Tanking: NBA’s perennial self-sabotage tactic brought to the fore by the Philadelphia 76ers

Brett Brown of the Philadelphia 76ers talks with Michael Carter-Williams during a game. Is he asking him to deliberately underperform?

It is oddly amusing to watch the Philadelphia 76ers lose game after game in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable. The ineptitude of the team has become kind of an anomaly to watch. On any given night, the 76ers field only about two competitive players. The perfection with which they are executing their tanking mission has stirred up a lot of debate among the analysts and the general public alike.

The term ‘tanking’ in the NBA refers to a franchise throwing away its season in order to get a higher draft pick in the annual NBA draft lottery, the marquee event which initiates the inception of new young players ready for the NBA rigour. The way it works is that the more a team piles up its losses, the higher chance it gets of snagging the No. 1 overall pick every year. It is arguable that this technique does not always work, but isn’t it better to have a 25% chance of getting the first pick rather than having, say, a 10% chance? So in essence, the NBA might actually be the only sporting league which rewards losing.

The landscape of the NBA has changed drastically in the past few years. Analytics has become such a major part of the machination of an NBA franchise that the teams not willing to embrace the numbers are in danger of becoming obsolete. The implementation of the current “Collective Bargaining Agreement” (CBA) has put a choke-hold on team spending in quite a forceful manner. The aim was always to level the playing field, so that big spending teams like the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers do not snag every free agent out there by dangling the money carrot.

There is no hard cap as such in the NBA, the like of which is present in the NFL, but the imposition of hefty fines on teams exceeding the salary cap has every franchise in a conundrum. The repeater tax fine, which is imposed on a team if it is in violation of the salary cap regulations for two consecutive years, can put quite a bit of a dent in even the deepest pockets. This has resulted in the cropping up of a new, extremely cap savvy breed of general managers, who are money minded and treat draft picks as the best trade asset with which to strike deals.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are a fine example of tanking in all its glory. The absurd ways with which they ruin their franchise every year is topped only by the New York Knicks, who are a beacon of mismanagement. The Cavaliers have received three No. 1 draft picks since 2002, a direct by-product of their horrendous regular seasons. The Cavaliers got LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Anthony Benett with those picks. Anthony Benett has pretty much proved a bust in the NBA, somebody who will most probably never be better than a rotation player.

The Cavaliers let James walk after repeatedly turning a deaf ear to his requests of surrounding him with a better supporting cast, and are on their way to piss off Kyrie Irving the same way. It will not come as a surprise if Irving walks the next time he becomes a free agent. You cannot put two players in the back-court who clearly want nothing to do with each other, and assume they will get you wins.

It is becoming increasingly rare to see long contracts in the NBA. Teams have become so wary of bad contracts that only certified superstars are being offered maximum level contracts. Cap clogging and minimal return contracts like the ones of Josh Smith and Rudy Gay are being shopped like never before, with teams wanting financial flexibility or at least something close to a return from players like them.

Rudy Gay has already been traded twice and the Pistons are clearly unhappy with Josh Smith’s monster deal, readily shopping him for spare change. But here is the thing; none of the other teams want anything to do with such contracts and such players. Cap space has become of such paramount importance to every team that accepting bad contracts such as the ones mentioned above is not feasible to them even if they lose night after night.

LeBron James during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers

Such has been the impact of the CBA that almost half the teams out of the possible 30 enter the free agency with max level cap space; enough to offer at least one max level contract to any player. This has opened up the contention of fighting for the free agents more than ever. Gone are the days when a team had to plan two years in advance for the arriving free agent class, clear up cap room and offload bad contracts. This is the time of single year deals and mid-level exceptions.

Amid all this extravaganza of max contracts, bogus trades and waiving of non-productive players, the smaller market teams still see tanking as the only viable option for rebuilding. Star players prefer greener pastures and fatter pay-checks. The glamour and the life-style of places like New York, Los Angeles and Miami is a much bigger draw than going and playing for teams like, say Milwaukee.

Tanking is easy for any NBA team. You just have to follow a few basic steps in order to ensure that your season turns out as disastrous as you want it to be, the steps that the 76ers are following with immaculate perfection. The steps look as follows.

1. Firstly, you trade most of your players away on nonsensical deals and get absolutely nothing in return. Remember Orlando Magic and the Howard trade? Yup, that is the blue-print. Complete bogus trades with other franchises sending productive players their way and spare change towards yours. Doing this ensures that none of the players on your team even accidentally win you a ball game.

2. Secondly, you put a few of your competent players out with fake injuries prolonging their recovery and rehabilitation time, giving the press statements like, “We do not want to rush with the recovery process,” and “His long-term health is a bigger concern than the current state of the team”. Oh, and trade for Byron Mullens. Always trade for Byron Mullens. If you have to give up two front court players for him you do it. If you have to give up a second round draft pick or two you do it. Because nothing in the NBA is as big a certainty as Byron Mullens on a lottery team. Remember the 7-59 Charlotte Bobcats?

3. Try every bogus lineup imaginable by a fan, with the pretext of finding out which lineup suits the team better. If you have to field four front court players to lose a match you do it, because we are experimenting and experimentation means trying something that has not been tried before. Who cares if the lineup cannot manufacture a single look at the basket?

4. Reward the fans for their unwavering support of the rebuilding process by giving them discounts on season tickets, because it is their life’s dream to watch their team getting pounded by every team coming into the arena for a cheaper price.

It is really that simple. The 76ers are following it with more concentration than their players follow up their jump shots. Michael Carter Williams is sidelined with a fake injury and the competent players are shunted into ridiculous line-ups because they do not want to win games. The 76ers’ losing streak currently sits at 21 consecutive losses and if they lose the rest of the games nobody will even bat an eye, because hey, that’s what tanking is about right? The worst part is that the 76ers actually belong to the Eastern conference, which is a giant dump of incompetent basketball teams in its own right.

It is just not okay for teams to throw away seasons like this. It is not fair to the fans nor is it fair to the players. The whole concept of the draft lottery needs a reboot because otherwise it is going to be the same year after year. If roughly six teams out of a possible 30 are willingly throwing away games in the last five weeks of the season, it does not bode well for the sport as a whole.

Self-sabotage is pretty much a recurring danger, and if it is not dealt with head-on then we will soon see more frenzy for a draft lottery than we will for an NBA finals.