Tanking, and how to prevent it, is all the rage right now around the NBA. Adam Silver and the league office just handed out fines to the Pacers and Jazz for tanking, and while we’re still in early February, there are at least seven other teams who already appear motivated to lose as many games as possible after the All-Star break.
It’s only becoming more of a problem, and with the current system in place, teams are clearly incentivized to be as bad as possible in hopes of striking gold in the draft lottery and landing a franchise-changing player.
Most reasonable minds seem to agree that change is needed, but there’s no obvious solution to this problem that won’t cause equally bad, and potentially even worse outcomes. But one idea that was suggested many years ago is starting to make the rounds again: a wheel concept first proposed by Celtics’ Vice President of Basketball Operations, Mike Zarren.
Zarren first proposed his wheel idea back in 2013, which was documented by Zach Lowe after obtaining the official proposal. Essentially, the wheel would replace the draft lottery, and each team would be assigned to a rotating slot that would have them draft at every position from 1-30 over a 30-year span.
Mike Zarren's wheel would completely eliminate tanking
Teams would know exactly where they will be picking for decades to come, draft position would never be tied to team record, and there would finally be zero incentive for teams to lose games.
The idea drew some interest, but obviously didn’t go very far. Some obvious concerns would include good teams getting top picks and bad teams having no path to improving, but with almost a third of the league currently trying to lose on purpose, it’s hard not to at least consider that something along these lines would be an improvement.
The wheel has caught some traction again recently, with tanking becoming such a big story. Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo! Sports recently made a new proposal based on Zarren’s idea. In his new wheel, instead of being locked into draft positions, teams’ picks would rotate within tiers that would decide their lottery odds.
There would be five tiers of six teams each, and each team within a tier would have equal odds of winning the lottery. Those odds would be tradeable and would rotate just like Zarren’s original wheel idea, but on a much shorter time frame and with more variability in place.
This would come with its own issues, of course, but like the original wheel, the idea revolves around removing any connection between a team’s record and draft position. It may not be perfect, but the current system needs fixing, and Adam Silver and the Board of Governors seem more open to change than ever.
Zarren has proven to be a brilliant basketball mind and a master at navigating the league’s rules and the salary cap. Perhaps we should give his idea a second chance and realize that perhaps this guy knows what he’s doing.