Capture the Flagg
Amidst the brutality of lingering, recurring, and season-ending injuries, NBA teams will often take certain liberties in order to ensure the imminent worsening of the team’s season in the hopes of a higher draft pick in the coming season. This is commonly known as a ‘tank,’ and is a key component of a team's rebuild. A tank can appear in many forms, from trading away players for future picks, resting different players across different games to buy a loss, or, as most commonly, shutting down players for the rest of the season. Despite the league’s best attempts to prevent struggling teams from tanking, organisations have repeatedly found ways to drop games, rest stars, and patiently wait for the future.
A large impediment towards the league’s distaste for tanking is the great strength of upcoming draft classes. Over the past few years the emerging draft class has been lacklustre, however, for the foreseeable future, this trend seems to have shifted. Pioneered by near-guaranteed #1 pick Cooper Flagg out of Duke University, teams invested in a rebuild for the past few years such as the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors have been joined by injury-ridden teams such as the New Orleans Pelicans, Philadelphia 76ers and San Antonio Spurs.
For the Philadelphia 76ers, this season has been underwhelming, yet the decision to tank came as a result of the shutting down of Joel Embiid for the season, which subsequently resulted in Paul George getting shut down to work on some lingering injuries.
San Antonio Spurs were much the same, following their promising start to the season, generational talent Victor Wembanyama was shut down with Deep Vein Thrombosis, and subsequently the organisation allowed D’Aaron Fox to have his injured hand operated on, finishing him for the season. It is crucial to note that this surgery was not time-sensitive. By shutting him down and permitting him to receive surgery, the Spurs are committing to a losing season, focusing on next year's draft.
The NBA has various league-wide restrictions to prevent a team from tanking, such as the recently implemented ‘player participation policy,’ rejecting the concept of load management, as well as NBA executive investigations should they suspect a team of tanking, but is there any legitimate solution? Numerous ideas have been floated but the enforceability/value of these ideas is questionable:
Flattening the lottery odds: Instead of the worst team having the highest chance of the first overall pick, these odds would be adjusted to make things slightly more even, intended to inspire an identity among teams of ‘fight for the playoffs, if we miss we still have a shot at a high pick.’ However, this comes with an obvious impediment — with too many teams given a chance at the top pick, more teams might be interested in the first pick than a push for the playoffs.
Count wins instead of losses after the All-Star break: This suggestion would reverse the way wins and losses are counted for the last 20 games of the season, instead rewarding teams with a greater win percentage with a higher lottery pick, supposedly incentivising worse teams to play harder and not to rest starters, but a perplexing suggestion in a climate where some bad teams are tanking, and some bad teams are bad. This doesn’t level the playing field so much as it does isolate genuinely struggling teams while spoon-feeding better teams who have a tanking attitude.
Remove pick protections: This is a really interesting concept, suggesting that instead of flattening outcomes in order to prevent being the third instead of fourth, or the eighth instead of ninth. However, this is more of a response to late-stage tanking, such as the Mavericks in 2023 which resulted in Derrick Lively, and not necessarily long-term tanking.
Tanking is a difficult process — logistically, physically and emotionally — however for the NBA executive office, it seems incredibly difficult to completely eliminate. When teams get off to bad starts, it is historically difficult for a single season rejuvenation, thereby a bad start inspires hope at a better next season.
Bulls win 8 of last 10
The Chicago Bulls continue to fight for a playoff spot, recording 8 wins in their last 10 games, moving ahead of the Miami Heat into 9th place with a 32-40 record, only two games behind the Orlando Magic. This stretch of great play includes a 31-point win over the fully healthy Lakers, a 12-point win over the Kings, and a 10-point win over the Nuggets. The superstar for the Bulls the past few weeks has been Coby White, averaging 31/5/4 over the last 10. White has been on the way to leading the team for the past few years, yet now, following the departure of both Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, he has been given the green light. Josh Giddey has also been extremely impressive, not only the past few games, but his entire first season with the Bulls — over his last 10 he averages 23/10/10, an unbelievable all-court average. The Bulls have been extremely dominant in the past few weeks, and while I am not convinced they can make legitimate waves in the playoffs, it could be an exciting underdog story…
Mavericks reinstate Anthony Davis
In a highly questionable roster decision, the Dallas Mavericks have reinstated All-Star centre Anthony Davis following a one-month sidelining with an adductor strain. This move is questionable due to the current state of the Mavericks. Following the trade of their franchise player, Davis was injured in the first half of his first game with his new team. Following this, the Mavericks have fallen out of play-in position, yet can still reach a spot. However, they will have to do it without Kyrie Irving, who is out for the season with a torn ACL, and Dereck Lively II, who has been out since January with an ankle injury. Reinstating a heavily injury-prone player after he has just been out with a nagging injury while the team has no legitimate shot at the finals without their star is an interesting decision. The risk-reward is simply not valuable. The Mavericks should’ve given AD more time to rest, or just shut him down.
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