Um, so, it turns out the Los Angeles Lakers aren’t tanking.
That should probably make you feel good, except for the fact that they’re 11-48 and have the worst record in the NBA. It would make more sense, be more flattering, if they were tanking.
Alas, head coach Byron Scott says they’re not, and that they don’t plan on starting anytime soon. From the Los Angeles Times‘ Mike Bresnahan:
“You don’t go out there trying to lose basketball games,” he said Wednesday. “I think that’s a bad way to present that to your team, ‘We’re trying to lose so we can protect the top-three pick.’ That’s a bad omen to me.
“It sets a bad precedent to me, especially this organization and the people that’s been in this organization for a long time and understand what this organization is all about, we’ve never been like that and never will be. So I would never, even behind closed doors, tell my players, tell my coaches, tell my trainers or anybody that we were trying to lose games on purpose to protect the pick.”
A lot of what Scott is saying makes sense. And while his comments might turn some fans off, they really, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter.
The Lakers’ 2016 first-round pick is owed to the Philadelphia 76ers if it falls outside the top three. If the Lakers have been trying to win all this time, they still have the league’s second-worst record. Tanking, at best, can only give them the absolute worst record. It gives them a better chance of keeping their pick, but they have a good enough shot as it is. Plus, there’s no guarantee they lose enough to drop below the Sixers anyway, and even if they do, that pick still isn’t 100 percent protected.
Yes, we’re talking about a crazy valuable pick here. So it would be ignorant to say the reward isn’t worth the price when the Lakers aren’t playing for anything to begin with. The point is that the Lakers are losing enough on their own, so no matter what Scott says or does, he can’t really put the team’s draft selection in any more jeopardy than it already is.
