“Don’t talk to me about tanking”, Michael Carter-Williams wrote in The Players Tribune back in 2014.
Drafted with the 11th pick in 2013 by the Philadelphia 76ers, he went on to become Rookie of the Year in 2014. But the rebuild of that franchise in 2013-14, labeled “The Process”, which was basically getting rid of their best players and veterans, and replacing them with unsigned and younger players in order to intentionally lose games to gain better draft positioning, was a terrible experience for
Carter-Williams. At one point, the infamous 26-game-losing-streak led him to seek comfort in watching the Ellen Degeneres Show every day to help tune out the stress. “I was not a fun guy to be around,” he wrote.
His thoughts on tanking after his experiences that season were clear. It was not a good place for him to be – or anybody for that matter.
“Grown men are going to go out and purposely mail it in for a one-in-four shot at drafting somebody who might someday take their job? Nope.”
For professional athletes, who have worked to be winning players and be the best all through high school and college, this approach can be detrimental.
“In order to get to the NBA, you have to be crazy, over-the-top competitive. When I was riding the bench my freshman year at Syracuse, I used to stay in the gym so late doing dribbling drills that I had to superglue my fingers to stop them from bleeding,” Carter-Williams shared.
“You can question my shooting. You can question my ceiling. Just don’t question if I’m giving my all every single night. Don’t talk to me about tanking.”
Besides developing a losing culture, which may be hard to get out of again because it involves so much more than the specific roster, but also the whole approach of the franchise and people around the team, tanking can stunt the development of young players.
Imagine a lottery pick being put in different positions on the court that may not fit him – to supposedly help develop new skills – or playing alongside other players who are neither on the NBA level nor interested in anything other than showing off their own skills in an effort to stay in the league. That can hurt confidence and demoralize players for years to come.
And this doesn’t just create bad habits, it can ruin the important years of growth a major talent has to go through to fulfill his potential in the best league in the world. Sitting during games that could be won, being told to rest when you can play, perhaps missing out on the mentorship of vets, which are often shipped out and traded during a tanking process.
And while the process of tanking in Philadelphia initially boosted Michael Carter-Williams’ stats and helped him earn ROTY, the losing culture and lack of support early on seem to have been part of fostering bad habits and probably didn’t help in his decline towards becoming a journeyman later in his career. Carter-Williams retired in 2024, and the same year he wrote an honest piece entitled: “What happened to Michael Carter-Williams?”, where he talked about struggling with anxiety, panic attacks and depression.
But the mental aspect from the players’ perspective is just one part of this.
“Everyone loses when teams tank”, Howard Bryant of ESPN wrote in 2017. In a scathing analysis of the NBA’s growing tanking issues, he speaks for the eradication of “a system in which the suits get to call themselves geniuses for not trying.”
“Tanking sacrifices the players”, he argues, and it robs them of the opportunity to develop as people and professionals.
And as the clamoring by fans to tank becomes louder in Dallas, we may benefit from doing the work and learn from the past before announcing our membership of team tank.
“Some fans are willing to be gamed by a system that guarantees profit for owners while selling losing as the natural cost of improvement — never mind that it runs counter to the demand ticket buyers have of players, expecting hustle and effort no matter what the score,” Bryant writes.
And he has a point. Thinking of players as pawns and pieces dehumanizes them and the game, which is made up by the blood, sweat and tears of the players and people on the ground – and their fans. Not the owners or investors.
The concept of tanking completely misses the importance of the fans’ and their relationship with the franchise and players, and the fact that it is likely to erode a fanbase and take away all that humanity we love about basketball. In sports, there’s a both a formel and an informal contract. The formal one has to do with buying tickets for access (games, League Pass), and the informal is an unwritten social contract, which binds fans to a team’s identity and a sense of belonging, while teams in turn provide respect, dignity and entertainment to fans. Breaches of these unwritten rules have been known to lead to severe backlash.
In reality, theres should be other ways to rebuild a franchise than the most cynical of all. As Howard Bryant puts it:
“Fans, co-opted by management to believe in a corrupt system, become comfortable losing, invested in losing, feel smart explaining that losing 70 games is a good thing.“
A soft tank or recalibration of sorts in Dallas, trading Anthony Davis perhaps and a few other players to increase health and cap space, is one thing. But an all-out tanking of the Dallas Mavericks is both short-sighted and lacking in perspective, despite deceptively seeming the opposite.
