How to Stop NBA Teams from Tanking

In recent games the Celtics, and their head coach Doc Rivers, have been accused of throwing games to increase their probability of landing the top pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. Even the most critical journalists, however, are quick to point out that this is the worst crime a team can be accused of and is not true.

They point to the Celtic's rousing victory on the road against the San Antonio Spurs on March 17^th. They claim Doc Rivers had a lesson in mind when he played five players buried deep in the Celtics bench for the entire fourth quarter of a close game against the equally woeful Charlotte Bobcats. The real "experts" even go as far to point to the NBA Draft of 1997, where these same Celtics missed out on future All-Pro Tim Duncan despite having the worst record in the league.

What most seem not to understand is throwing a season is not as simple as it seems. Only the general manager of the Celtics, Danny Ainge, should be fully for the effort. Everyone else, from the head coach to the players, still wants to win.

Is Herm Edwards really the only person who knows you play to win the game? What athlete, professional or not, will say they don't want to win every game? What athlete will put their own statistics, wins and everything else aside so that his team can get a young player for next year?

Forget the notion that having the most losses doesn't guarantee a top pick. It does. The team with the worst record gets no worse than the fourth pick in the draft. In a draft as deep as this year's, a top-five draft pick is money.

And if the NBA wants to criticize teams losing intentionally, they should take a good hard look at themselves first. David Stern has made it clear that the NBA is a business first, entertainment second. In no other business do losing teams get rewarded. By awarding high draft picks to bad teams, Stern is just igniting the fire. At the same time, it does make sense to give teams that finish out of the playoffs a better pick than those in the postseason.

The solution? Keep the lottery for the worst fourteen teams, but get rid of the weighted probabilities based on records. Give each team a 1/14 chance of landing the top pick. It is a simple management strategy of not rewarding teams for behavior the league does not want.

Winning creates an atmosphere that can be used to propel a team to future success. Every team should try to win as many games as possible. By taking away the rewards for losing, the quality of basketball as a whole should go up.