The Sports Page 3.2.2014: The NBA Paradox

Henry Ward Beecher

Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near victory as when defeated in a good cause.

-Henry Ward Beecher


David Stern, former NBA Commissioner, has been retired for about a month now. When he was going out, there was almost a consensus of Stern being one of the all time great commissioners especially when primarily considering the league's growth in global popularity and revenues. However, there was one person that came out and threw haymakers at the former commish, ESPN's Jason Whitlock.

Whitlock's core argument is based on the relationship of the NBA's popularity among the four major sports leagues and the number of people that play and have an interest in the sport of basketball. Basketball is inherently easier to play and therefore more omnipresent than football, hockey, and baseball; and yet the NFL obliterates the NBA in popularity.

I began to not care for Stern once he started feeling himself too much and became condescending and pompous. His pompousness was very apparent by his behavior at the last couple of drafts. There were also plenty of rumblings about his behind the scenes antics. My disappointment with the league is how he and the league sat idly by as they maintained an environment that
encourages losing. If teams are not contending for at least success in their own conference, the idea is to bottom out and essentially lose as much as possible to increase the odds of winning the top draft pick or close to it. For a league that endorses integrity, how can they continue to foster an environment of letting teams deliberately not putting a winning team on the floor night in and night out?

I cannot recall witnessing a more pathetic season for the NBA, which is sad given the amount of talent that is young or in their prime. I thought I was the only one seeing this, but Jerry West's recent comments on the state of league confirmed what I was seeing. I am not just saying this because I have Laker DNA and they are having one of their most miserable years in their history. Look at the amount of garbage teams this season...

Hot Garbage
Philadelphia
Milwaukee
Utah
Sacramento
LA Lakers
Orlando
Boston
New York (actually tried hard to be contenders AND they do not have a first round pick in the 2014 draft...they deserve their own blog post)

Garbage
Atlanta
New Orleans
Charlotte
Cleveland
Detroit

...Eh
Washington
Chicago (not their fault as Rose has missed two consecutive seasons)
Toronto
Minnesota
Denver
Brooklyn

Tragic. It does not help at all that Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. are on this list as major cities and markets (sorry Bulls fans, you are ok in a time of JV Eastern Conference basketball).

Many of the Hot Garbage teams are in it to win it. Well, to win the draft lottery. Why not? The 2014 class is supposed to be the best perhaps since the 2003 draft that included LeBron, Wade, Anthony, and Chris Bosh among others notables with sustainable careers. Teams at the very least want to gain a top three top pick to get their hands on Andrew Wiggans, Jabari Parker, or Joel Embiid.

It seems as though I am seeing teams on a weekly basis get blown out by 30, 40, and sometimes nearly 50 points, which is inexplicable at the NBA level. When I get home and have a little free time in the evening, I glance at the NBA schedule and essentially end up scoffing at the match ups as half the league is terrible. Coincidence? I find it interesting that the last two drafts were mediocre if not bad. But those seasons preceding the last two drafts had more excitement and competition.  Now we are going to have fake playoff teams such as Phoenix (possibly), Washington, Brooklyn, Toronto, Charlotte, Atlanta,  and Minnesota (possibly) and the worst first two rounds of the Eastern Conference playoffs ever.

The NBA has to really look at this. Teams are indefinitely going to be incentivized to lose to try landing a potential franchise player in the ensuing draft. That seems great because it is the best way to  try to land a franchise-changing prospect. I'm not sure if this is a good thing for the long term health of the league. Teams setting themselves up to lose compromises the integrity of  competition and fosters the tendency to instill a losing culture, which hurts the fans that are still going to pay premium prices for a losing product with no guarantee that things will get better once their tank job is complete. How do we know if the aforementioned Wiggans, Parker, and Embiid are going to be NBA game changers that carry franchises to titles? We can only hope something is done because an 82-game season of teams routinely refusing to serious compete is terrible for business.