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Why it's GOOD to be BAD in the NBA

quick Google search of “the process” doesn’t yield step-by-step instructions or a definition of the phrase, but rather the Wikipedia page of Joel Embiid, the 7-foot Cameroonian center at the heart of the Philadelphia 76ers’ rebuild. A Embiid entered the league in 2014 and embraced then general manager Sam Hinkie’s challenge to “trust the process.” After posting a 47-199 record over three seasons that included the longest losing streak in NBA history at 28 games, the 76ers emerged as title contenders, largely centered around Embiid. That “process” -- part of a long tradition of tanking in sports -- required strategic dumping and benching of star players to effectively guarantee a high lottery pick. Once considered “sports’ dirty little secret,” tanking teams now operate in the open, barely assuming any guise of subtlety. A select few, like the 76ers, even turn it into an entire marketing campaign, rallying their fan base around the potential to land a franchise player down the road. Passing the optics test is just the first hurdle for tanking teams. They still gamble losing out in the lottery or failing to convert high picks into sustained success. More often than not, the rebuild falls short of expectations, leaving fans disgruntled and disengaged. But on the occasion that a front office manages to build a perennial contender, it seems well worth the wait and all is forgiven. While tanking is arguably inevitable at the professional level, the major sports leagues continue to work to develop innovative ways to discourage and even penalize teams that lose on purpose. To understand the history of tanking is to understand the history of the draft. The 2022 NBA Draft marks the fourth year since the league implemented significant changes -- aimed at disincentivizing tanking -- to the lottery in 2019. While the changes have largely been viewed as successful, teams continue to lose at the bottom of the standings in hopes of landing one of the coveted top-four picks. Here’s a brief history of the NBA lottery and what the league is doing to combat tanking. (NBC SPORTS) Pre-1985: The numbers game The first three decades of the NBA draft were both simple and calculating. The first two picks were decided by a coin flip between the bottom two teams and the remaining teams filled out the first round in reverse order of their records. Over time, this generated a race to the bottom which reached a peak in the 1980s. In his first season as owner of the then San Diego Clippers, Donald Sterling, no stranger to scandal, reportedly insisted the Clippers finish last in the standings so they could “draft a player like Ralph Sampson.” Several years later, the Houston Rockets seemed to take a page out of Sterling’s book and intentionally bench their starters with the 1984 draft on the horizon. Houston selected 12-time NBA All-Star Hakeem Olajuwon with the No. 1 overall pick. The NBA had a tanking problem on its hands that could no longer be ignored. 1985: Winning the jackpot In June of 1984, the NBA Board of Governors voted to institute a lottery ahead of the 1985 NBA Draft. The new system -- designed to disincentivize tanking -- operated as a raffle, with each team that didn’t make the playoffs represented by a single envelope. The league then randomly drew envelopes, with each non-playoff team having equal opportunity to land the top-overall pick. After all non-playoff teams received their pick, the remaining first-round selections went to playoff teams in descending order of their win-loss record in the regular season. 1987: Zeroing in on the top-three The first major change to the lottery came just two years into its debut. While we still refer to the top 14 -- the number of teams that don’t make the playoffs -- as lottery picks, that hasn’t been the case since 1987. Rather, the league elected to shrink the lottery to the top-three picks with the remaining first-round picks falling in reverse order of win-loss record. This guaranteed the team with the worst record at least the No. 4 overall pick. 1990: Birth of the weighted draft In an effort to create a more equitable draft, the NBA introduced a weighted lottery for the 1990 draft. This included 66 total tickets, allotted to the non-playoff teams (at the time 11) according to their regular season record. For example, the team with the worst record received 11 tickets, followed by the team with the second-worst record who received 10 tickets. This continued until the best non-playoff team earned a single vote. The initial rollout of the weighted draft proved unsuccessful. Not only did it incentivize tanking, as teams well outside the playoff picture were now compelled to lose and improve their chances in the draft, but it was criticized as failing to achieve its objective of producing a weighted preference toward teams with worse records.