It’s basketball season. A time for some of sports’ greatest traditions – the Cameron Crazies at Duke, St. John’s ever-flapping hawk mascot, Kansas’ “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk” and Taylor University’s annual “Silent Night” game at Christmas, for example. This season, however, I’m concerned with one grand tradition that exists outside of the pageantry of college roundball and in the corporate world of professional basketball: tanking.
Tanking, in its simplest definition, is intentional terribleness. Tanking is not a conspiracy by the players on a team to throw games, though many sports personalities define it as such. That’s why so many people hate tanking as a concept.
As noted Greatest Basketball Player of All Time and possible Worst Basketball Owner of All Time Michael Jordan put it, “Tanking is no way to build a winning team.” Which means the Charlotte Bobcats have been the worst team in NBA history entirely by accident for the past several years, but I digress. Players would have no interest in that strategy. For one, if a player has made it to the NBA, he’s got a competitive drive that would reject that idea. Besides that, a good player on a bad team is always a potential trade asset, so they treat their season as an audition for the league. Every play is a push for a promotion.
Tanking is an organizational decision to rebuild by selling present assets to invest in the future. This season, no team and general manager exemplifies this strategy quite like the Boston Celtics.
Over the past two seasons, the Celtics lost the best distance shooter of all time in Ray Allen, one of the 20 best players of all time in Kevin Garnett, the third greatest Celtic of all time in Paul Pierce and a Hall of Fame coach in Doc Rivers ,and also Jason Terry, for an astounding eight extra draft picks over the next five years. This season, they’ve got a core made up almost entirely of bench players. With Rajon Rondo currently playing as many NBA minutes as I am, their best scorer is Jeff Green, an athletic forward two years removed from open heart surgery. In crunch time against the Milwaukee Bucks, their go-to scorer? Former Alabama player Gerald Wallace. The Boston Celtics are, in a word, horrible.
The hardest part of this tanking season, though? Rooting against your favorite team. Ever tried that? It’s not easy. But I’m doing it, and doing it without shame. Have you seen Andrew Wiggins? He’s amazing. I’m all-in. (All-out? Folded? I don’t know how the poker metaphor works here).
While Alabama was busy breaking LSU’s spirit on the gridiron, the Celtics were playing the reigning NBA champion Miami Heat in South Beach, Fla. I, like any good American, detest the Miami Heat and their nefarious championship-winning ways. I don’t trust Pat Riley or his hair, Ray Allen is a traitor, and Shane Battier’s face makes me angry. And yet, when Jeff Green hit a buzzer-beater three to lift Boston to a 111-110 victory, I was conflicted.
Beating Miami always feels good, sure, but those were three wins. You’re almost at .500. That’s no way to win a championship at some later date, Boston. You’ve got to be better at being bad if this is going to work. And you need this tank to work, for once.
