League closely watching numerous teams’ race to the bottom

Aweek after the NBA fined Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban $600,000 for his public admission of tanking, the race to the bottom has continued in full force.

Entering Friday, just six games separate the last nine teams in the league – from the New York Knicks on down to the Orlando Magic. The combined record of that woeful group since the All-Star break? 4-29.

But while losing is one thing, losing on purpose is quite another. And therein lies the league’s legislative challenge in these final six weeks.

This is a Happy Hour of sorts for the league’s worst teams, the end of a draft era that changes next year when the value of sustained failure will take a major hit because of reformed rules. Starting in 2019, the last-place team’s odds of landing the No. 1 pick drop from 25% to 14% – the same odds that will apply to the bottom three teams in this new structure. The “Trust the Process” Philadelphia 76ers are largely to blame for all of this, of course, as they took tanking to a whole new low under general manager Sam Hinkie from 2013 to 2016 and inspired change.

This is the last, best chance to take advantage of the current system. But tankers beware: The league is watching more closely than ever.

A February 21 memo sent by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to all 30 teams explaining the Cuban fine made that much abundantly clear.

“Over the past several seasons, discussions about so-called ‘tanking’ in the NBA have occurred with some frequency, both in the public discourse and within our league, and you as governors have taken steps to address the underlying incentive issues by adopting changes to our draft lottery system that will go into effect next year,” Silver wrote in the letter. “Throughout this period, we have been careful to distinguish between efforts teams may make to rebuild their rosters, including through personnel changes over the course of several seasons, and circumstances in which players or coaches on the floor take steps to lose games.

“The former can be a legitimate strategy to construct a successful team within the confines of league rules; the latter – which we have not found and hope never to see in the NBA – has no place in our game.”

Silver, who handed Cuban the largest fine of his career as an owner, makes his concerns quite clear in the letter.

“The integrity of the competition on the playing court is the cornerstone of our league,” he wrote. “It is our pact with the fans and with each other, the fundamental reason we exist as a preeminent sporting organization, the very product that we sell. With everything else changing around us, it is the one thing in our league that can never change. We must do everything in our power to protect the actual and perceived integrity of the game.” Which brings us back to the Mavs. Just five days after the fine was levied, ESPN published an analysis of Dallas’ season and the question of how deliberate, if at all, their failures have been. It detailed the difference between “active and passive” tanking, and included reporting relating to “reverse analytics” – the idea that some coaches might be provided with data to indicate which lineups are least effective to aid the alleged tanking effort. This kind of discussion is precisely the kind of thing the NBA wants to see come to an end.

“We have no basis at this time to conclude that the Mavericks team is giving anything less than its best effort on the court, and Mark has assured us that this is not the case,” Silver concluded. “But even a suggestion that such conduct could be occurring is obviously damaging to our game, as it creates a perception of impropriety. It is also extraordinarily unfair to the players and coaches who are, in fact, competing at their highest possible level every night.”