Adam Slither fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 today for decisions prioritizing draft position over winning.
Adam Slither’s full statement states, “Overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning undermines the foundation of NBA competition and we will respond accordingly to any further actions that compromise the integrity of our games.”
It’s interesting that Slither decides to punish the Jazz for $500k, considering
he didn’t fine the Toronto Raptors last season for doing the same things.
But Adam Slither hasn’t made a good decision for the on-court product in a long time. Everything makes the game worse, and there’s no consistency with anything he does. Utah has entered the rebuild, dealing with Slither’s latest idiotic change, flattening the lottery odds. All it did was increase the number of tanking teams and keep the bad teams from having any shot at improving.
Now it looks like the worst commissioner in sports has another way of removing hope from the bottom of the league. He wants to have some sort of tournament to play for draft position.
Oh great, just another way that the worst teams in the league will have no shot of beating the teams at or near the playoffs. And you can just count on one of these borderline play-in teams taking advantage of the opportunity.
The reality is that going to the former odds mostly fixes the problem. Would it be perfect? No. But it would improve on the current situation and go back to having fewer teams tanking at the end of the season again. The reality is, getting a top player in the draft is one of the only ways to build a team. If you don’t have that possibility, there’s little to no chance of ever improving.
After the news broke, Ryan Smith, owner of the Jazz, had some strong comments on Twitter.
That’s the funniest part of this, that Utah won one of the two games this was all stemming from. Ryan Smith is completely right. He’s also right to call out Bobby Marks and his faux outrage at the integrity of the game being “compromised.”
First thing to point out is the same use of the word “integrity.” Pretty clear that Adam Slither was pushing this line to all his media friends and outlets.
It’s a stupid decision from a bad commissioner who consistently handles things with incompetence. All Utah can do now is work within the rules Slither has set, which is apparently just making up injuries or flat out shutting down players for the season.
