Tanking Theory

The talk of the town in the NBA right now is tanking. Some of the most logical NBA analysts argue the importance of tanking, but I think they might be missing the forests for the trees via first order thinking that misses second order effects..

The Path of Champions

Let’s walk through a quick review of the last 7 years of champions:

• Toronto Raptors – Kawhi (acquired in trade) leading a sneaky Raptors championship.
• Los Angeles Lakers – LeBron (acquired in free agency) and AD (acquired in trade) in a weird bubble year.
• Milwaukee Bucks – Giannis (15th pick), Middleton (2nd round pick acquired in trade) and Jrue Holiday (trade).
• Golden State Warriors – Curry (7th pick) legacy run.
• Denver Nuggets – Jokic (41st pick) and Murray with enough around him.
• Boston Celtics – Tatum and Brown (both high picks – but the picks were acquired from Brooklyn) with a strong cast around them.
• OKC Thunder – SGA (acquired in a trade) with Chet (2nd pick) and Jalen Williams (12th pick but the pick was acquired in a trade).

I didn’t cut this off at 7 years to stop my narrative either. Before this, it was a lot of Warriors, Spurs and Team LeBron (Cavs and Heat).

The Process Failed

It turns out losing is for losers. Over the past 7 championships, the only team that even came close to tanking was the Thunder, but that was a small portion of a much larger plan by Presti (people forget he turned Serge Ibaka into Paul George into SGA + Jalen Williams). The tank by the Thunder only led to Chet Holmgren and Josh Giddey… not the core of the championship team (sorry Chet but you weren’t it).

If you look back even further back at previous champions, you see the same idea. Good teams that became great by adding another piece opportunistically, with some opportunistic tanking.

The Middle Path to Championships

I’d argue that staying semi-competitive as you churn through players looking for game changing talent is key. Opportunistically tank in short doses, but tanking for years at a time is toxic. Do we really think it’s a coincedence that the 76ers process led to two of the most bizarre careers ever in Simmons / Embiid? We have teams that have been tanking for a decade at this point with limited results to show, yet we see strong results from teams choosing the middle path.

The middle path is a philosophical idea of avoiding extremes and finding balance. The comparison here is that teams need to find balance between being overly competitive and not competitive at all.

The problem is that many confuse the middle path with teams that choose mediocrity like the Bulls. That is a different kind of extreme…. constantly choosing mediocrity instead of balance. I’m not saying tanking isn’t logical, in some cases it is. The problem lies in that at times decisions are individually rational (i.e we can’t win a championship, so we should tank), but collectively irrational (tanking for 5+ years).