Ooooh, look at all those prized college prospects. DeAndre Ayton! Marvin Bagley! Michael Porter! These prospects are so shiny they could blind you.
NBA teams thirsty for a top pick in the 2018 draft may be tempted to employ a strategy we've seen from other teams in recent years—cough, Philadelphia—and tank, intentionally losing games so they end the season with a worse record. If you're going to miss the playoffs, why not? Losing games increases your probability of drawing that ping-pong ball you desire in the NBA draft lottery.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, however, is not here for the tanking talk. There are as many as 7-8 teams with a legitimate shot at claiming the No. 1 pick, and in the wake of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's comments about tanking, Silver made it clear the strategy will not be tolerated.
Silver sent out a memo to all 30 teams, according to USA Today Sports. Silver wrote that the league has "been careful to distinguish between efforts teams may make to rebuild their rosters, including through personnel changes over the course of several seasons, and circumstances in which players or coaches on the floor take steps to lose games."
Silver can get down with the former, but not the latter.
"The former can be a legitimate strategy to construct a successful team within the confines of league rules; the latter—which we have not found and hope never to see in the NBA—has no place in our game," Silver wrote. "If we ever received evidence that players or coaches were attempting to lose or otherwise taking steps to cause any game to result otherwise than on its competitive merits, that conduct would be met with the swiftest and harshest response possible from the league office."
You heard the man: the swiftest and harshest responsible possible.
What type of punishment from the league office does that entail? We don't know. But it sure sounds scary.
