Some feathers were ruffled in the NBA this week by a couple of teams perceived to be tanking. That’s almost been an everpresent issue in professional sports with a draft. So that’s really not news but I did come across this quote by NBA Commissioner Adan Silver.
“If teams are manipulating their performance in order to get higher draft picks even in a lottery, then the question becomes … are they really the worst-performing teams?” Silver said. “It’s not clear to me, for example, that the 30th-performing
team is that much measurably worse than the 22nd-performing team, particularly if you have incentive to perform poorly to get a better draft pick. “It’s a bit of a conundrum. As I’ve said, the All-Star [Game] is 75 years old. The league is 80 years old. It’s time to take a fresh look at this to see to whether that’s an antiquated way of going about doing it.“
Tanking has been around forever, but it kinda sounds like Silver wants to put an end to it, positing that their approach may be antiquated. It’s interesting that as baseball has recently started a draft lottery, the NBA is considering radical changes to its draft. It makes me wonder if MLB needs a review as well.
Baseball is very connected to its history. And it seems each generation wants Baseball to reflect its past. So its age and traditions are celebrated. Is it too antiquated though?
Yeah, some aspects are. It still closely resembles the games of 100 years prior. But is it too much? Bullpen management is the big offender. Analytics haven’t changed a thing there. Whereas load management is a thing in basketball, playing all 162 baseball games in a season is still a big deal. And at some point, they’re probably going to need a shared revenue model with some form of a salary cap. But as a whole, they have kept a large part of their history, and it’s a good thing.
They have tried to change it up. They have added 100 plus rules over the last decade. ABS is a good addition and something that I didn’t think we’d ever see. We have the designated hitter in (blech) both leagues. But the way that baseball has pursued its TV rights is something that will be well above basketball and hockey.
So anyway, is it ok for Baseball to be antiquated? Have they updated it too much/not enough? Anyway, over to you all.
