Popular radio hosts discuss the idea of teams tanking for the 1st overall pick and propose a way to fix it
The idea of tanking to get the best draft pick is not a new concept. Teams have been doing it for decades across the various sports, but there have also been plenty of conversations surrounding whether or not tanking maintains the integrity in sport and whether or not the whole idea is for teams to be in competition, trying to win every single night.
On Monday, during an episode of Real Kyper and Bourne on SN590, Justin Bourne proposed an idea to eliminate tanking. Bourne explained to co-host Nick Kypreos and listeners that if, instead of awarding the first overall pick to the team who produces the lowest number of points in a season, the league could set up a system where teams begin to accrue points from the second they're mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, every point they earn will be calculated and the team with the most points at the end of the year among the non-playoff teams is awarded the 1st overall pick.
The whole idea behind this theory is that, instead of incentivizing losing, the league is giving teams an incentive to go out and try to win games - even when they're out of the playoff picture. This way, they're not awarding being purposefully awful - they're awarding perseverance and determination.
The obvious Achilles heel here is that if a team wanted to just tank earlier in the season and have themselves mathematically eliminated from the playoffs earlier so they can bank more points, that would be entirely possible and could result in a really good team continuing to bring in top prospects at the price of not qualifying for the playoffs.
As Bourne stated during the show, in this scenario, teams could openly declare that they are out of the playoffs right from the first game of the year and begin to bank points towards picking 1st overall at the draft. While that may seem silly, for a team like Carolina, Toronto or Boston outright declaring that they have no intent on playing in the playoffs right from the 1st game of the season and instead playing for the right to draft the top player, Bourne's logic here is that at least teams are going out there and trying to win every single game. It would eliminate the idea of purposefully making your team worse for the sake of drafting high, like what the Coyotes and Sabres did.
Honestly, I'm not sure I buy that idea working and I'm sure there are plenty of ways to exploit a system like that as well. But, the idea of having 1/3 of the league essentially checking out every year to try to get the best pick possible does make for some less exciting matchups. Perhaps there's a way to implement a deadline of sorts for teams currently outside of a playoff spot to declare that they're out and do it that way - say around the trade deadline. That would also make the trade deadline more exciting, because teams on the outside of the playoff picture would then be incentivized to be active buyers at the deadline as well in hopes of winning enough games in the final month of the season to ensure that they receive the top pick. Check out the full discussion below:
| POLL | ||
10 JANVIER | 75 ANSWERS Popular radio hosts discuss the idea of teams tanking for the 1st overall pick and propose a way to fix it Do you like Justin Bourne's proposal to help eliminate tanking for the #1 pick? | ||
| Love this idea | 21 | 28 % |
| Hate this idea | 18 | 24 % |
| It might work, it might not | 36 | 48 % |
| List of polls | ||
