Tanking? With deep NBA Draft class, this is the year to do it

Wednesday night in Oakland, the Golden State Warriors trotted out a starting five of Charles Jenkins, Klay Thompson, Dorell Wright, Jeremy Tyler and Mickell Gladness. That’s four rookies, including first-rounder Thompson, two second-rounders in Jenkins and Tyler, and a D-League veteran in Gladness. In Portland, Hasheem Thabeet and Nolan Smith started for the Trail Blazers, while the likes of Joel Przybilla, Jamal Crawford and Raymond Felton all sat.

The Blazers and Warriors would never acknowledge it, but it’s pretty clear they’re not hunting for wins in these last few games. They’re OK with some losses. The reason is obvious. They want to improve their standing in the NBA Draft, and the more they lose, the better their chances at a higher pick.

The Warriors are more desperate than the Blazers—they owe their pick to the Utah Jazz, unless it falls in the top seven. Golden State’s six-game losing streak has sunk them below the Detroit Pistons and into the No. 8 spot, but they still need some wins by teams like the New Jersey Nets, Toronto Raptors and/or Cleveland Cavaliers to get into the top seven. (Once there, the Warriors still could be bumped out if one of the bottom seven teams moves up in the lottery.)

Losing intentionally—or, at least, not fielding the best possible lineup—isn’t pretty, and we’re getting the usual reaction from concerned observers around the league, ranging from hand-wringing over how laying down impacts playoff races to downright outrage over the big-league money being spent for tickets just to watch third-rate lineups. In many years, those reactions make some sense, because history shows that tanking simply is not worth it.

But this is not an ordinary year. This year, if you’re out of the playoff mix, it behooves you to approach these last few games with this mentality: lose, and lose often.

“It depends on the draft,” one general manager told Sporting News. “In a lot of years, it’s not really going to matter because you’re not going to get a true superstar, franchise player in the lottery. This draft, you can’t say that. This draft might have a handful of franchise players.”

Let’s start with the general usefulness, or lack thereof, of tanking in the NBA. The league’s top picks are determined by draft lottery, and no matter how much you lose, you won’t have more than a 25 percent chance of winning the No. 1 pick. In fact, having the most losses has not meant getting the top choice in the vast majority of years. In 22 draft lotteries since the NBA began weighting teams’ chances, only three teams (the Nets in 1990, the Cavaliers in 2003 and the Magic in 2004) have had the worst record and won the lottery. Only 11 times has the lottery winner come from the four worst teams in the league. Lose all you want—there’s a good chance you’re still not getting the top pick.

Winning the No. 1 pick is not as simple as piling up losses, then. The more you lose, the better your chances for a high pick, for sure. But even with the No. 1 pick, you might find it was not worth tanking for in the first place.

The last four top picks (Kyrie Irving, John Wall, Blake Griffin, Derrick Rose) still have a chance to create superstar legacies. But beyond them, recent No. 1 picks have either seen their careers diminished by injury (Greg Oden, Andrew Bogut, Yao Ming), been huge disappointments (Kwame Brown, Michael Olowokandi) or settled into good-not-great careers (Andrea Bargnani, Kenyon Martin, Elton Brand).

In the last 16 years, there have been only four No. 1 picks to lead the teams that drafted them to the Finals—Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson. Duncan, chosen by the Spurs in 1997, is the only No. 1 pick to lead his team to a championship in that span.

If you can tank for Tim Duncan, as the Spurs did in 1997, you do it. If you can tank for Dwight Howard, go for it. But the problem with those drafts was that there was a big drop off to the consolation prizes for the worst teams (the Celtics and Grizzlies in ’97 and the Bobcats, Bulls and Clippers in ’04). In ’97, it was Keith Van Horn, Chauncey Billups and Antonio Daniels. In ’04, it was Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon and Shaun Livingston. Those are not franchise building blocks.

But the easiest tanking decision comes when there is a great player available at No. 1, and potential franchise players behind him, too.

That was the case in 2003, with LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and (ahem) Darko Milicic on the board. Only Wade has won a championship among that group, and only Wade is still with the team that drafted him. But the four teams that really stunk in ’03—Cleveland, Denver, Miami and Toronto—got potential franchise cornerstones out of that draft. For those four teams, losing games was undoubtedly worth it.

This draft could present the same kind of field. The top pick, Anthony Davis, already looks like a superstar. There are at least four other players behind him (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Andre Drummond, Thomas Robinson, Harrison Barnes) who are potential cornerstones, and a handful more (Jared Sullinger, Perry Jones, Bradley Beal, John Henson) that some scouts see as future stars, too.

Usually, losing with a purpose has little impact on what happens with a franchise’s future. But some years are different, and this is likely one of those years. If you’re Portland or Golden State, or any other team with a chance at a top pick in this year’s draft, now is the time to tank.