It’s still the entertainment industry. The fans, who after all pay for the whole thing, want and expect to see the best players out there. Plus, if those guys don’t play, they lose their own edge and eventually aren’t marquee anymore. They’ll get disgruntled too, and consider leaving instead of rebuilding.
Good ways to tank in basketball:
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Afraid your new superstar in the making will make your team mediocre? Just play him out of position! Kevin Durant put up 11 rpg at Texas, but the then-Sonics played him at shooting guard. Not coincidentally, the Sonics drafted 4th the next year, where they got Russell Westbrook.
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Get an international steal in the lower half of the first round? Keep him in Europe! Serge Ibaka was drafted in Westbrook’s year, but the now-Thunder left him in Spain. Combine that with Russell earning the nickname “Westbrick” and you get another early draft pick: the Thunder moved up 1 spot via the lottery and took James Harden at #3.
Even though OKC hasn’t actually won an NBA title as of yet, I think it’s hard to say that this wasn’t successful.
The Cavs coach back in 02-03 accused the front office of tanking for LeBron. It worked, in that they got their guy and eventually went to an NBA finals with LeBron and not much else talent-wise.
Exactly… the games at the end of that year were so abhorrent we got the draft lottery system. The Rockets played a senior citizen who was so past over the hill he’d have had to remember where the damn hill was in Elvin Hayes… literally 40 plus minutes a night…
Well it got them “The Dream”…
In general, I agree. But I can think of one example where the fans would have been happier if their team had tanked. The 1968 Eagles started the season 0-11, then finished 2-12. That cost them the chance to draft OJ Simpson. The last game of that season was when they booed (and pelted with snowballs) Santa Claus.
I’m not saying bench them entirely, but there’s also no real reason to run a franchise player 40-50 minutes a game either.
Did the Knicks really “tank” for a shot at Ewing? Remember, that was the first year of the Draft Lottery; each of the seven teams had an equal chance of getting the #1 pick, so “tanking” meant “not making the playoffs”.
Since then, the NBA has changed the rules so that (a) the team with the worst record was guaranteed the #4 pick or better, then (b) got a 1 in 5 chance of getting the #1 pick, then (c) when the team with the best record outside of the playoff teams ended up getting the #1 pick, they changed it to 1 in 4 (and changed the best team’s odds from 1 in 55 to 1 in 200) - in other words, added incentive to tank.
It sort of did work for the Celtics. Yes, they still got stuck with the 6th pick in the lottery, but traded the pick, Jeff Green, to Seattle for Ray Allen. That was enough to persuade Kevin Garnett to go to the Celts, which directly led to their lone championship since 1986. (Compared to the Lakers 7 in that span. :p)
The Lakers clearly tanked last year – the moment they traded their only quality point guard, Steve Blake, for flotsam & jetsam – and clearly started up the tank again this year when they hired Byron Scott to coach the team. Tanking is not a players/coach thing; it’s a front office effort and Mitch Kupchak is a stealth tank beast. Whether it helps or not will probably be offset by the new ownership – the (Short) Buss kids – who have likely sent the Lakers into a nuclear winter, no matter what happens in the next draft. (Murphy’s Law has also been present for the last three years.)
The secret is to keep the mobs from attacking your weaker allies, whether by smack talking, constantly pressing your attack so that anyone who divides attention away from you gets thwacked for that mistake, or otherwise by some unexplained mystical ability to simply keep foes so irrationally angry at you that they’ll ignore the easy-to-kill spellcasters spamming mezzes and DoTs. Rembember that a dead tank is no good to anybody, so make sure your armor and hit points are up to snuff and don’t be afraid to evac if the cleric goes down.
On the other hand in the NBA having the worst record in the league only gives you a 25% chance at the top pick, which is very low for throwing away a whole season.
There’s also the 1997 draft when the Celtics lost out on Duncan. The Celtics still had two Top 10 picks, and got Billups and Ron Mercer. But both were gone almost as quickly as Pitino.