00:00Dan Wickey with Athletic, welcome to Los Angeles.
00:02As you know, what median fans call tanking has been a part of this league's culture here for some time,
00:07and you've been asked about it a lot.
00:08This week the Jazz were fined half a million dollars, Indiana was fined $100,000.
00:13Kind of a few related questions to that.
00:15Why now the fines for those teams specifically?
00:19And do you feel like tanking is worse this season than it has been in the past?
00:23And what are some of the solutions the league is discussing to ensure that when fans go to a game
00:29or are they watching him on TV that both teams are competing to win that night?
00:34So, Dan, I'll maybe answer it out of order a bit with several questions.
00:39You're right, I'll just use the colloquial tanking term.
00:43You know, yes, it's been part of this league for a long time.
00:46I mean, back in the 1960s there was a coin flip.
00:49You know, at some point, I think it was in the 1980s, we moved to a lottery.
00:53That lottery has been changed roughly five times over the years to try ahead.
00:58To stay ahead of some of the behavior of our teams.
01:01The incentives are not necessarily matched here.
01:05The tradition in sports where the worst performing team receives the first pick from their partners.
01:14When any economist comes and looks at our system, they always point out you have the incentives backwards there.
01:19That doesn't necessarily make sense.
01:21I think there was a more classical view of that in the old days where it was just sort of
01:28an understanding among partners about in terms of behavior.
01:31I think what we're seeing is modern analytics where it's so clear that the incentives are misaligned.
01:38I think when you, maybe to further answer your question, are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than
01:45we've seen in recent memory?
01:47Yes, is my view.
01:48And which is what led to those fines.
01:51And not just those fines, but to my statement that we're going to be looking more closely at the totality
01:57of all the circumstances this season in terms of teams behavior.
02:01And very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice.
02:05And there is a bit of a note when you see equality to this.
02:08I mean, we spend a lot of time at the league office going back and forth with teams on injury
02:12reports, on coaches decisions.
02:15It's not a position necessarily want to be in.
02:18But I'd say also to address your question, it's not what the fans want at the end of the day.
02:23Although my caveat is, and this is where teams are in a difficult place, many of you in this room
02:28have written understandably about our teams that the worst place to be, for example, is to be a middle of
02:34the road team.
02:35Either be great or be bad because then that will help you with the draft.
02:39And so in many cases you have fans of those teams.
02:44Maybe it's not what they want to pay for to see poor performance on the floor, but they're actually rooting
02:48for their teams in some cases to be bad to improve their draft chances.
02:52So I think we're coming at it in, I'd say, in two ways.
02:56One is, again, focusing on the here and now, the behavior we're seeing from our teams and doing whatever we
03:04can to remind them of what their obligation is to the fans and to their partner teams.
03:10But number two, as I also said in that statement, the competition committee started earlier this year reexamining the whole
03:18approach to how the draft lottery works.
03:21And ultimately any changes will require a vote of the Board of Governors.
03:26So then we'll need to go in front of the board.
03:28But there have been lots of different ideas out there over the years, not just necessarily changing the draft lottery
03:34odds once again, but looking at whether there's a better system here to try to align incentives.
03:42I think when the point about this year, when you look at totality of the circumstances, I mean, of course,
03:48I'm paying attention to what's happening and the perception is you have a very deep draft class this year.
03:54A perception, who knows, who knows whether this will be the reality that the next two years draft classes aren't
03:59as good.
04:00There's no doubt that's affecting the behavior of our teams.
04:03But at the end of the day, I think there needs to I think all the teams need to step
04:10back the ownership of those teams.
04:13And just as a reminder that we're all in this together, that we want to have fair competition.
04:17We want to have fair systems and to keep an eye on the fans, most importantly, and their expectation that
04:24we're going to be putting the best product forward.
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