NBA GM's admission of tanking hilights a necessary evil

While it got some buzz, I thought the anonymous NBA General Manager's op-ed for ESPN The Magazine about tanking should have been a much bigger story this week. Not because it was a shocking admission or something we were naive about, but because while he did it anonymously, we finally had a GM come out and say they were going for broke in their quest for temporary futility, instead of the usual "we'll see how it all plays out" narrative we often hear from crappy teams at this time of year.

It's a fascinating look into the mind of an NBA executive who understands the dirty work that must be done, as evidenced by these excerpts from the column:

Our team isn't good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes -- and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games.

Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.

Our coach understands that too. It's no secret what we're trying to do, and you can't lie to him anyway or you'll lose all trust. We never really had to tell him, because the handwriting is on the wall. He knows exactly what's going on, and he's good with it.

In a sports world where getting to the top often filters through a stay at the bottom, and a spot in the middle is hell unless you're a young team coming from the bottom and are clearly on the way to the top, a General Manager's job is to find a viable path to sustainable contention. These execs didn't make the rules, they're simply playing by them.

Sure, you can call intentional losing or taking a strategic step back for at most a 25 per chance at the No. 1 pick ludicrous and disrespectful to the loyal, paying customers that are the fans, but in the NBA more than any other league, a 25 per cent chance at the No. 1 pick is significantly better than the chances a bottom-feeder or middle of the pack team has of upsetting a championship contender in the playoffs, let alone making The Finals or actually winning a title.

As the anonymous GM writes:

If you're an NBA general manager like me, the last place you want to be is in the middle. There are only two outcomes there: Either make the playoffs and be first-round fodder for one of the premier teams or miss the playoffs and pick somewhere around 11th to 14th in the draft. Either way, the odds are that you stay in that middle range. It's a recipe for disaster.

Some seasons are more prone to belligerent tanks than others, and those seasons occur when a generational talent in a transcendent draft class is available, as is the case with Canadian teen and Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins this season. "In a different season, it might not make sense, but this draft certainly makes it more appealing," writes the author.

Between Wiggins, Julius Randle, Jabari Parker, Dante Exum, Marcus Smart and others, this draft class even has some young teams currently in position to contend for playoff spots leaving themselves open to joining the 'race' to the bottom, as on Wednesday the Toronto Star reported, citing "someone involved in the process," that the Raptors will blow things up in their chase for Wiggins if the team doesn't show signs "that they are not only a playoff team, but a sustainable one" within 45 days.

In my predictions for this season, I mentioned that I thought one of this year's potential surprises was that with a handful of teams tanking in the background, the level of competition across the rest of the league (whether in the championship discussion or in playoff races) would be as compelling as ever. I still believe that to be a great possibility in 2013-14, but if The Star's report rings true and other teams in similar positions to Toronto embark along the same path, then we could have half the Association looking for ways to lose games for the final half of the season.

That might make for bad press for the NBA, but how exactly do you or anyone else on plan on fixing it?

Some observers have mentioned awarding lottery picks in order of how many wins teams accumulate after being eliminated from playoff contention, forcing the worst teams to improve and go for wins after such a point. But that would still put teams tanking early at an advantage and would still hurt teams making an honest effort to make the playoffs, who may not be eliminated from contention until the final week or even the final night of the regular season.

So what do you do? Completely balance the lottery for all 14 non-playoff teams? There are surely a faction of fans who believe the entire process of rewarding the worst run teams year after year is the real problem here and that the lottery should give all 30 teams an equal chance at the No. 1 pick, and it's a valid point worth considering.

For the anonymous General Manager who penned the column and the other NBA executives in his shoes, however, these potential solutions for tanking address future seasons, while they operate in the here and now. So while fans, media members and others often criticize teams and GM's for intentionally losing while offering their solutions for tomorrow, those Managers' livelihoods and reputations depend on how they navigate the NBA today.

Do they like it when they have to throw away seasons to give themselves a better chance at sustainability? Probably not. Does playing to lose go against everything that sport and competition stand for? Absolutely. But until a better solution is put into place instead of just into theory, tanking, while inherently evil in the world of sports, is a necessary evil at that.

All of which is to say, hate the game, not the players.