Hey sports fans, noticed something about the NBA?
Have you paid attention?
Have you been checking ESPN? What? ESPN has not pointed any odd variables about the NBA this season? Then I guess it’s up to me to point this out:
The NBA currently sucks. Hardcore. And it needs help immediately.
On Black Friday (very suitable choice of time to write this piece) only 12 of the 30 teams are above .500. Only 2 of the 12 teams above .500 are in the Eastern Conference. The bottom half of the Eastern Conference combines for a dismal .408 winning percentage. The 8th seed of the West would be the 3rd seed in the East. And to be totally honest, the only teams that really are worthy of paying attention right now are the Pacers, Heat, Spurs, and the Blazers---not in that order. To a lesser extent, the Thunder also deserves some sort of mention.
But even the winning records of the West are rather biased, since the top 8 seeds are a ridiculous 33-4 against the Eastern Conference. And I am sure you want the overall numbers of the West against the East, right? Well….51-20. A .718 winning percentage. 39% of the collective winnings from the West come from playing East teams---and they play them only…guess what…39% of the season!!!!
So what we are seeing are these Western Conference teams having far better records, but mainly because they are feasting on the bulk of East teams that just don’t give a crap about this year. This season, the Magic, Bucks, 76ers, Cavs, Celtics, Bobcats, and potentially even the Raptors are tanking in favor for good seeing in the 2014 NBA Draft. Even out in the West there are uncaring teams---the Kings and Jazz combine for a beautiful 6-23 record.
Eight NBA teams are universally known to be tanking, and we have a few questionable teams to boot. No league can possibly be entertaining or worth your money with this nonsense continuing. Potentially one-third of the NBA is hamming up the season. This is the equivalent of trying to enjoy a sandwich when one-third of the ingredients are expired. This is the equivalent of trying to enjoy a movie but seeing that Dane Cook is in one-third of it.
And I know that it’s not that the players themselves are throwing the games. I am not accusing any of the lineups from any team to be intentionally losing games at ridiculous levels. This is upper management nonsense trickling down attempts to sabotage a potentially good season. Look at the Orlando Magic---a team with the ability to develop into a good young core that can handle teams like the Clippers—run by a coaching staff that believes Big Baby Davis should be an everyday starter. Really?
The tanking issue has been absolutely obliterating any chance of the current NBA resembling the NBA of the 90s, when it seemed like every team had household names players and had legitimate shots at going far in the postseason. Think about it, the Bulls won 6 championships----but played 5 different teams during their reign of winning terror. Nowadays, it’s the same squads threatening to reach the Final Four in the postseason. In the East nobody, repeat, nobody outside Miami and Indiana wants to be in the playoffs this year. In the West, if you are below the top 4 you are also secretly dreading the playoffs—and are just approaching December.
The worst part is that there is no solution in the horizon for the tanking epidemic that is spreading rampantly in this league. We can try to just give guaranteed top picks to the bottom-dwellers, or force the losers to compete in a massive tournament, or even financially punish repeat offenders of having terrible seasons. Or even better, give the top draft picks to the teams that made the playoffs, and have them choose whether to keep it (and pay a major rookie tax) or choose a non-playoff team to trade with. With the final idea, it forces to teams to actually compete and also forces teams to try to improve their staff otherwise they will never have decent trade bait for the playoff teams in the off-season.
Whatever the solution we come up with to fix this, we need to come up with it fast. Any league with only six relevant teams will never be able to maintain a decent level of success.
NBA, fix yourself.
