NBA

Tanking In The NBA: A Terrible Strategy For Rebuilding

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The object of the game of basketball is, and always has been, to score more points than the other team, though the Philadelphia 76ers continue to challenge the validity of that assertion with the way they have conducted business over the past few seasons. Never in the history of the game, at least to my recollection, has there been a more flagrant and brazen failure to construct a viably competitive roster.

It is now to the point where NBA draft lottery reform measures were put forth before the board of governors to thwart the proliferation of such blatant tanking strategies. Of course, we all know that the vote to adopt the newly proposed draft reform came up six votes short of being approved, and so the problem remains unchanged.

Tanking remains, and will remain, a valued strategy by teams looking to rebuild in the superstar-laden landscape of the NBA, though I challenge the assertion that it should be. In fact, if you look back at the history of the NBA since the NBA/ABA merger, the evidence is stacked heavily against it being a productive strategy.

The No. 1 Overall Pick

The obvious thinking behind the tanking strategy is that, by ending the season with fewer wins than any other team, your odds at the No. 1 overall pick is greatly improved. By the way, that is one thing that would have been addressed by the proposal that was recently denied as it would have given the bottom four teams equal chances at the number one pick. Currently, the team with the worst record has a 25% chance, the second worst team 19.9%, third worst 15.6%, and the chances gradually decrease as you move down the line.

This is where the tanking strategy starts to break down. Since a weighted lottery system was implemented in 1985, the team with the worst record has received the No. 1 pick only four times, and it hasn’t happened at all since the Orlando Magic selected Dwight Howard in 2004. So despite having fractionally better odds at landing the top pick, it rarely actually happens. So what really is the benefit besides alienating your fan base?

Franchise Changing Players

Another reason tanking doesn’t work is that even if you are guaranteed a top four pick, as is the case currently for the team with the worst record, the chances of landing an impact player with that pick is also marginal at best.

Looking back at every draft since 1976, the first year of the NBA following its merger with the ABA, the numbers show that true, franchise altering players are actually more likely to fall to teams beyond the fourth pick. I identified 40 players that are hands-down, unquestionable, transcendent superstars drafted over that time period. Interestingly enough, the average draft position for those players was actually the fifth position. Of those 40 players, only 12 of them actually fell to a team that had the worst record in their respective conference, let alone the entire league. That means that 70% of the time, they went to teams that didn’t pack it in and lose hope on the season.

Players With Best Win Shares

For non-basketball geeks, a win shares (WS) is an advanced statistic that calculates a given player’s contribution to their team by estimating how many wins they add over a replacement player. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for instance, has a lifetime WS of 273.41, which means he is estimated to be responsible for adding 274 lifetime wins to his respective teams, over a player who would have taken his place.

For the purposes of this analysis, I looked back at every draft since 1976, and looked at the five players with the best win shares from each draft. Then I referenced which position that player was taken, and also the previous year record for the team that drafted them. What I found should completely eliminate tanking as being viewed as a viable strategy for rebuilding a team.

The average draft position to land the player with the highest WS from a given draft year was eight. Yes, that means as long as you have one of the first eight picks, you have just as good of a chance of landing the best player in that draft as anyone below you. The average position to land any one of the players with a top five WS was 13, which means that you can still land a really, really good player as long as you are in the draft lottery, and you have a good scouting department of course.

Obviously bad teams can get unlucky and find themselves saddled with a low draft pick despite having a terrible record. Conversely, teams with mediocre records can luck their way into a top draft pick as well. Historically, the player that ended up having the highest WS in their draft class fell to a team with a mediocre record (32 wins), i.e. not the lowest in the league, but certainly not the best. A top five WS player fell to a team with about 36 wins on average.

Bottom line, it pays to be bad, but it definitely doesn’t pay to be the worst team in the league.

Exceptions To The Rule

Like any good rule, there are of course exceptions. LeBron James and Dwight Howard both fell to the team with the worst record in the league the year before. Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Allen Iverson and Kevin Durant fell to teams that were extremely bad, but not bad enough to have the worst record in the league. But honestly, it is much harder to find exceptions than it is to find the overwhelming majority of examples that debunk tanking as a practical strategy.

So, on its surface, it may seem like Sam Hinkie and the 76ers are doing what needs to be done in order to return the franchise to respectability but history is definitely not on their side. It is more likely that we find ourselves looking back on this period in their organization’s history as a failed experiment, and one 76ers fans would like to forget.

Court Zierk is a Columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @CourtZierk, “Like” him on Facebook or add him on Google

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