This season has made clear that the tanking meta has gotten out of control, and absolutely requires addressing. No surprise that it's been Silver's major talking point through the ASG pressers - shit's bad.
But it's also been the league's own doing, so it's hard to feel sorry for them. Flattening the odds was, in hindsight, a terrible move - it both interfered with the "natural flow" of worst teams -> top picks which worked for decades, while
also creating an even bigger incentive for middling teams to tank, as the "chance of a jump" increased exponentially. Therefore, teams that yesteryear would've dismissed the difference between a 10-14th pick and played on, are now heavily incentivized to lose games for the chance at a top-4 pick.
The second angular stone that propels the NBA to take hands on the matter is (Silver you spineless, stupid fuck!!) gambling. There is simply too much at stake in terms of "preserving integrity" with so much money on the line
each night, you just can't have teams actively throwing games. We used to discuss "what is actually tanking" and this season showed why: the
good tank is FO-moves-driven, the
bad tank is coach-player driven. There is a big difference (once again, props to the Spurs FO playing their hand perfectly - trading out Dejounte, DWhite, and bottoming out "naturally", as opposed to the Jazz sitting Lauri in the 4th Q of close games).
The solution isn't as simple as reverting the odds... But it's a good start. I wouldn't overhaul the system personally, it's worked plenty well for years. But change is coming - that much is obvious with all this rumbling.
Above all, I'm real thankful the Spurs got it out of the way before this shit-show fully came to be. Change whatever now, we got ours
