Tanking vs Fan Engagement

It has been a long day at work, back aching, your feet are sore but you have front row tickets to an NBA game. You got your popcorn, coke and you’re ready to watch your favorite players duke it out; instead, you watched Nicolas Batum play for all four quarters. 

The NBA lottery rewards losing teams with high draft picks to select top prospects throughout the nation. This system helps out losing teams but recently teams have exploited this system by purposely losing to get a higher chance to snag a top pick. This creates an issue of fans not wanting to watch a losing team but the team needs to do this to get the key pieces in the future to win a championship.

The NBA fines teams that purposely tank as much as $750,000 to protect the integrity of the league. While former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has a different approach, “The NBA should embrace tanking, and instead address the real reason holding the sport back: that more people can’t afford to go to games.” 

I absolutely agree with Cuban, this is a natural process most teams go through. This cycle of being good but not good enough doesn’t give you much; sure, you might make the playoffs, but then your lottery pick will have a lower chance of being high. It is for the best for a team to tank, and maybe one day they win a championship.