Mark Cuban thinks the NBA should embrace tanking. Suns owner Mat Ishbia thinks the NBA should run away from it.
Ishbia shared his views in a Thursday afternoon Twitter post.
“This is ridiculous!” Ishbia said. “Tanking is losing behavior done by losers. Purposely losing is something nobody should want to be associated with. Embarrassing for the league and for the organizations. And the talk about this as a ‘strategy’ is ridiculous.
“If you are a bad team, you get a good pick. That makes sense. But purposely shutting down players and purposely losing games is a disgrace and impacts the integrity of [the] whole league.
“This is much worse than any prop bet scandal. This is throwing games strategically. Horrible for fans that pay to watch and cheer on their team. And horrible for all the real teams that are competing for playoff spots. Awful behavior that Adam Silver and the NBA will need to stop with massive changes, and I have complete confidence that with his leadership, he will fix it. Those of us in a position of influence need to speak out . . . the only ‘strategy’ is doing right by fans, players, and the NBA community.”
He’s right. Cuban is wrong. By focusing on “experience” and not competition, Cuban turns sport into entertainment. The NBA becomes a blend of the WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters.
And it’s wrong for any sports league to gaslight the public as to the importance of winning and losing each and every game, especially when the sports leagues are making millions from gambling. Even without legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized gambling, the integrity of sport relies upon both teams at all times trying their best to win every game.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver recently explained that tanking happens because the incentives are misaligned. The only way to align the incentives is to remove the incentive to tank. Not partially. Completely.
That requires an overhaul of the manner in which new players are absorbed into the league. Whether it’s a truly random lottery or a draft order turned on its head to reward success and punish failure, the only solution entails removing the strategic basis for winning games taking a backseat to stumbling into a player who will make the franchise a consistent winner.
