Let’s Get Wheel

How to Fix the NBA’s Tanking Problem

The tiresome ranting about tanking has gone round and round in circles, but now it’s time to get wheel about this issue. This upcoming draft class, projected to be one of the deepest in years, has prompted many teams to lose games at an incredible pace. Some do it through structural means, like the Philadelphia 76ers building their team to look like the local YMCA. Others do it through more…crafty ways, like Pau Gasol not playing the final month of the season because of self-induced vertigo.

Regardless of how teams are losing, the primary issue is that the NBA’s current draft structure gives teams a strong incentive to lose as many games as possible. The more games a team loses, the higher percentage probability it has to land a top draft pick. If a team is lucky enough to use the pick on a franchise player (see: Durant, Kevin), they can raise themselves from the cream of the crap to the cream of the crop.

But watching teams throw away games for the sake of the future is bad for the league as a whole. At the most, maybe eight teams have a realistic shot at the title. For some teams, playoff relevance is good enough, which is why the Charlotte Bobcats broke the bank this summer instead of tanking for the draft again. Take those teams away, and that means a third to a half of the league has no interest in winning. And that’s a structure that’s failing.

Which brings us back to the wonderful, glorious Wheel. A few months ago, Mike Zarren of the Boston Celtics floated out this idea to halt tanking, and it has gained so much traction that it owners could vote on it as early as later this year. The idea of The Wheel is this: teams would be placed on an ordered wheel that picks once per draft slot every thirty years. For instance, the Lakers may pick 1^st this year, and then 30^th, 18^th, 19^th, 6^th, and 7^th the next five years. It cycles around so that every team gets a fair turn at each pick, regardless of how many games won or lost.

This type of draft wheel eliminates any correlation being a bad team and getting a good draft pick. Teams would no longer have the incentive to tank during the season, and it creates a much more competitive environment in the league as a whole.

There have been several people who should be tried for treason against this great sport have expressed concerns with The Wheel. The first argument is that if a small-market team fails to draft correctly during years of high draft picks, then fans might check out for a few years while The Wheel cycles through less favorable picks. But there are other ways of building a team though, such as Daryl Morey’s trade-friendly Rockets, or the free-agency spending Bobcats. The Wheel stops general managers from holding franchise hostage under the oft-false hope of winning by losing into the draft.

Another argument is that college players will time their entrance to go a bigger market team during The Wheel’s cycle. However, the best players want to start earning money right away, and the opportunity cost of spending another year in college will be too much.

The Wheel may very well not look like a wheel after all the editing to it. Proposals have come up recently to implement five buckets of six teams each, with those five buckets circling around The Wheel, and the individual teams drafting by win-loss record inside the bucket. Bill Simmons has proposed the Exciting as Hell Tournament at the end of the season, where all the lottery teams play for a shot at the 8^th seed in the playoffs. There are multiple proposals out there, and new Commissioner Adam Silver is listening.

Even if you against The Wheel and puppies, ice cream, and America evidently, we can all agree that tanking is bad for the game. Something needs to be done, and soon. The Wheel wouldn’t be able to be implemented until 2020 at the earliest because of current draft pick trade restrictions, but it’s a step in the right direction. And that’s a wheely good thing.