Tank the Tanking Takes!

NBA writers are currently besides themselves because so many teams are tanking this season. Everyone is throwing out creative and often laughably convoluted ways to “fix” the draft, however, I feel like this is a great example of people being myopic. They see teams tanking and think, “We have to change the lottery!” But the Mavs won the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes. The Jazz, who have been bad for a while, keep missing out on the top picks. The team with the worst record hasn’t won since the NBA flattened the lotto odds. These teams gave away a season in order to draft the likes of: Ron Holland, Ausar Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr, Jalen Green, James Wiseman, and RJ Barrett. How exactly is the lottery not doing what it is supposed to?

I don’t believe that the problem is the draft. The problem is the CBA. The old CBA wasn’t good but the newest one is downright awful. The one thing that the NBA has yet to figure out is that every move they make to punish rich teams from spending too much money actually just makes it even less likely that the smaller market teams will ever be able to afford a contender without relying on landing a stud in the draft.

Since the last CBA, the unspoken truth about the NBA has been that, if you want to build a contender, you need to get your core pieces together while at least one of your top two players is on his rookie deal. If you’re paying two guys max money, it’s pretty much a guarantee that you’ll be the dreaded One Player Away for their run. The exception to this rule is the Knicks who were able to find a sub-max superstar in Jalen Brunson (who then took a hometown discount for his next contract) and also turned a less-than-the-max Julius Randle into KAT. But the odds of threading that needle are far worse than the odds of winning the lotto.

I think the other issue is that the CBAs have essentially tied top draft picks to their franchise for 7 years and when the star finally does hit the open market, they will cost 30% of the salary cap to sign. How many franchises are going to put together a quality team while also having that kind of money to spend in the upcoming offseason? I’m not sure that I consider the Lakers a true contender but they’re close to this scenario except look at the gamble they are taking. How many GMs would risk losing both LeBron James and Austin Reaves so they can hopefully sign someone in free agency? And if the Lakers do sign a star, by my count, they’ll then only have $15 million left under the cap and will probably need two other starters and key bench contributors. To me, I think the reality for the Lakers is that signing one star to go alongside Luka won’t work.

The next issue is what I call the Morey Move. I feel like Daryl Morey was the first GM that I heard of throwing around tons of draft picks in trade offers but it’s starting to get out of hand. The amount of picks being thrown around in some of these trades is ridiculous and it’s making it so teams are not only not getting any real quality players in trades for their core pieces, but they aren’t even getting draft picks in the near future. These teams are dealing their star player for the promise of a future lottery ticket.

And the final issue is this - the NBA is a superstar league and there are only so many true superstars to go around. Some teams simply aren’t going to have a true star and this fact is going to get even worse once the NBA expands again. Now the obvious response is, Well, some teams can go the 2003-04 Pistons route and build with good-not-great players but the problem there is that GMs don’t have the impulse control to not overpay the next best thing. They’ll throw 40+ million dollars a year at Lauri Markkanen because they feel like they don’t have any other choice. I’m sorry, Utah, I know you’re trying to win but it’s going to be hard when you’re paying Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson almost 100 million dollars. And they also have to pay Walker Kessler this year and Keyonte George next offseason, which brings us back to the current CBA issue - there’s no way Utah is going to pay three big money guys and get close to the first apron. Utah desperately needs Ace to live up to the hype or else I don’t see how they are anything but the new version of the mediocre-but-at-least-trying Chicago Bulls, in which case, I’m sure all of the writers who are complaining about tanking will start whining that the Jazz are stuck in mediocrity and need to start fresh.