Sloan Conference Reveals More Than It Probably Should Have
Initial hat-tip to Brian Tuohy and his News of Note page (meaning, someone else may have tipped him off), but the new commissioner of the NBA may now have a bit of a public-relations problem here.
I don't think many of us have heard of the Sloan Conference on Sports Analytics, but the NBA took center-stage at it for some comments that were made in the first two days of the event.
First, on the Friday of the conference, the NBA's rule against “tanking” or not giving your best effort every night was exposed, once again, to be an abject farce.
The NBA is, to my knowledge, the only league in the country which can sanction teams for not putting out their best efforts, or deciding to rest players at inappropriate points (just ask the San Antonio Spurs for taking their best players and sending them home at the end of their long Rodeo Road-trip – which just happened to be a highly-anticipated national-network game against the Chosen Ones from Miami).
So imagine the shock when ESPN picked up on this story from the Sloan Conference about NBA teams tanking and looking, by the end of their season, at their draft position.
Imagine all this going on in a league where it is supposed to be a substantial penalty for any team or player not to give their best efforts every night...
- Jerry Colangelo admitted that he wanted the 2011-12 Toronto
Raptors to get the #1 draft pick through tanking the season by going
to a youth movement. His coach at the time put a stop to that.
- Stan Van Gundy openly stated, with the GM of the Philadelphia
76ers present, that the current 76ers roster was put out there
specifically to lose, that the 76ers are embarrassing themselves and
the NBA. (Bill Simmons covers this monstrosity here.)
Van Gundy believes there is so much tanking going on that he would
eliminate the entry draft entirely and allow all college players to
become free agents.
- Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey also wants a change in the
draft, because he believes that upwards of 2/3 of all the teams in
the league are tanking by the end of last season – and that would
then include at least six of the playoff teams (who wouldn't be in
the lottery in the first place).
A lot of people are trying to come up with a solution. You already heard Van Gundy's solution. Another would be a rotation that each team would get the #1 pick once every 30 years. Charles Barkley would return the lottery back to it's original format: Every non-playoff team gets one equal shot at the #1 pick.
The fact is, if you have a GM out there who's saying even nearly half the playoff teams are tanking, then something really has to be done. The only realistic solution to tanking will never happen in a United States sports league: Promotion from the minor leagues, relegation from the top level.
Tanking would stop instantaneously if the worst team from each conference had to go down to AAA/D-League/whatever minor league the NFL would have/etc.
It's basically an off-shoot of the whole “We Sell Fantasy” situation. The fantasy of competition in a business setting would, if taken to the correct end, punish teams with crippling financial losses for continually losing, etc.
The problem is that the reality is that the poor teams and franchises are effectively constructed to be the Washington Generals, padding the statistics of the respective leagues' “Harlem Globetrotters”.
Hence, by this act, they are propped up as necessary evils, and that's one of the reasons that, frankly, unless you are a fan of one of the 4-6 relevant teams every year in the NBA, you have no business plopping down hard-earned money, because, chances are, your team is going to take a dive.
But that wasn't the only thing which should've raised eyebrows from the Sloan Conference.
Mark Cuban was at it again – with another great point that probably would blow up something major that no one (else) really wants to see happen.
It appears as if Mark Cuban is one of the growing number of people who see the NCAA's days as numbered.
Mark Cuban believes that, unless the NCAA changes from the “one and done” eligibility principle (that a player can go to the NBA after only one college season), that it's time for the NBA to go after those players who almost-certainly will be in the NBA in one season, making the D-League (where a player can go immediately the season after his 18th birthday) more viable, visible, and a transition to professional basketball.
He's right. The problem is, at that point, you blow up the last remaining real reason for the continuance of the NCAA on a national stage – the March Madness Men's Basketball tournament.
Between the O'Bannon lawsuit (though some teeth have been taken out of that) and calls for unionizing players (such as Northwestern's football team), the NCAA may finally be on the way out. Cuban (who openly wants the NCAA destroyed) believes he can capitalize on this by ending the complete hypocrisy of student-athleticism in most of the major schools.
The main problem Cuban is going to have is the importance of retaining the social status quo. Even with a multi-conference coalition basically ru(i)n(n)ing college football, getting rid of the NCAA might well do away with many sports and many teams, even in the major-revenue sports. Also, it would probably get rid of a national institution which has gained almost-mythical proportions in the last 30 years or so.
(So much so that, for the first time, Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans are teaming with Yahoo! to provide the impossible prize for the impossible act. It is believed that no person has ever perfectly predicted the entire bracket for the main NCAA men's basketball tournament. If anyone in the Yahoo! contest can do so this year, they will win an annuity which will pay them ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
That's right: $1,000,000,000.00 .
And if you don't want to wait, you can take half that amount immediately. All you need is a perfect bracket. Har de har har har.)
Cuban is right, as he often is. The problem is he'd be getting rid of at least one national institution, and many local ones.
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