One of the largest topics in the recent NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles was the continuing losing battle the NBA is fighting with "tanking" -- the practice of teams deliberately resting players to ostensibly lose games to improve their position in the NBA Draft the following season.
Adam Silver has actually now gone as far as possibly considering revoking draft picks (and he's not going to be able to do anything unless they are first-round draft picks in that regard), because he knows the fines, including a $500,000 fine applied to the Utah Jazz -- calling their violations of player participation "conduct detrimental to the league".
So how much does Mark Cuban get fined for saying today the NBA should accept and embrace tanking, in the name of the fans?
Then you have a problem, Mr. Cuban. A huge one.
The moment a fan can discern that every effort is not being made to win the game in progress, that fan is being financially and emotionally harmed by continuing to take part in the experience.
Sometimes that is a night-to-night thing: There are certainly games where almost every team is a substantial underdog or is seen that it is unlikely that they would win the given game. This is understandable.
This is, however, a different process. It is the deliberate understanding that the team is setting out to just survive the game, not get it's players injured for a game that it is not worth enough for them (micro or macro) to win.
At that point, why does a fan bother paying to see it? And, writ larger, why do teams which continue to lose year after year after year be considered allowed to call themselves "professional" teams in the top-tier league?
Let's get some realities on "paper" here:
1) There are too many teams.
2) There are too many games.
3) There are too few players of sufficient "professional" caliber to support the number of teams or games that the league is bilking players, television partners, and corporate sponsors out of.
The fact is: All four major professional leagues, in every idea except financial bottom line (which is why it won't be done) would do better either folding 25% of the teams or going promotion-relegation.
Make "professional", and top-tier professional at that, be earned. You do it for the players -- why not force the same on the franchises?
The fact is (and it should've been demonstrated with the Foolish and Wretched One-Dimensional Ballhog, the National Bulls Broadcasting Company, and the National Bulls Association in the 1990's) that there aren't enough players to justify the existence of the number of professional teams in the top leagues in any of the major sports.
As a result, you are seeing pressures put on the NBA franchises to play top-flight players in the national televised games -- and it still doesn't help.
The fact is, there are just too many damn teams and no justification for a number of them to continue to exist. And, in extreme cases, you get what happens in the NBA.
4) There is no legal ramification against a league fixing the games -- if Adam Silver really wants to prevent "tanking", he's going to have to state that it is an action outside of the league's allowed purview with respect to the manipulation of the contest's result, and punish accordingly.
5) It is of no secret that the games cost far too much money to attend, and that goes double when there's no assurance on the part of the two teams to actually provide a marketable contest.
A fan can't recover for even a "tanked" game, just as he or she can't recover for a rigged one (only entitled to a seat and a result -- 2005 US Grand Prix lawsuit). To actually provide the kind of fan experience Cuban wants, this MUST change, by any and all means necessary.
6) The games need to be believed to be on the level, because there's no way the tanking teams even believe the games are on the level -- much as many fans are basically certain the games are not.
If Adam Silver wants to prevent tanking, he has to take the following steps:
A) He has to basically admit the NBA (as the other professional sports have) has openly manipulated the games for their own benefit, financial and otherwise. And that this process must stop. The games must be officiated according to the rules and all efforts (including result reversal) must be on the table to ensure that what takes place on the court is the only factor which leads to the result.
B) He has to open the door to removal of teams. This will probably never happen as organically or on a scale which needs to happen (see above), but the only way he's going to truly be able to prevent teams from tanking games is to put the nuclear option on the table -- once other means to improve fan experience and trust in the product are enacted.
In short, bad franchises need to die.
C) The fact that teams with incompetent/lazy/greedy ownership can still advance through the ranks needs to be ended. I'm about 70-80% toward getting rid of the NBA Draft entirely, and that can be a means in which bad franchises can rot and die. At the barest of minimum, we need to get rid of the the worst team getting the best chance at the one or few relevant draft players.
D) He needs to recognize that there will be games in which players need to be rested for their health and safety.
