If Pro Sports Leagues Want To Put An End To Tanking, Lacrosse Has Already Figured Out The Solution
So this clip from Get Up came across my timeline where Mike Greenberg was clearly getting paid by Adam Silver and the NBA to put to rest any conspiracy theories about the NBA Draft Lottery being rigged. At no point in his rambling, incoherent response was he even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. The draft lottery doesn't incentivize tanking? If anything, it makes it so much easier for teams to tank. Before the draft lottery, you actually had to fully commit to a tank. You had to go out there and actively try to lose enough games to end up with the 1st overall pick in the draft.
Nowadays with the lottery, it's opened up a whole new world of soft tanking. Where teams in big markets can win enough games to keep selling tickets, but lose enough games where the NBA can make the lottery balls fall their way to give them a top pick in the draft. Everyone keeps saying that the Mavs only had a 1.8% chance of winning the draft lottery. But that number jumps all the way up to 100% if the league hands that pick to Dallas. As long as you get everyone to believe these lotteries are all actually chance, it creates the perfect protection for teams to soft tank their way to a top pick.
If you want to get rid of tanking entirely, the Premier Lacrosse League already figured that out a few years ago. In the inaugural PLL season, the way the 1st overall draft pick was awarded was via playoff. The teams who didn't qualify for the actual playoffs ended up playing in a separate playoff. Basically like an NIT tournament. Whoever ended up winning that loser's bracket tournament ended up with the 1st overall pick in the following year's draft. It was perfect because there should never be a reward in professional sports simply for losing. You should never be able to just lose your way to any sort of advantage. You should have to earn everything.
So you take the 14 teams that were in the NBA Draft Lottery. You give the top 2 teams a bye to the draft quarterfinals, and play from there. It doesn't need to be anything crazy. It could just be best of one game. And then teams can decide how badly they actually want the top pick in the draft. Do you go all out at the end of the season and risk any additional injuries? Or do you feel comfortable enough with the 7th pick in the draft and you feel like you don't need to go crazy in that draft playoff game? That's up to the teams to decide, but at least this way you have to actually earn your 1st overall pick.
And sure, that's going to make it more difficult for the teams that actually suck to get better through the draft. Because there are definitely some teams that aren't actually tanking, but rather they are actually just dog shit. However, that's their own fault for sucking so hard. Maybe they should just try winning.