Detroit Pistons: Does the NBA still have a tanking problem?

Detroit Pistons: Does the NBA still have a tanking problem?

While tanking has not been a huge league-wide problem, there are some tweaks that could incentivize it even less.

The NBA has shown itself to be ready and willing to make changes to add more excitement and competition to the game, as they did when they added the play-in tournament. Most people seem to like it and it put more teams in play for the postseason, which also reduces the urge to tank.

Since that tournament was such a success, why not another one? I’ve written about this before, but I’d love to see the NBA have some type of competition for the top pick. They could take the bottom six or eight teams and let them play a tournament for lottery seeding or even lottery odds.

You wouldn’t want to incentive it too much, because then some team at the 10th seed would tank at the end of the season hoping to miss the playoffs for a chance to play for the #1 pick, but you could give the team that won extra odds in the lottery.

Then it wouldn’t matter if you were the worst team, or the third-worst, and teams would be motivated to be healthy and playing well down the stretch. I’ll let smarter people work out the details, but who wouldn’t want to watch this?

I am all for adding entertainment and a tournament for lottery position would definitely be entertaining.

Tanking has gotten less prevalent across the league, which is a good thing, so at least the NBA is trying to improve the product, but there are always ways to make it better.