Ask any NBA fan what they think the league’s biggest problems are, and you’ll likely hear a lot of the same things.
There are too many three-pointers. Nobody plays (or is allowed to play) defense anymore. The All Star weekend has become an unmitigated mess. The league’s become overrun with social justice sloganeering and pandering. The NBA and its partners are too deeply in bed with sports gambling sites.
While individual mileage may vary on each of those issues, there’s no doubt that the combination of them has put the NBA in an awkward position.
The league’s television deals may be numerous andrich, but fandom and popularity are as middling as they’ve ever been for the NBA.
And a big reason for that is the league putting out an unwatchable product on many nights.
The underlying cause of that? Tanking — which may very well be thebiggestproblem the NBA currently has.
For the non-sportsball fans, “tanking” in a sport is the act of a team intentionally sabotaging its chances of winning (read: intentionally trying to lose) to better their draft position.
(And yes, this problem is exacerbated due to the NBA’s proximity to sports gambling platforms.)
This is a uniquely NBA problem because of the way it handles its draft. Unlike, say, the NFL, where the worst record gets the best pick, the second worst record gets the second-best pick, and so on, the NBA implements something that’s known as a “draft lottery.”
In short, every non-playoff team in the league is put into a “lottery,” which determines draft order. While the worst records theoretically have the best odds to get the best picks,that doesn’t always happen.
Source: VidNews » Feed
