Adam Silver Rejects Idea That NBA Players Lose on Purpose
Though the notion of "tanking" has become a fixture of the NBA lexicon, league commissioner Adam Silver believes the conventional narrative is misguided.
"I absolutely don't think any team is trying to lose," he told ESPN's Andy Katz in a recent Outside the Lines interview (via ESPN.com).
Skeptics may discount the assessment as spin, but Silver isn't blind to case studies such as the now notoriously bad Philadelphia 76ers. From his perspective, criticisms of front-office strategies are often overly simplistic.
"No player is going out there to lose," Silver added. "In terms of management, I think there's an absolute legitimate rebuilding process that goes on. It's so hard to win in this league, and it's so complex.
"I think what's happened in the case of Philadelphia—their strategy has been reduced into a tweet. This notion 'be bad to be good.' ... When it gets reduced into a headline, I understand the reaction."
One suspects that Silver also understands the frustrations of fans whose teams remain indefinitely noncompetitive. Patience may be a virtue in the business, but it can be a hard sell to ticket holders.
Paradoxically, of course, rebuilding is all about pleasing those ticket holders. Sometimes it just takes a few years.
Without a painful commitment to starting from scratch, however, it becomes difficult to acquire (and afford) multiple franchise players during the prime of their careers. Given the importance of building upon a foundation of talented young assets, many franchises have to start from the bottom in a bid for prime draft positions.
Though Silver is probably correct that teams aren't deliberately trying to lose games, it's much harder to deny that some general managers (including Philadelphia's Sam Hinkie) are at the very least comfortable with the idea that their teams are going to lose a lot of contests in the short term. The 76ers were 19-63 last season and are off to a 2-23 start this time around.
In response to Silver's comments, CBSSports.com's Zach Harper wrote:
"The players and coaches on the Sixers are trying everything they can to secure wins on a nightly basis. The issue isn't with effort or intent of the players and coaches involved; the issue is with the intent of Sixers' management.
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Hinkie and Co. have had their opportunities to add skilled veterans via trade or free agency, but they understandably prefer to create ample playing time for youngsters such as Michael Carter-Williams, Nerlens Noel and Tony Wroten Jr. It's probably a sensible approach, but it's also a very deliberate one.
It's not like the losing season that ensues is a complete accident.
The league's board of governors took up a vote in October to reform the draft system, eyeing an arrangement that might remove some of the incentives for an organization to tank. That referendum fell six votes short, leaving solutions to the tanking issue an open question. Similar proposals may be revisited, but there doesn't appear to be much consensus about the way forward.
And if you ask Adam Silver, the status quo really isn't that bad.
