NBA overreactions: Abolish the draft, end tanking

It’s NBA All-Star break eve! Everyone is headed to a much-needed weeklong break to recharge and get ready for a sprint to the finish line.

While we should be talking about the on-the-court product, the story of the past couple of weeks is the problem with tanking. Everyone is looking for a solution. Let’s change the NBA draft lottery somehow to make it less likely teams will give up halfway through the season.

Let’s get into the discussion and wonder if the league actually has a tanking problem.

The NBA has a tanking problem

NBA tanking hit what seems to have been a breaking point over the weekend when the Utah Jazz — who just acquired former All-Star and NBA Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson Jr. — decided to rest their starters and essentially blow a surefire win against the Orlando Magic. The Jazz were ahead entering the fourth quarter, and Jackson and Lauri Markkanen had combined for 49 points. Suddenly, both players were benched and the Magic were able to win.

It didn’t take a basketball savant to realize what was happening: The Jazz were executing a blatant tank to help secure their draft position.

And this isn’t the only tank job going on. Much of the trade deadline and the weeks leading up to it were about tanking teams trading for stars who could play next year, even as they tank this year.

The Wizards acquired Anthony Davis and shut him down for the season. This is a few weeks after acquiring Trae Young, who has yet to play for Washington. The Pacers got Ivica Zubac and sat him with a nagging ankle problem.

All of these teams want high picks, and all of them seem willing to rest their stars or assets until they are assured they have the best chance to get a potential franchise player from a loaded draft.

Post All-Star weekend, we’re going to see more teams actively tanking. There will be at least 10 teams doing their best to race to the bottom. So many of their games will be unwatchable. And so many entertaining players will be benched.

This is bad for the league.

Verdict: CAP

The league doesn’t have a tanking problem. The league has an ownership and power problem. There’s no solution to tanking in the current NBA landscape. There just isn’t. As long as there is a draft or any way that adds randomness and lottery odds to secure a once-in-a-generation player or players, teams are going to tank.

The only solution to tanking is abolishing the draft itself.

If players are allowed to simply go to whatever team they want, then it puts the onus on organizations to make their teams desirable destinations for incoming rookies.

You think the Nets would be OK putting a roster and product out that loses games by 60 points if they knew they had to also attract a top-level rookie to come play? You think the Jazz would be blatantly losing games every fourth quarter if they knew they had to impress a kid with their roster construction and coaching?

The common argument against abolishing the draft is that young players would all go to the same markets. You’d have the best pick go to the Lakers every year, and it wouldn’t be fair to smaller markets. But that’s not how free markets work. Nike doesn’t have every star athlete. Neither does Adidas. People choose where they want to go.

Take the aforementioned Lakers, for instance. They are historically the prime destination in the league because, well, they’re the Lakers. But right now they’re building around Luka Dončić, who is on a mission to win a championship now. Imagine telling him that you are investing cap space on a rookie who may or may not be able to contribute to that championship right now.

Better yet, imagine selling that to LeBron James a couple of years ago when he was desperately in win-now mode and the biggest star on the Lakers. If you’re a rookie, do you want to play for a team that’s trying to win now, especially if it’s full of veterans and you might not get the playing time you want for the first few years of your career? Ask Jonathan Kuminga how that worked out in Golden State.

The next question is what’s to stop a rebuilding team from loading up on the top three picks in a given draft year? Well, nothing. But that team would also eventually come across the same issue the Celtics had to deal with after having homegrown talents Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown: Eventually they had to gut their team of other talents to avoid the second apron if they wanted to keep their two drafted stars.

Oklahoma City will eventually have to make similar decisions with all of the guys they picked up in their drafts and early in their careers. The league has fail-safes so you can’t just run up a dynasty of three or four superstars whether they’re from the draft or not.

But again, if you’re a top-5 pick, are you really going to join three other star rookies when you’re on your rookie contract and you might have to give up touches and earnings potential? This makes the idea of superteams from a system devoid of drafts a little less obvious, no?

Without a draft, teams are incentivized to show off their very best from an organizational standpoint. They’re always auditioning for a player’s interest. They’re building veterans and winning culture. This is how a team like Dallas became a destination in the 1990s and early 2000s with a great infrastructure. It’s why people want to go to San Antonio or Golden State, or how the Clippers can grab a full house of stars (for better or worse). 

Remember, when Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were free agents, they chose the Nets over the Knicks in part because of the organization in comparison to the storied Knicks at the time. Will big markets have an advantage? Probably. But they always do. They just won’t have the overwhelming easy road to a championship that so many draft apologists claim. 

When I bring up abolishing the draft, the biggest pushback I get is that owners simply won’t go for it. And they probably won’t. But that doesn’t mean that the clear option of abolishing the draft isn’t possible. Owners benefit from the lottery. They benefit from not having to be good at their jobs and being rewarded by a ping-pong ball magically falling in their favor.

But as long as owners are going to maintain that the draft should still happen, then I don’t want to complain about players, coaches and general managers doing what they can to game a broken system to their advantage. 

After all, just ask a Jazz fan: Would they prefer a game-changing draft pick or an early February win against the Orlando Magic?

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