The 2017 NBA draft class is great, so why aren’t more teams tanking?

As the calendar flips to December it’s not too early to think about the inevitability of tanking. Who should do it, who should wait, and who shouldn’t ever consider it. Flanns and Zillz discuss.

ZILLER: The end of November is here. As I wrote Monday, recent history suggests nine teams have pretty much already been knocked out of playoff contention. Yet, none of them are straight-up tanking. The Sixers are still slowly pivoting from a full-on institutional tank job to trying to be competitive, and the Suns are not expecting to be anything like good. So those two teams are quasi-tanking. They are, at least, not mad about losing.

Everyone else is trying to win. The Mavericks, all of 3-13, proudly announced that they won’t tank. Yet, this is expected to be one of the best NBA drafts in years, with Markelle Fultz, Jayson Tatum, Lonzo Ball, Josh Jackson, Harry Giles, OG Anunoby, Ivan Rabb ... the list goes on! By March, there’s a real chance two or three of these prospects stick out as franchise players.

But none of these doomed NBA squads seem all that interested in setting themselves up for it. Should they be? Do we need more tanking this year, for these teams’ own sake?

FLANNERY: I always judge the tank on actions and not by words. So, when teams say they’re not in the tank and then run out a bunch of undrafted free agents while injuries to star players linger, that’s when you know it’s on.

I empathize with the Mavs’ position. It’s tough to tell your fans that all hope is lost in November, and it’s especially tough when you’ve got a Hall of Famer still on your roster. It’s real easy for us to sit up here and tell teams that they need to go out there and lose a bunch of games. We’re not the ones on the hook for ticket sales and advertisers.

But yeah, of course they should tank. And so should the Kings. Again. And the Heat. And the Magic. These are mediocre teams, at best, without high upsides even in the most optimistic projections. There’s a difference, though, in a team like Miami that’s playing its young guys and trying to build a core while taking on losses, and, say, the Magic, who are trying to jump-start a stalled process.

ZILLER: I’m going to disagree on one team you mentioned: the Kings. The West is a bit shallow again, and Sacramento is in the mix for a playoff spot. It’s not likely or anything, but so long as they are in the mix, they have to pull out almost all the stops to grab it. If you don’t, you need to trade Boogie Cousins and all those veterans you signed over the past two offseasons.

The Magic have bounced between average and bad, and they’re currently on a downswing. Now Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic are coming off the bench and Mario Hezonja is buried. I get that Frank Vogel is experimenting to find a winning rotation, but this roster is so unbalanced and the best prospects aren’t being put in great positions. I mean, is it worth to be a No. 8 seed with Serge Ibaka and Jeff Green leading the way? Maybe it is. This all just seems awfully backwards.

The thing about the Mavericks is that this is not at all how Dirk should go out. That team has been so solid his entire career. To have a busted season now is painful. Maybe he ought to have joined Kobe, KG, and Big Fundamental last summer.

FLANNERY: Fair enough. Let’s put the Kings in the “maybe” file. I’ll drop the Nuggets in there, as well, as they are in basically the same place as a franchise, give or take some dysfunctional elements. The Wizards have to go in there, too, much as I am down on them at the moment.

I’m not worried about Philly, Phoenix, or Minnesota. They’re young, they’re rebuilding. If they make strides, great. If not, take another high pick. The Nets are the Nets and we should talk about them in a minute.

The Magic are the single-most mystifying team in this entire exercise. They make little sense on paper or on the court. They need more talent. Full stop. The best avenue for attracting talent for them has always been the draft. So, yeah, I think they should tank and they might even be able to get some good value for Ibaka in a trade even if it would be a really quick about-face. God they’re weird.

As for Dirk, nobody should ever go out the way they do, but it happens all the time. In some ways, maybe it’s easier if the reckoning is this painful.

ZILLER: The Wizards need to surge ASAP if they want to stay in this. We saw what happened last year when they waited too long to get it together. Scott Brooks gets leeway as he learns his roster, and injuries continue to play too big a role. But I just can’t fathom why this team is so much worse than the playoff team from a couple years back. The other piece is that it’s unlikely the Wizards can conceivably be bad enough to get a top-five pick.

