Of all the challenges plaguing the NBA this season, “nothing has seemed to excite the league office quite so much as the problem of tanking,” according to Louisa Thomas of the NEW YORKER. The NBA has faced a rash of severe leg injuries, the arrest of an active NBA head coach during an FBI gambling investigation, the shuttering of RSNs carrying local NBA games. But an “exceptionally strong draft class this season, in combination with the complicated math around protected picks” has “increased teams’ incentives to do well in the lottery.” The draft is designed to “increase parity by sending the best new players to the worst teams in the league,” but the problem is that this “incentivizes losing on purpose — tanking.” There is an “obvious, simple solution: abolish the draft” and “give every incoming player free agency.” This “not only has the benefit of being morally correct from a labor standpoint but it also removes the incentive to tank.” But this approach is “considered hopelessly unrealistic.” Small-market owners, the “logic goes, would never go for it, because they’d have no hope of competing with” a team like the Lakers. Owners would “have to upgrade facilities, institute best practices, focus on player development, establish smart front offices who targeted the right players, employ great training staffs, and cultivate ardent fan bases, in order to attract the rookies they want” (NEW YORKER, 4/5).
BUCKS’ BUSINESS: In Milwaukee, Jim Owczarski cited sources as saying that the NBA and NBPA have been “having conversations” with the Bucks and F Giannis Antetokounmpo about his “availability to play following a knee injury he suffered March 15.” Antetokounmpo, as well as “multiple members of the organization’s staff, have been interviewed about the hyperextension and bone bruise he sustained to his left knee following an awkward landing after a dunk” (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 4/3). An NBA spokesperson on Saturday said that “certain facts remain in dispute” in the saga between Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. The league said that its investigation determined that the Bucks “scheduled Antetokounmpo to go through a three-on-three scrimmage the week of March 23 but Antetokounmpo declined to participate.” Antetokounmpo spoke publicly for the first time about his situation on Friday and said that he “welcomed an investigation into his availability” (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 4/5).
GAINING INSIGHT: YAHOO SPORTS’ Jack Baer wrote Friday might have been the “clearest possible window into just how miserable professional basketball has become” with the playoffs just a couple weeks away. In one day, fans saw nine games played with an “average margin of 24.4 points.” Lakers G Luka Doncic got “ruled out for the remainder of the regular season, which will make him ineligible for All-NBA honors unless he can successfully use the birth of his daughter as an extenuating circumstance.” There also was Antetokounmpo “insisting to reporters he is healthy, after his team tried to quietly shut him down for the season” (YAHOO SPORTS, 4/4).