Dear NBA,
For the love of all that’s holy, please stop trying to convince me that this has anything to do with the fan experience or the integrity of the game.
Your pal,
Relegated in River City
***
Let’s get this out of the way. Are the Sacramento Kings tanking? Sure. So are the Indiana Pacers, Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and (late to the party) Dallas Mavericks, and perhaps even (later to the party) Memphis Grizzlies, Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks.
Two teams not mentioned here are New Orleans and Brooklyn. The Pelicans have no pick to tank for, and Brooklyn is just sort of young and bad.
That said, all of the bottom five teams (Kings, Pacers, Wizards, Nets, and Pelicans) have been bad all season. The Kings, currently on a pace to win 18 games, have never projected higher than 23 wins, and that was right after their four-game win streak in mid-January – they were on a 17-win pace just before that streak.
To paraphrase Huey Lewis, tank is the stank, but sometimes bad is bad. The Kings may not win 20 games this season, but was this team even a Play-In contender at any point this season? The team was 5-15 at the end of November. The roster, regardless of who is and who is not available, stinks. It is unbalanced. It lacks the firepower to compete from beyond the arc (see the loss to the Orlando Magic recently). It does not possess a top 10 player at any position other than center, and it does not do anything particularly well on either end of the floor. Add to this that the Kings are cap-strapped, with parts that are only moveable when you attach sweeteners.
The Fan Experience
This leads me to the fan experience. For Kings fans, the only glimmer of hope is in (a) watching the youth* on this team play, and (b) scouring the college and international game tape for this June’s draft class. And the same holds true for most of the other teams racing for the bottom. For these fan bases, the reason to watch is to root for youth and losses. Should youth pull out a victory, that is still fun – if Max Raynaud flipped in a buzzer beater to seal a win for the Kings, it would be very enjoyable. But if Demar DeRozan foul lines his way to a Kings win, it is a lot emptier and hollower. It is not even to the level of empty calories. It is pure cholesterol, blocking the arteries of future Sacramento Kings relevance.
(*Youth relative to the overall roster, not the NBA.)
I think we can all agree that the overwhelming majority of tanking team fan bases support, follow and root for this race to the bottom.
As it pertains to the fans of other teams, who cares? Do the fan bases of the best teams give two squirts about the health and welfare of the bottom feeders?
No, nor should they.
The bottom five teams are going to lose seven out of ten games when they are “competing.” They lose eight out of ten when they choose to rest their “better” players. Could this impact a playoff seeding spot or the play-in pecking order?
Maybe?
But all of those teams could easily look back on their own schedule and find several games that they could have / should have won without wringing their hands over the bottom few teams in the league.
The “Integrity” Of The Game
While we’re at it, can anyone explain to me why teams with zero playoff chances should roll out their highly paid players in games that are meaningless to them? If the Kings brought back Sabonis in the name of league integrity (give me a break) and he blew out his knee, who pays the freight on that? None other than your Sacramento Kings and their fan base.
It makes zero sense.
I get that the NBA is different from MLB or the NFL when it comes to draft impact, but it is amazing that with those two sports, “tanking” is encouraged by the national media and fans alike. Each of those sports is rife with annual articles and podcasts and publications pointing to which teams should sell off and reload, listing out which teams should be buyers or sellers at their respective trade deadlines. And even in the NBA, if you sell off your talent at the deadline, that is fine. It is just not OK to sit your investments once you have determined that you are not going to compete that season?
Give me a break!
And the integrity argument rings more hollow with me than anything. It is dripping with hypocrisy. You have Giannis’ prediction market ties, Kawhi’s under the table dealings, illegal gambling, an NBA ref that was convicted for fixing games. And as a league, you have reportedly elected to get into bed with gambling / betting entities.
And the problem is tanking???
You want to address tanking?
Fine.
You should get to that right after you suspend Giannis and Kawhi and cut all ties with all gambling-related entities. Get back to me once that is done.
I won’t hold my breath.
Meanwhile, I don’t really care if someone gets jobbed out of their prop bet because Utah decides to sit Lauri Markkanen in the fourth quarter.
It’s Called. Gambling. For. A. Reason.
To be clear, I have no real issue with the NBA looking at things like pick protection revisions (maybe just top 3-4 protection for one year), restrictions on consecutive top 3-4 picks, etc.). Whatever is put in place, the fans should be considered – KEEP IT SIMPLE! Fans should not need an advanced degree in NBA CBA in order to understand where their team stands in the upcoming draft.
But can we please stop lip-sticking the pig and trying to make this about fan experience of integrity?
This is, after all, what the NBA is all about, and that is money. And that’s fine. Capitalism for the win! But don’t try to cram fan experience and integrity down my throat, especially when the organization that runs my favorite NBA team possesses neither.
Tanking Is Not The Problem
Tanking is not the problem in Sacramento. Tanking is not the reason that this team sucks arse, and has for a long time, and likely will for a long time. The problem sits courtside on a nightly, with a cavalcade of B-list celebrities and former Kings players. Dismiss that little chap from the league, and watch how quickly tanking may no longer be an issue, at least in Sacramento.
The topic of tanking is there to distract from the NBA’s real issues, and it is there to supply the national media with low-hanging content (there is a reason why tanking articles outnumber Kawhi articles 1,000-1, and that is because it is easier to cut and paste).
I’m not buying the hype.