I wonder if the Pelicans are in that position, too. It looks like their highest Brow-era pick will be Buddy Hield. That’s not optimal. I’m assuming they’ll end up around the No. 10 pick at this point; it’s hard to get an instant franchise player that low, and New Orleans doesn’t have all the time in the world. But with Jrue Holiday back and Anthony Davis putting up historic numbers, they aren’t going to be bad enough to get a Fultz or Jackson. Why couldn’t last year’s draft class be this good?

FLANNERY: There’s a crucial element in team building called planning that often seems to elude those franchises that are stuck in the mud.

We should stipulate at this point that neither of us have any idea how good this draft is going to be because the college season is barely underway. It sure looks nice, what with all those freshmen stacked up together in the lottery. My hunch is that this draft will look pretty good by March and will be much better than last year’s, which was one of the most underwhelming in recent memory. New Orleans and Washington both need some direction, and soon.

I was waiting for you to bring up the Nets’ situation, so fine, I’ll do it here. Jeremy Lin’s been out for weeks with a hamstring injury. They’re the only team tanking correctly and they’re not actually tanking! It will be interesting to see which direction they go at the trade deadline. They have a handful of solid players along with Brook Lopez. They have no reason to tank thanks to the pick swap with the Celtics, but they might be able to pick up some nice consolation draft prizes from contenders looking to make a move.

There are a couple of other picks in play this year. There’s the Lakers pick to Philly (top-three protected), a Memphis one to Denver (top-five protected), and the infamous Sacramento choice to Chicago (top-10 protected) that Philly actually controls because Sam Hinkie will have revenge on us all.

ZILLER: Ah yes, the other reason Sacramento shouldn’t tank: Philadelphia has the option to swap picks with them this year. It’s actually impossible for the Kings to get the No. 1 pick because of that, and it hurts their chances at a top-three pick overall. The Bulls get the Kings’ pick if it falls outside the top 10, so it’s better for the Kings to be a bottom-10 team than to just miss the playoffs in terms of team-building. The Kings also still owe a future first (unprotected in 2019 at worst) to Philly for the honor of being able to sign Rajon Rondo, Kosta Koufos, and Marco Belinelli. Talk about a team with no damn plan.

The Nets should really feel free to tank out if only to get assets for the players who aren’t integral to culture change and won’t be on the next very good Brooklyn team. That means Brook Lopez, basically. The market on him is weird, but presuming it exists, it should be explored. The need to rebuild supersedes the desire to not give Boston another great pick. That hole has already been dug. Time to crawl out the only way you can: slowly, through smart draft picks, trades, and signings.

Am I tempting fate by wondering if the Lakers end up in this conversation within a couple weeks? They’d have to go on a truly epic slide to be bad enough to keep their draft pick at this rate (top-three protected to Philly) but I think the question is whether they should continue to build slowly around this core or flip one or two of the young dudes for a star. Rolling ahead with a team that’s .500 through November isn’t at all tanking — this is seriously a potential playoff team — but it’s the same type of conversation the rebuilding squads are having. Leverage assets and playing time to win more now, or stay focused on sustainability?

FLANNERY: For once, the Lakers are in good spot and don’t have to rush into anything. Take some time. See what they have. They’re not making the playoffs with that defense, but that’s not really the point of this season anyway. They’re developing a core and sorting through roles. Because they’re the Lakers, there remains the possibility that a solid free agent or two will look their way. Maybe not a supernova player, but a good one who could get them right back on solid footing more quickly than these other teams we’re discussing. Play out the season, pay off your debt, and move forward without that hanging over your head.

The other issue with tanking is Philly, Phoenix, and Brooklyn are all bad teams. It’s going to be hard to outflank those outfits.

ZILLER: Indeed. That’s an understated benefit of Philly tanking so hard in recent years: they are so bad it disincentives other clubs from tanking because they’ll struggle to be as bad as the Sixers. The Mavericks are in the mix, at least.

FLANNERY: They should be. We agree on that.