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Categorized as: Author: Nels, Diatribes, Fantasy Basketball, NBA Basketball, NBA Draft, NBA Playoffs
Posted on: April 26th, 2007

or: Tanking is the New Pink

The Wage of Wins Journal explains the reasoning behind tanking (and why it doesn’t happen in other sports) – at least, not on purpose as much.

Dude quotes from an article, and while you should go read the whole post over there, here’s the quote:

Beck Taylor and Justin Trogdon [in an article published in 2002 in The Journal of Labor Economics] wondered how the incentive to lose altered the behavior of NBA teams. During the 1983–84 season, the year before the lottery was established, these authors­ found that teams eliminated from the playoffs were, relative to playoff teams, about 2.5 times more likely to lose. This result was uncovered after they controlled for team quality. In other words, non-playoff teams were found to lose more often than one would expect even bad teams to fail. When the lottery was instituted the next season, though, the increased tendency of non-playoff teams to lose vanished.

That is not the end of the story. In 1990 the NBA instituted a weighted lottery, where the odds of landing the top pick would improve the more the team lost. Once again, teams in the NBA had an incentive to lose. Once again Taylor and Trogdon report that after controlling for team quality, non-playoff teams were more likely to lose, although the size of the effect was smaller. With a weighted lottery non-playoff teams were only 2.2 times more likely to lose. Hence, as the incentives these teams faced were changed, the behavior changed as well.

To relate this to fantasy basketball (oh, is that what this blog is about?), let’s take a look at RotoPoll’s Daily Player rankings for the day of April 18, 2007 (which just happens to be the last day of the 2007 season):
1. Rajon Rondo
2. Travis Outlaw
3. Amir Johnson
4. Randy Foye
5. David West
6. Earl Boykins
7. Tarance Kinsey
8. Willie Green
9. Luke Jackson
10. Chris Bosh

Now, I haven’t done any sort of research as to whether more “superstars” (aka 1st and 2nd round fantasy picks) are usually represented in the Top 10 players. BUT when the top 9 positions are occupied who probably went undrafted in most leagues (maybe Rondo, Foye, West, and Boykins, but those would be fairly late round picks), something ain’t right.

Now, the obvious solution to tanking, as you can see from the article quoted above, is to make the draft lottery completely random once again. Then, the only reason to “rest” your starters is to make sure they don’t get hurt. From a fantasy standpoint, that does a decent job of trying to make teams play all their players at the end of the season, but it’s really more a move to make it so teams like Boston and Memphis don’t just tank right from the very start of the season.

So, here’s my second diatribical argument, by way of fellow Chicago blogger Basketbawful in this Apology to Mike D’Antoni post. The point of the post is that the Suns were playing their starters for 27-35 per game minutes at the end of the season, and they came out and beat the Lakers twice in fairly convincing fashion, while Dallas – who, if you recall was resting their starters for what some might consider a badonkulous amount of games – lost game 1 to the Warriors and were not winning convincingly game 2 (at least until Baron was thrown out). “Now,” you might say, “the Warriors just have the Mavericks number.” But, as Exhibit 2, I will point out that San Antonio, 3 of whose starters didn’t play the last 2 games of the season, lost game 1 to Denver, who only rested their starters for the last game of the season. Okay, it’s not that strong of an argument for continuing to play your guys through the end of the season (which would be optimal), but conversely, it is a strong argument for:

Limit the Max number of Games Played to 75

That solution is provided on behalf of fantasy basketball managers worldwide. Anyone know who I can contact at Yahoo to have them set that as the default for MGP? Cause I don’t see David Stern altering the lottery process, nor do I see coaches playing guys all the way to the end once playoff positions are determined. So please, if you are a fantasy league commissioner next season, do yourself and your fellow managers a favor and lower that Max Games Limit.

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  • Let me say I'm in favor of doing something about the crap that is known as the end of the NBA season and the problems it causes fantasy leagues. I'm also a fan of your max games limit of 75. But, me personally at least, I have something against using all my games before the season is over. It might be some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder, but I can't help it, I will horde my games left to use at the end of the year. So, how about, in addition to the max games limit, we push to shorten the fantasy season by a week or two? Those two weeks don't accurately represent what went on the rest of the year. Plus the season is too long anyway, by April, I usually feel like I've gotten a nadshot from Reggie Evans.
  • Well, the idea is that if the average player plays about 3.5 games/week, then 75 games means 2 less weeks. But it also gives you some flexibility... like, say, if Dwyane Wade were to get injured and be out for 6 weeks... you could still play him for 4 games at the end of the season if you had those games left to play (not that you'd really want to, but his 4 games would probably be as good as anyone you could get off the waiver wire at that point). It's only a hypothetical situation, but I'm sure you can see what I mean.
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