So it turns out certain NBA owners are pretty invested in tanking.
During a recent, pre-playoff episode of The Woj Pod, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski relayed an uber-interesting anecdote about the owner of a team laying into his head coach for failing to lose enough games down the stretch of the season. Here’s what Woj said (h/t Bleacher Report’s Mike Chiari):
“I never heard more talk from front office executives—frustration with coaches who were winning games they didn’t want them to win. And owners—I know of an instance with an owner berating, really berating his coach here, in the last several weeks of the season for going in and beating a pretty good team on the road, going ‘What are you doing?'”
You have our sympathies, J.B. Bickerstaff.
Okay, okay, we’re kidding. We don’t know who the coach or owner is. And it probably isn’t even the Memphis Grizzlies. Owner Robert Pera has been lampooned in the past for not being around his team. And the Grizzlies still finished with top-two lottery odds. Unless he was obsessed with dethroning rhw Phoenix Suns for the No. 1 slot, it wouldn’t make sense to get so heated over a late-season victory or two.
The point here is this: Don’t ever let owners and coaches and players lead you to believe they’re not aware of what’s going on when it comes to tanking. They know. The players on the floor might not be actively trying to lose, but the owners, coaches and front office execs specifically sometimes have a stake in padding the taboo side of the team-record column. Perhaps this changes when the NBA reformats the draft lottery next season, but probably not. So long as the league rewards teams for losing, there will always be those who try to capitalize on the system.
