Tanking in the NBA is once again aggravating basketball fans around the world thanks to the Jazz and Wizards throwing games before the All-Star game. This topic has been hashed out time and time again, with many proposals being regurgitated and re-discussed for a new generation of NBA fans. These include the Draft Wheel, draft lottery elimination, as well as other wacky ideas such as an NBA Conclave. 

The root cause of teams purposefully losing games is that the on-court outcome of each game directly affects the ability of teams to draft rookie players before other teams. This is not new to sports fans – in the current system, the three worst NBA teams evenly split a 42% chance at the first shot at picking from the rookie class. The three worst teams each have a 53% chance of a top-five pick, and in fact, the three worst teams in the league will have the top three picks more than half the time. The below chart shows the breakdown of lottery odds, by pick and by team. 

Zach Lowe put it best when he wrote in the Wheel draft proposal: “Nearly the entire history of the NBA suggests that a team wishing to win the title must have one of the 10 or 15 best players alive — and preferably one of the half-dozen best”. This has remained true in the twelve years since that article was posted, and remains one of the clearest indicators that linking team record to draft order will keep tanking as part of an NBA fans vocabulary as long as the link exists. 

There are other reasons to lose games on purpose. Rookie contracts are more valuable than max-contracts (dollar per unit of performance). This exacerbates the incentive to tank because the apron system for team cap sheets is highly restrictive. 

A 1st overall pick’s salary will not exceed 7% of the salary cap in their 3rd year in the league. Even in the 5th and final year of a rookie contract cannot exceed 11% of the salary cap. Taking into account that most teams operate above the nominal salary cap every year reduces even further the rookie contract’s percentage of a team’s total cap sheet. 

This contract ceiling can be far lower than a young player’s true worth. For example, Lebron in his 5th year in the league was already averaging 30 points a game, with the 6th best PER of his career. A non-lottery pick, Giannis Antetokounmpo was averaging almost 27 points per game in the last year of his rookie deal. 

Rookies generally approach their career averages by the 4th and 5th year of their rookie contracts at a cost ceiling that can’t be matched in free agency. More than 120 players in today’s league command NBA contracts greater than the max possible value of a rookie deal, including Dillon Brooks, Kevin Huerter, and Josh Hart. NBA players are more-or-less who they are by the last few years of their rookie contract, but always make much more money as free agents. When this is the case, the chance at adding transformational stars, or just All-Star caliber players while at a discount provides a strong incentive to maximize chances at high draft picks. 

In my opinion, flattening the difference between rookie and free agency contracts best reduces the incentive to tank while also minimizing changes to the fan’s experience of the game. This article about abolishing the draft was my original motivation to write this piece, and is one way to approach the equalization of contract value AND remove tanking incentives. 

The draft is just one way an NBA team can improve its roster, some others being trades, free agent signings, and waiver pickups. Under the current CBA, trades are generally hard to make. This is because the league has a soft salary cap, and a roster that costs more than this cap penalizes the team by placing restrictions on trade options and free agency signings. As I mentioned above, most teams spend their seasons above the salary cap, so options become quite limited in terms of mid-season trades and acquisitions. 

Teams in smaller cities, such as the Pacers or Cavaliers, do not believe they can attract high-end talent purely in free agency, since there’s a perception that NBA players would prefer to live in big cities such as NYC or LA. Because the talent level of the league is very high, a team needs a strong roster from top to bottom in order to compete for a championship. 

If having just one star could be sufficient to compete for a championship, then it could be easier for small market teams to navigate the trade, free agency, and draft space to build a championship-caliber team. However, If we accept the premise that free agents are less likely to sign in small markets, this problem is compounded if the task of free agency signings must be repeated several times in order to build a competitive team.

Eliminating the CBA/apron system while also decreasing max contract salaries (as a percentage of the cap) would allow for smaller market teams to more effectively use the trade market to build championship teams. Teams with one star would be less constrained by the star’s salary in making additional personnel signings, and a compressed salary distribution would also make matching salaries in a trade easier to manage for a team’s front office as well. 

While this would limit the maximum pay of NBA superstars,  the NBA and player association could agree to reserve some portion of basketball revenue for players who achieve certain accolades (such as all-NBA selections, MVPs). This allows the NBA to reduce the max contract a team can offer while allowing a player like Giannis to keep a similar salary while remaining in Milwaukee, while ALSO giving the Bucks the chance to compete for more competitive contracts. 

While there might be a few teams fielding sub-par rosters in February and March, there are enough competitive games night to night to keep any NBA junkie happy. In my eyes, the larger risk for the NBA is (as always) money outside the scope of league rules. The Aspiration scandal illustrates that owners as wealthy as Steve Ballmer can find ways to achieve their team goals without regard for league rules. Similarly, the gambling allegations facing Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier (and subsequent shoulder shrug by NBA players) presents an even larger threat to the competitiveness of NBA games. Issues like tanking are truly small potatoes if we can’t trust that NBA teams operate on an even playing field with integrity. In that vein, it feels that basketball fans are being distracted by the issue du jour, and forgetting to focus on the longer term pathologies that threaten the NBA’s health.