NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is a dancer, especially when it comes to language. Case in point: his answer about whether or not tanking, or purposely losing games, as a rebuilding strategy exists in his league.
"I absolutely don't think any team is trying to lose," he said in a recent interview with ESPN's Andy Katz. "I talk directly to our players. You know our players. They're the most competitive people in the world."
What about management? "OK, so just players," he said. "No players are going out there to lose. In terms of management, I think there's an absolute legitimate rebuilding process that goes on. It's so hard to win in this league and it's so complex, and I think what has happened in the case of Philadelphia is that their strategy has been reduced into a tweet, this notion that, you know, 'Be bad to be good.'"
I can't help but give him high marks for pirouetting around a lie without fully exposing the truth, which is that, yes, tanking is practiced by some teams in the NBA and, at the moment, the Philadelphia 76ers aren't even trying to be coy about it. At least not as coy as Silver was in addressing whether the Sixers are tanking.Silver shaped the entire conversation by simply creating advantageous definitions of the word "team" and "tanking." The "team" he made to be just the players. He then defined "tanking" as "trying to lose" as opposed to "not trying to win."
Silver is correct in doubting that when the word "team" is defined as "the players," no "team" is trying to lose. I've met players who weren't personally as committed to winning as others or who had an easier time accepting losses, but I don't know of one who intentionally sabotaged his team.
Silver is, again, correct in suggesting that the method of rebuilding through tanking is more complex than simply assembling an inferior collection of players. Every general manager is fully capable of putting together, barring unforeseen injuries, a mediocre roster. It takes the deft manipulation of the style a team plays, the combinations put on the floor, who plays are run for and how many minutes certain players are given to reduce a team to flirting with 10 wins rather than 30. The players aren't purposely missing shots or committing turnovers—they're just being asked to take shots and make plays that more often than not will end in failure.
Same goes for putting a young player's name in trade rumors. It can be sold as testing a player's value; it also has a good chance of wrecking that player's focus or confidence, at least for a while. Then there's being extra cautious with a key player coming back from injury because, after all, under the circumstances, why risk a setback? It's not direct sabotage; it's simply tilting the scales on a nightly basis to produce far more losses than wins. It's tanking by tinkering—tankering, if you will.
Silver insinuated that "a team" means only "the players," a definition subscribed to by no one. A team, in the conventional sense, means the entire organization—coaches, front office, ownership. Kudos to Silver for his rondo around the question if teams in toto ever purposely undermine themselves. Because of course they do. Drafting a lottery pick who is guaranteed not to play an entire season two years in a row may not be trying to lose, but it clearly isn't doing everything possible in the present to win.
The Sixers' argument is that they are indeed trying to win. Eventually. They were acquiring the best talent in Joel Embiid, Dario Saric and Nerlens Noel, albeit on a layaway plan. If it ultimately turns into a first-class living room set, then a couple of years of losing will be justified—at least in the mind of general manager Sam Hinkie.
All that, though, doesn't change the fact that, for now, the Sixers are not doing everything possible to win. Or that other teams have, or will, do the same. Silver didn't deny that fact. He simply waltzed around it in a way that wasn't insulting. Maybe I'm setting the bar too low, but I can appreciate the man's position as well as his artistry. And maybe if every tanking GM were as deft and congenial talking about it as Silver, who knows, maybe it wouldn't seem quite as offensive. Maybe.
Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2310039-nba-insider-the-fine-art-of-tanking-and-of-how-the-commissioner-talks-about-it
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