The NBA’s worst teams are finding new ways to accrue losses as the end of the season as there is a potential generational prospect to be selected No. 1 and a more crowded than expected field of teams.
“These next few weeks,” one NBA executive said, “could be the worst tanking stretch we’ve ever seen.”
While teams tanking has become a blight on the league at the end of each season, nobody expects the NBA to move away from its draft system. Several teams at the bottom of the standings will start key players, but will not play those same players during clutch time of games.
“Philosophically, I’m not aware of anyone making a serious push to eliminate our current philosophy of the draft, which is to award top picks to teams that are most in need of talent,” Evan Wasch, the NBA’s executive vice president of strategy and analytics, told ESPN. “That is a fundamental tenet of our current draft system.”
Multiple sources told ESPN that one way to reduce tanking would be to remove mid-lottery pick protections. Teams would be allowed to have a top-4 protected pick, a lottery protected pick, or unprotected.
“Coming off this season, it would be reasonable to expect that we would re-engage with our competition committee,” Wasch said. “And see if there’s anything they might want to explore to tackle the issue.”
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