Why NBA's Proposed Lottery Changes Won’t Fix Tanking Issues

If you’re standing in the middle of the first fairway, deciding whether to hit a driver, a 5-iron or a pitching wedge into the green (or more likely, the lake), you really should take up tennis.

This pretty much sums up the three finalists designed to save the NBA in the Great Tanking Debacle announced last week by Commissioner Adam Silver.

At the conclusion of his league meetings, the boss also was supposed to unveil his Think Tank’s recommendations for expansion, but then informed us his game has bigger issues to deal with first.

Turns out the league is concerned that the product already is watered down enough, and that bringing on additional teams would serve only to add more fizz to a Shirley Temple.

Think about those two things for a minute …

On one hand, the NBA wants us to believe bad teams are bad only because they’re trying to be. They actually have enough talent to compete.

But if the talent pool truly is that deep, then why not add a couple more teams and deliver the world’s highest level of basketball to an even greater audience?

If you’ve watched the NCAA Tournament and seen clips of the various high school championships in recent weeks, you probably are aware that there are more remarkably talented basketball players out there than any other sport in the world.

For crying out loud, NFL talent evaluators are telling us there’s one eligible quarterback in the draft this year who’s good enough to help the Raiders or Jets. One.

There were double that amount every time Illinois played Purdue in basketball this season.

How to fix NBA tanking

The problem with the NBA isn’t that the bad teams are too bad. It’s that the good teams are too good.

Maybe expansion would spread out the talent a bit more. But let’s be honest, as we see year after year in baseball, unless the NBA figures out a way to put a true cap on the amount of money each team can spend, the young (cheaper) teams have no chance.

Unless they “cheat,” of course.

So the goal of the NBA has to be: Give the teams that need the most help, the most help.

That brings us back to Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest – AKA the three lottery proposals.

• The first wants to give the team with the worst record no better chance of landing a franchise-turning first overall pick than the club with the 10th-worst record, while at the same time giving 18 – up from 14 – teams a chance to win.

How is that helping the neediest team?

• The second requires Bill Bradley’s education to do the calculations. But most clearly, it gives 22 teams a chance to pick first.

Again I ask: How's that helping the neediest team?

• The third is basically the same as the first, except that it involves a second lottery for purposes having little to do with tanking.

OK, you know what I’m about to ask.

No, no, no. The NBA’s brightest minds spent three months dissecting every minute played by Daeqwon Plowden and they still don’t understand: If you want to do something about tanking, then address TANKING, not the lottery.

And, yes, if you truly believe this is a big problem, then there’s a direct way to go about fixing it.

How about creating a Tanking Committee (OK, let’s call it a Quality Control Panel) to – imagine this – sniff out tanking and punish people for it?

Call it drug testing for a 21st-century epidemic.

Every night, a team is accountable for its actions – who it plays and how much, who it claims is injured, even who is scripted to take the game-winning (losing?) shot.

If the committee smells a rat, that coach is called on the carpet to defend his actions.

Punishments could range from severe to more severe.

I say: You get one warning. After that, you lose one draft position, wherever you end up via the lottery, in the next draft.

Everything is transparent, like allowing cameras at a criminal trial.

It says here: Tanking would be gone faster than the Raptors in the upcoming playoffs.

Today’s lottery would be saved. Tomorrow’s expansion, too.

And if the ping pong balls bounce according to Hoyle, this year’s Utah Jazz would wind up with this year’s Cooper Flagg when they are the ones who truly deserve this year’s Cooper Flagg. Not this year’s Dallas Mavericks.

How did THAT help the bad teams?

That’s how you improve your product – by putting better players on the bad teams. Not by pressuring bad players to comprehend Math 1A, which is why many of them left college in the first place.