Man, ESPN is driving me nuts lately.  I love a lot of the discussion about how to make the game better but it sure would be nice if we could talk about how to fix things that are, you know, broken, instead of turning the blogosphere into shit-storms of articles on the current meme of what's wrong with basketball. The latest craze is OH MY GOD HOW DO WE STOP THE TANKING And, as I have written before, tanking doesn't need to be fixed because tanking is basically a moronic strategy.

First it was flopping, which is pretty annoying, sure, because watching an NBA player flop on defense is a lot like watching a pro wrestler bounce off the ropes -- you know that this isn't really the way things work in the real world. But flopping isn't really anywhere near my top ten most annoying things about the NBA (top of the list, for the curious, is the benefit of the doubt that superstars get on every contact of every play).

Now, it's tanking. Like ten articles a day on Truehoop about how terrible it is that teams are tanking. Jeff Van Gundy talking about how to fix things. OH the HUMANITY! And I know the pain of watching a team tank, believe me, I'm from Minnesota, and I live in Seattle, where the Thunder did most of its tanking sucking. But, you know, here's the thing: there's nothing really wrong with the system. Tanking, as a strategy, does not need to be "fixed" because tanking, as a strategy, already sucks balls. Let's re-visit what I wrote last time:

First, let's talk about the other two points. I kind of did this the other day in my article on the Eric Gordon trade -- "rebuilding" is basically the NBA management playing the hamster running endlessly in the wheel. There are two key points:

• The playoffs are pure marginal gross profit for an NBA team. This is because players are paid for the regular season, but beyond a per-diem, they don't get paid for the post-season.
• Being the worst team in the league does NOT, in fact, offer very good opportunities to land the coveted "super-star" player. Ask Chicago, who waited about 10 years to land Rose. Or Minnesota, who have NEVER gotten the first pick (their management is terrible but not responsible for this bit of bad luck). The fact is that the #1 overall pick is about 4-6 times more likely to land a championship player than other lottery picks. Yet your chance of the #1 pick is very low, even if you are the worst team in the league.

 

There are two considerations here: financial profit and "contending". The drones over at ESPN love to pretend that the two are independent, and that somehow money flows in and out of teams irrespective of how many games you win, but this is simply not true. Winning drives attendence, and attendance fills owners pockets with money.  And playoff games mean more attendance, which means more money. There is absolutely no question that, all other things being equal, 45-50 win teams that lose in the first round make more money than teams that win 20 games.  A lot more money.  I realize that the 30-win clippers often made more money than the 45-win Bucks teams did, but the true comparison is, did it make more money than a 50-win Clipper squad would have?

This is further compounded by the notion that fielding a playoff team is as expensive as fielding a championship team, thanks to the expense of NBA salaries. This, however, is bullshit.

To illustrate, let's say I purchased the Orlando magic, and was allowed to void all the contracts, except Dwight Howard and Ryan Andersen.  Then, next year, I'd tell management to fill out the roster, but stipulate that they could not spend more than $3 million per player unless I approve it, and I'd only approve it if I thought it was a franchise player.  So your roster is Dwight, Andersen, and a bunch of replacement-level players.  Who here thinks that team isn't good enough to make the playoffs as a 6th-8th seed? In the East, no less?

Ok, so you don't have Dwight Howard or another star. That's a valid argument. But if you don't have even one superstar on your roster, or if you have a superstar but no other star players at all (ahem, Minnesota in 2010), you are probably not tanking on purpose, the odds are you are just losing a lot of games because your team just isn't very good. It's also true that, even if you are only paying $3 million per player, you have to get guys that are actually replacement-level talent and not guys like Glen Davis or Darko Milicic, who should not be able to charge money for the privilege of playing basketball.

The financial question is further complicated by the new collective bargaining agreement. Even if we did buy the argument that playoff teams are more expensive than lottery teams, there's a minor wrinkle: the minimum salary threshold, which next year is 85% of the cap, and the year thereafter will be 90% of the cap.  You can't a field a team like Memphis did last year, with a $40 million dollar payroll. A team trying to tank will only "save" 10% vs. a team at the cap. We'll generously double that and say that it is actually 20% after luxury tax payments (although it is not clear to me how such payments are actually distributed).  Since the cap is about $58 million now, we're talking about a "savings" of about $14 million per year.

