This past Sunday gave fans a raw look at the NBA’s most persistent issue—or at least that’s what we’re told.
It’s a league where players accuse referees of hidden agendas, while coaches call them unprofessional. Games are buried on obscure streaming platforms between reruns of old TV shows. The front office insists on an 82-game season, says it’s fine to play only 65, and then complains when 40-year-old stars rest after logging 40 minutes. Fans are so confused by postgame analysis that they can’t decide whether to celebrate Stephen Curry’s flawless three-point shooting or to push for rule changes that make it harder. Victor Wembanyama’s incredible shot-blocking leaves people wondering if it should be outlawed.
A team like the Golden State Warriors executes a long-term plan perfectly, only to have the league dig up fine print in the collective bargaining agreement and slap them with hundreds of millions in penalties—for simply delivering great basketball across the country. Billionaires get scared by the mere threat of million-dollar fines and back down (see the Boston Celtics), or else they shrug off those threats because they just won the lottery—or in this case, finished fifth, which felt like a victory (see the Los Angeles Clippers).
The league can barely wait for a New York team to become genuinely good so it can declare its own rules unconstitutional. There are “No Kings” marches in a city where the conversation is about the basketball team. And bad teams get excited about lottery luck even though everyone knows it means very little in a year when Wembanyama and Cooper Flagg aren’t available.
Whew.
Sunday’s draft lottery worked exactly as intended: bad teams won (Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies, Chicago Bulls), while good teams saw their dreams shattered (Atlanta Hawks, Dallas Mavericks, Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, Charlotte Hornets). Wembanyama got so upset with officiating that he got himself ejected, and yet the hot topic on Fifth Avenue this week will undoubtedly be how to “fix” the lottery.
Fix what? Clearly, the NBA would have preferred to see the Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, and Miami Heat go 1-2-3-4 in Sunday’s drawing, rather than the Warriors (evil billionaires), the Clippers (they cheat), the Thunder (already too good), and a bunch of losers. Why? Because within 30 games of next season, it will become clear that AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer, and Caleb Wilson aren’t saviors. Remember that quartet from the NCAA’s Final Four in March? Oh wait, those guys were so ineffective against college amateurs that their teams won a combined four games in March Madness. Kind of like your brackets.
Assuming those are the top four picks in the NBA draft, you’re looking at five more wins for the Wizards, Jazz, Grizzlies, and Hornets, and an obvious conclusion: we need to tank one more time to get our new star a sidekick. That thought must scare Adam Silver and the state-of-the-game apologists. They’re already talking about flipping the ping-pong odds more in favor of the big-market teams next year. They would have preferred the Pacers get the first pick this summer and immediately become a threat to the Celtics and Knicks. The Bucks would get a reason to keep Giannis Antetokounmpo around. The Hawks could add someone who speaks Jonathan Kuminga’s language. And the Heat would return to prominence, because everyone likes Erik Spoelstra.
That didn’t happen. Maybe next year—even if the NBA has to invent a process that no one can understand anymore.
