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.
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