Who here believes that a 50 win team that plays one playoff series can't make at least $14 million dollars more than a 25-win tanking team?  That's 2 or more extra nearly pure-profit playoff games (you don't have to pay your players since their paychecks stop after the regular season) and that's a lot of increased attendance during your 42 home games. Presumably, the increased attendance means more ad revenue too. As I have mentioned before, winning a playoff series alone is probably worth $10 million in profit. So raise your hand if you think spending $14 more million to make the playoffs would not be profitable.

Anyone?

Bueller?

Ok, so maybe my owner doesn't care about money (James Dolan and Mark Cuban often give off this impression, for different reasons). Maybe winning a championship is worth losing money for a few years, and if tanking can maximize your chance at a championship, that's fine, then, right?

Well, the thing is, tanking just doesn't do any such thing. Let's, once again, re-visit some key points:

• Tanking does not, and will never, guarantee that you'll "contend" later.  Since the lottery was introduced, it doesn't even guarantee you a very good shot at the overall #1 pick, which is almost always the only one that carries some certainty of increasing your championship chances.
• The argument that "you need a real superstar to win" is a valid one.  But the chance of luckboxing your way into a real superstar is just about as good for 50-win team as it is for a 20-win team, either through an opportune trade (See Gasol from MEM to LAL, Garnett from MN to BOS, Rasheed Wallace to DET in 2003, etc) or a draft (see the Sonics landing the #2 pick and luckily dodging Oden's health issues, the Spurs grabbing Parker/Ginobli very late, etc)

The other day, Arturo Galetti decided to send around an interesting table to the group.  Here's how teams perform over a ten-year period following the previous year:

	50 to 54 Wins (playoff team)	55 or More (contender)	Total
20 Wins or Less	8%	6%	14%
20 to 24 Wins	10%	11%	22%
25 to 29 Wins	10%	12%	22%
30 to 34 Wins	9%	12%	21%
35 to 39 Wins	10%	13%	23%
40 to 44 Wins	15%	14%	28%
45 to 49 Wins	15%	17%	32%
50 to 54 Wins	15%	22%	37%
55 or More	17%	34%	50%

What this table says is dead simple: the more you win now, the more likely you will be a contender in the future. As you can see above, only 6% of teams that win less than 20 games become a 55 game winner within a decade. And then Dre pointed out that those 6% are probably the smart franchises. So, say you are 2011-12 Trailblazers, who were on pace for an 82-game adjusted 45 wins or so before blowing things up. Their chances of being a contender in the next 10 years were a modest 30% or so. Their best bet of contending for a title in the next ten years, it turns out, is not tanking, but rather improving a few games!

If you think about it, this is eminently logical. Because on the path from lottery team to championship, you usually spend a year or two being a midling playoff team. But, hey, news flash, if you already are a middling playoff team, blowing things up and tanking does not allow you to skip this step. It's just the equivalent of staying back a year in school. Well, unless you get to tank while coincidentally keeping David Robinson on your roster back before the lottery. But that involves going back in time and breaking your franchise center's foot, neither of which are here in my handbook of sound NBA management principles.

Or, to phrase it for the slow kids: there is no such thing as the Oklahoma City model. The Oklahoma City model is "Well, we suck, so let's draft good players to get better. And let's trade some of our players for better players. And let's trade some of our draft picks for good players." Oh, yeah, and then we'll just hope our picks work out or we'll all be fired soon. Let's not pretend that Presti was infallible. Everyone thinks he was a genius for drafting Russell Westbrook but did you notice who the very next pick was?

Clearly, a lot of luck was involved in the Thunder success. So, your plan is to tank, make smarter decisions than you've been making so far, and then get lucky? That's your model?

Seriously?

Tanking doesn't need to be fixed, folks. If you are a fan of a tanking team, your problem is not that the NBA incentivizes tanking, your problem is just that you are a fan of an incompetent organization. Trust me on this, it takes one to know one. I feel your pain.