Speaking at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver shared that
substantial changes” are on the way to discourage NBA teams from intentionally losing to increase their chance at more favorable lottery odds.
Summarized by Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic (subscription required), Silver hinted at continuing a more gradual set of changes to keep NBA games competitive deep into the season, rather than push through large changes all at once:
“Not to exactly forecast where we’re
going, but I think I’m sort — I am an incrementalist,” Silver continued. “I think we got to be a little bit careful, you know, about how huge a change we make at once. I’m not ruling anything out, but I am paying attention to that. And then there’s something significantly more than, I would say, just tinkering with the existing system.”
Silver mentioned the WNBA as an example. The WNBA takes the last two seasons of records into account for non-playoff teams and bases the lottery odds on those.
Silver also addressed the “tension” between teams that are actually trying to win but they’re bad, and teams who are pulling shenanigans to lose more games:
I do think, and this is the tension, there are legitimate rebuilds where you have young teams, they’re genuinely trying to win games. They’re out there trying to win night in, night out. There are also situations where you have teams this used to be more toward the end of the season … where you want to see the young players playing under game circumstances and those wins aren’t as important. I don’t view that as the kind of tanking we’re experiencing right now. So incentives are off.”
Silver also repeated a narrative that has been floated in NBA podcasting circles: that this upcoming draft is stronger than usual and therefore the tanking has been particularly egregious:
“It’s a little bit of a perfect storm this season, that you have a perceived, very deep draft,” Silver said. “Again, I say perceived because scouts’ predictions are wrong. But there’s a sense that you have four players in particular, maybe five, who are true game changers. You add to that a forecast that the next two years drafts won’t be as good, and you create enormous incentive for teams to tank and I add on top of that, and this also goes to this basketball’s life notion there’s been sort of destigmatization around certain behaviors.”
Silver and the NBA fined the Utah Jazz last month for pulling a few key players from the end of two games, and fined the Indiana Pacers (after an independent physical evaluation) for sitting players who were deemed fit to play.
