Silver considering all remedies for rampant tanking in NBA

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday that tanking is “worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory” and that he’s considering “every possible measure” — including removing draft picks — to stop the kind of blatant behavior he fined. utah jazz And Indiana Pacers for this week.

“In the old days, it was kind of an understanding between partners in terms of behavior,” Silver said ahead of Saturday’s All-Star Saturday event. “I think what we’re seeing is modern analysis where it’s so clear that the incentives are misplaced. … Are we seeing behavior this year that is worse than what we’ve seen in recent memory? Yes, that’s my view. That led to fines, and not just those fines but my statement that we’re going to look more closely at the totality of all circumstances this season in terms of the teams’ behavior, and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice.”

Silver began his news conference by saying he recently spoke to a 97-year-old man bob coozie about the first All-Star Game in 1950, and they both commented on how much the game had progressed since then. This led to Silver thinking that after 75 years, it might be time to rethink how the league runs its draft, just as the league continues to experiment with its All-Star Game format.

Silver said that in conversations with general managers and other members of the league’s competition committee, the lottery’s incentive structure has not made it clear that the worst teams are actually the teams with the worst records.

“If teams are manipulating their performance to get higher draft picks, even in the lottery, then the question becomes… are they really the worst-performing teams?” Rajat said. “For example, it’s not clear to me that a 30th-performing team is significantly worse than a 22nd-performing team, especially if you have an incentive to perform worse to get a better draft pick.

“It’s a bit of a puzzle. As I said, the All-Star [Game] Is 75 years old. The league is 80 years old. “Now is the time to take a fresh look at whether this is an outdated way of doing it.”

On several occasions Saturday, Silver reflected on the tradeoff between the short-term incentives teams may have to lose games to improve their draft position and the long-term best interests of the league.

“The whole community is coming together and deciding what’s in the best interest,” Silver said. “It’s part of my job to remind everybody. … I understand what your short-term interests may be, but we better not lose sight of our fans here. We better not lose sight of the people who support this league day in and day out.”

Silver noted that last point as part of his answer to a question about an ongoing investigation into whether LA Clippers Bypassed the NBA salary cap in an endorsement deal between then-team sponsor Aspiration and the star forward kawhi leonard.

Silver said he had no update on the investigation, which is being conducted by Wachtel Lipton in New York.

“This is extremely complex. Your company is bankrupt. You have thousands of documents, multiple witnesses who need to be interviewed,” Silver said.

“I would say, in case anyone was wondering, the fact that the All-Star [Weekend] Coming here this weekend has not affected the timeline of the investigation. We owed it to the Wachtel Law Firm to do the work and then come back and make recommendations to the league office, and that’s where things stand now.”

Silver said he did not have a timeline for when the investigation would conclude.

However, he did provide an update on the NBA’s plans for expansion, noting that he hopes the Board of Governors will discuss the issue at their next meeting in March and then begin reaching out to potential expansion cities and owners to gauge interest. He said that the league is not considering relocation of any of its existing franchises.

“I think the logical next step would be to say, ‘Okay, we’ve had those discussions internally, we’ve made decisions about what cities to focus on and what the opportunity is, and now, we have to go to market,'” Silver said. “I think that’s probably the most important step, to figure out who is potentially interested in owning a franchise in particular cities, what the value of that franchise is. There is some work to do in terms of possible conference realignment. This is the next step.”