Tanking: NBA’s perennial self-sabotage tactic brought to the fore by the Philadelphia 76ers

LeBron James during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers

Such has been the impact of the CBA that almost half the teams out of the possible 30 enter the free agency with max level cap space; enough to offer at least one max level contract to any player. This has opened up the contention of fighting for the free agents more than ever. Gone are the days when a team had to plan two years in advance for the arriving free agent class, clear up cap room and offload bad contracts. This is the time of single year deals and mid-level exceptions.

Amid all this extravaganza of max contracts, bogus trades and waiving of non-productive players, the smaller market teams still see tanking as the only viable option for rebuilding. Star players prefer greener pastures and fatter pay-checks. The glamour and the life-style of places like New York, Los Angeles and Miami is a much bigger draw than going and playing for teams like, say Milwaukee.

Tanking is easy for any NBA team. You just have to follow a few basic steps in order to ensure that your season turns out as disastrous as you want it to be, the steps that the 76ers are following with immaculate perfection. The steps look as follows.

1. Firstly, you trade most of your players away on nonsensical deals and get absolutely nothing in return. Remember Orlando Magic and the Howard trade? Yup, that is the blue-print. Complete bogus trades with other franchises sending productive players their way and spare change towards yours. Doing this ensures that none of the players on your team even accidentally win you a ball game.

2. Secondly, you put a few of your competent players out with fake injuries prolonging their recovery and rehabilitation time, giving the press statements like, “We do not want to rush with the recovery process,” and “His long-term health is a bigger concern than the current state of the team”. Oh, and trade for Byron Mullens. Always trade for Byron Mullens. If you have to give up two front court players for him you do it. If you have to give up a second round draft pick or two you do it. Because nothing in the NBA is as big a certainty as Byron Mullens on a lottery team. Remember the 7-59 Charlotte Bobcats?

3. Try every bogus lineup imaginable by a fan, with the pretext of finding out which lineup suits the team better. If you have to field four front court players to lose a match you do it, because we are experimenting and experimentation means trying something that has not been tried before. Who cares if the lineup cannot manufacture a single look at the basket?

4. Reward the fans for their unwavering support of the rebuilding process by giving them discounts on season tickets, because it is their life’s dream to watch their team getting pounded by every team coming into the arena for a cheaper price.

It is really that simple. The 76ers are following it with more concentration than their players follow up their jump shots. Michael Carter Williams is sidelined with a fake injury and the competent players are shunted into ridiculous line-ups because they do not want to win games. The 76ers’ losing streak currently sits at 21 consecutive losses and if they lose the rest of the games nobody will even bat an eye, because hey, that’s what tanking is about right? The worst part is that the 76ers actually belong to the Eastern conference, which is a giant dump of incompetent basketball teams in its own right.

It is just not okay for teams to throw away seasons like this. It is not fair to the fans nor is it fair to the players. The whole concept of the draft lottery needs a reboot because otherwise it is going to be the same year after year. If roughly six teams out of a possible 30 are willingly throwing away games in the last five weeks of the season, it does not bode well for the sport as a whole.

Self-sabotage is pretty much a recurring danger, and if it is not dealt with head-on then we will soon see more frenzy for a draft lottery than we will for an NBA finals.