Mr. Commissioner, the NBA has an embarrassing problem—too many teams doing their best to lose. “Right now there are nine teams tanking,” a league executive told ESPN in March. That would imply that about half the league’s games involved at least one team trying to lose. Not infrequently, in a twisted parody of sports, both teams were trying to lose. “And next year’s draft is going to have maybe more franchise players than this year’s draft,” that executive added. “A year from now, you may still have nine teams tanking.”
The reason, of course, is the draft.