrity, Hammond had a plan; he knew his owner was being an idiot, but he didn't want to get himself fired. So he went about his mandate under the appearance of legitimacy, inking deals and making trades that seemed aimed at the short-term, but weren't making Milwaukee any better . He even coerced sports' trendiest website into exaggerating his team's worth in their season preview.

Then when the curtains came up, the Bucks confirmed everyone's suspicions that they couldn't score. At all. Hammond then hired local goons to provoke new-signed defensive backbone Larry Sanders into injuring himself in a drunken nightclub meltdown. As a result, they own the NBA's worst record (/best Lottery odds), two promising prospects in John Henson and Giannis Antetokounmpo (it's his name, get over it), and little long-term financial commitment.

2. Orlando Magic
Few teams made being bad look as easy this season as the Magic, who have a bottom-3 record in the East and plenty going in their favor:

- they have two legitimate foundation pieces (Nik & Vic); they're the only serious tankers who can say that.

- their whole team is bathing in upside; a roster to which they'll add a potential stud in late June

- they have oodles of cap space, and play in Orlando, which between the sunshine, Disney World, and the lack of state income tax, is relatively prime Free Agent real estate


All added up, this should be a pretty quick turnaround for the Magic, which after Dwight Howard hijacked their franchise for 18 months, should come as comfort to their fans.

1. Philadelphia 76ers
THIS is how you suck. The Sixers have by far the largest pot of gold of at the end of this season's shit-rainbow.

First they snaked likely future-All Star Michael Carter-Williams late in last year's Lottery and had him miss a convenient amount of games. They'll get continued growth moving forward from a guy nobody thought would be this good. Then they whittled their payroll down to the bare bones; with somewhere between 17-32million on tap for next year, they'll be the least-constricted team in this summer's spending spree. All the while, losing almost methodically by playing a frenetic pace with a D-League roster.

The plot thickens with the oncoming arrival of potentially game-changing defensive center Nerlens Noel, along with (and here's the best part) not one, but two Lotto picks from the much-ogled 2014 Class. Not only do the 76ers have their own selection, but that of the Pelicans in the highly likely event it lands outside the Top 5.

After the Bynum disaster, the floor fell out beneath the Sixers quickly, but this team has enough going for it beyond this season that they'll likely wind up reaping the greatest spoils of the Tank Brigade.