What is tanking in the NBA? 

what a take

Go spurs go!

Jordan wasn’t considered a generational talent in 84 though. He was taken 3rd overall

@@TC-cx4gm Jordan was pretty well regarded though, hakeem was a generational talent

it's tough though still with the lottery. At most the worst team in the league has a 14 percent chance of getting the number 1 spot so it's not a surefire thing.

⁠unless it's wemby and the spurs. Then it's 100 percent 😎

Grizzlies changed their team through the draft, not trades

@@futurehofer1564 They have been very smart with draft picks too, forgot to mention

@@adam01101 The Warriors also built their team using the draft by getting draft picks that they could develop into their system.

Miami’s bench is weak and they needed Jimmy to sign

Agreed

You won't have a league. owners aren't going to spend billions on a team if they know the next year they lose revenue by being relegated.

Tanking is not successful at all. Yes, teams tank to get a prospect, but in the future depending on how well that prospect plays they aren't able to get another talent to surround them. Prime examples are Doncic and LeBron with Cleveland. The Grizzlies and Warriors are the only recent team that was able to successfully tank, but the GSW rookies are demanding such high contracts that they will be forced to trade them over violations of the salary cap.

@@samporter5526 This. Also, as we've seen with the reaction to removing pro/rel.... ie, the Super League. It would seem that this concept must be decided at the beginning of a league's history, or it can never be removed or added in the future. Like a starting option of a video game adventure: warning: "you cannot change this setting!"

Because American sports is broken in this way. Unlike in Europe, where teams are incentivized to try (maybe not for a team who is mid table in their league at this point of the season and not in danger of being relegated, but besides that), there’s no point to try in American sports unless you have a solid chance of winning it all. There’s noteworthy times in both basketball and football where teams have deliberately played bad, selected an important player and immediately saw a turnaround. The Pittsburgh penguins in hockey are another team who successfully executed the deliberately play bad strategy. They got an all time great player in 2005 who continues to help them win today.

Because of the Law of Competitive Exclusion which essentially theorizes that in any given eco-system, organism with an advantage will slowly make it increasingly difficult for weaker ones to compete eventually leaving one or a few organisms. eg every single Premier League title since the start of the Premier League in the early 90's was won by either a multi-billion dollar club or a club owned by a billionaire. Even Leicester. Like the Premier League isn't for poor pple. It's only for the super-wealthy and that's now guaranteed for all time unless they equalize so the draft system and equal revenue distribution is a way to equalize the organisms so everyone has a chance to compete. And besides, if you've already won, d'you really need to be incentivized?

@@hornetguy9063 Either you don't watch American sports or you're perception of it has been warped by wherever you consume it from. What d'you mean, "no point in trying?" The league has equalized it for you so if you fail it's entirely your fault and not the leagues and that's kinda like the whole point. Also, pple are paying for contracts. Like pple have families to feed and rent to pay. It's only the front office that seeks to tank otherwise the players and coaches will never put their jobs on the line for sth that doesn't secure their own well-being. Like no coach or player on the alleged Trailblazers tanking season had anything to gain by tanking so none of them supported nor participated in it. It was just the front office.

@@Ngatiatimothy obviously. No one has ever accused the players and coaches of not trying. Brian Flores allegedly soured his relationship with the dolphins for refusing to be terrible. But yeah, it’s simple. There’s no benefit to going 9-8 constantly in the NFL. The front office is disincentived to do so. The Jaguars are likely to make the playoffs and have being terrible 2 years ago to thank, and could be well positioned to compete for years. The colts twice successfully blew up their competitiveness in order to land generational talents at QB. Meanwhile, the Vikings have been stuck in purgatory since time immemorial it seems (and before you say they’re having a great season, they have a point differential of -19. They’re likely to get blasted by the eagles or 49ers come playoff time). The fact that the worse your team is, the more you get rewarded in the draft (which, in a salary cap league, is hugely valuable because it allows you to pay less for what’s essentially top FA talent at the top of the draft). Trevor Lawrence’s cap hit was around $8.4m in 2022. He played like a guy worth about $27m more than that in 2022 according to over the cap. That’s $27m more the team can use to sign premier talent. Meanwhile, an average team gets to pay full price via free agency.

You can't just slap pro/rel on everything

There's no need yet. Big Soccer needs pro/rel to ensure their league has it's best chance at Europe. The NBA is the be all end all of the Basketball World. There are other leagues sure, but even the worst NBA franchise is 10x more prestigious than any other team in the world, they might as well be the NFL. There's no need for relegation when your league is a better product with parity.

although relegation prevents anti-competitive behavior a lot of leagues outside of America are prone to go bankrupt over improper fund management, which doesn't really happen because of the salary cap in American sports.

Tanking is the inevitable downside to having a draft, which is needed to help promote parity across the league. The upside is that every NBA fan has a realistic chance of watching the team they love win a championship one day, which just fundamentally isn’t the case in the leagues that have promotion and relegation. I’d rather deal with some uncompetitive teams for the chance at relevancy instead of spending a lifetime rooting for teams that will never be truly competitive against the wealthier franchises.

I'm not sure if relegation works for parity though. Other than the premier league, in most futbul leagues the same teams are constantly winning. It's one of the reasons the NFL is the most popular league in America, in any given year any team can win. While being top heavy caused the NBA and MLB to lose popularity in the 2010s. Basically no one wanted to see Golden State win again.

While relegation in the NBA would make it more "competitive" in terms of play at the top, there are many owners who only own teams with the prospect of selling them later on for a massive profit. Many teams, especially in small markets that struggle to sign free agents, would just become perennial losers. I do agree that it's ridiculous to pay money to watch your teams lose, but some fans embrace it like in Philly when they would chant "Trust the process." I would like to see something similar to the 50+1 rule in Germany and Sweden be implemented in American sports

@losermike Relegation prevents teams at the bottom from intentionally "tanking" bc their owners would lose more money by being relegated. I think the reason why the draft works in the NFL is because of the "law of large numbers" in which teams will be forced to pick draft prospects that match their playstyle. As the case with the NBA the numbers of players is much smaller so a valued draft pick could easily make your team competitive like MJ did with the bulls in the 90's and LeBron James with the Cavs in the 2000' and Luka Doncic with the Macs in 2020's.