Warriors' Steph Curry has positive retort to question about NBA tanking problem originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Steph Curry believes the NBA is in a great spot competition-wise, despite ongoing league-wide frustration over teams tanking.
The Warriors superstar was asked Saturday at NBA All-Star Media Day what he believes the league should do to combat tanking and offered a positive retort to the question.
“Is it really that big of a problem? I’m asking,” Curry said. “We feel like there’s obviously a lot of competition. It’s something I’m sure every year the NBA wants to address: why the Play-in Tournament exists. Things evolve, problems arise, and everybody wants to shine a spotlight on all the negatives of the league. But let’s focus on the positives of how great the competition is at the top. There still is relevancy regular season-wise of the seeding and playoff chase.
“I know there’s a conversation around how many games we’re playing. That’s probably where I would focus more the attention. Let’s not forget the league is in great place overall in terms of the attention, the skill level, the global reach, all of that stuff. Every year you’ll address the issues. I don’t have those answers though.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, whose league office just fined two teams, the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers, $500,000 and $100,000, respectively, for “overt” tanking behaivor, also spoke to reporters on Saturday and discussed the ongoing tanking efforts and what he believes is part of the problem.
“We got to look at some fresh thinking here,” Silver said. “We’re doing, what we’re seeing right now, is not working. There’s no question about it.”
“I think part of the problem is that if you step back, the fundamental theory behind the draft is to help your worst-performing teams restock and be able to compete. The issue is if teams are manipulating their performance in order to get higher draft picks, even in a lottery, then the question becomes, even if teams were rewarded for draft picks purely according to predicted odds of the lottery, are they really the worst performing teams?”
Neither players, like Curry, nor leaders in the league office, like Silver, seem to have a clear solution to how the NBA can combat tanking, and it does not appear a resoultion is imminent.
For now, the majority of teams, like Curry and the Warriors, will do everything in their power to win as many games as they can down the stretch in order to punch their ticket to the playoffs.