Many PG’s can get run off the line and step in a few steps and reliably make the shot.

I hate this shot so much. It’s the stupidest shot in basketball. LEARN TO SIDESTEP. Idiots.

My favorite part of the whole tanking discussion is that most of the teams ‘tanking’ weren’t (or at least didn’t start out) trying to lose, they just sucked at putting together a competent professional basketball team. There’s no practical difference between a team that’s tanking and one that sucks. The existence of bad teams doesn’t ruin sport.

If you think tanking is cheating then, I don’t even know. Outlaw having a long term plan? Make teams randomly select players out of a hat at the beginning of the season? Create seniority rules for who gets to play? Maybe just go watch college ball, cause the advanced machinations necessary to run a professional basketball club are never going to stop making you feel unclean.

What isn’t okay is asking players to not play hard when they are on the court. I don’t know if this has ever actually happened. But if the league finds out that coaches or front offices are asking their players to lose on purpose, I’d hope they get the full anti-tampering treatment because that is bogus and is absolutely tampering with the integrity of the league.

See, this I agree with, at least when the games are still meaningful.

I think the 82-game season is antiquated and impractical, but the owners won’t give up a dime of gate revenue until concomitantly higher TV ratings (i.e. for a smaller, more competitive season) makes up for it. I don’t see that happening to the NBA. If GMs get shadow-fired for rocking the analytics/roster management boat, there’s no way that they’re going to listen to some actuaries, even if they’ve got proof that an amended season would be a ratings hit — say, 50-game reg. season, group stages/tournament for lesser playoff seeds, a “loser’s tournament” NIT-style for the lottery teams, and then a traditional playoffs with 8 teams.

What isn’t okay is asking players to not play hard when they are on the court. I don’t know if this has ever actually happened. But if the league finds out that coaches or front offices are asking their players to lose on purpose, I’d hope they get the full anti-tampering treatment because that is bogus and is absolutely tampering with the integrity of the league.

NBA PAYOUTS: Win a championship, and the NBA hands over a juicy bonus.

The league this season will distribute $13 million in bonuses to teams that excel in the two-month postseason..

Already, the Heat have racked up more than $1.5 million in bonuses: $374,947 for the best record in the NBA, $328,078 for the best record in its conference, $194,016 for being in the first round of the playoffs, $230,853 for the conference semifinals and $381,482 for the conference finals.

The NBA also will shell out $2.3 million to the team that wins the Finals and $1.5 million to its rival. Last year, the Heat pocketed that $2.3 million — plus the coveted trophy and championship rings.

And that’s just a start.

TICKET SALES: Winning big dramatically boosts demand for game tickets.

The Heat sold about 18 percent more tickets for home games this season compared to the year before it won the 2012 title, according to ticket re-seller Stubhub.com. Average ticket prices are up, too.

Demand is so strong that the Heat are the only NBA team now offering a three-year renewal package for season-ticket holders at every price point. The package means the team brings in more predictable income and cut the team’s costs to manage sales to season ticket-holders.

TEAM VALUE: Champs see a boost in the overall value of their franchise.

Forbes magazine calculated the Heat’s team value at $625 million in January 2013, up from $427 million a year earlier. That 37 percent gain is more than the NBA average gain of 30 percent.

That’s nearly a $200 million increase in value in just one season.

Nein.

It wasn’t cheating to make him shoot 25 freethrows a game, but it shouldn’t have needed a rules change to fix. Just the common understanding that it was a lame, unwatchable tactic that was completely against the spirit of what basketball is.

And the stakes:

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/for-many-nba-assistants-the-road-to-glory-is-well-traveled/

NBA head coaching jobs are the holy grail of the profession, with the highest-paid leading men with president titles making between $7 million (Stan Van Gundy) and $10 million (Doc Rivers) annually. (Gregg Popovich, who agreed to an extension with the Spurs this summer, lives in that neighborhood, too.) Last season, the average head coaching salary in the NBA was $3.05 million, according to industry data.

But when Gates left his $100,000-a-year job as head coach of the Idaho Stampede to join the Kings, the reward for finally making it to the NBA was a 50 percent pay cut. This with a D-League championship and multiple coach-of-the-year awards on his resume.

By Gates’ estimation, it took him nine years of minor league coaching to finally make $50,000 in a single year — which was still shy of the tech salary he turned down when he graduated from Boise State.

So that rules out the coaches from following this unwritten rule.

Players?

https://gleague.nba.com/news/nba-g-league-announces-player-salaries-2018-2019-season/

The NBA G League announced today the salaries for the 2018-19 season: players under NBA G League contracts will earn a base salary of $7,000 per month – or $35,000 – for the five-month regular season.

Nope. I think we’re going to get “whatever wins games” out of those guys.

But then comes another problem: GMs, coaches and players are not paid to withhold the moral standards of the game, they are paid to win basketball games right? That’s why intentionally losing is bad, because the objective should be to always try to win.

So as a player or a coach in Hack a DeAndre case, wouldn’t you simply do it? It gives you a better chance of winning, which is what you’re there to do. Would the fans be happy if a team lost a playoff series because they refused to continuously foul the 35% ft shooter because it was dishonorable to exploit that opening?

That’s why I’m fine with arguments against tanking that question if it really works or under what circumstances it works, but not the morally charged argument of cheating or dishonor. GMs are paid to build the best basketball team they can, not to withhold moral standards (obviously as long as they keep under what’s “legal”), and if tanking is seen as the ideal strategy to exploit a league opening, why not?

Nobody will remember in a couple of years how Philadelphia disgraced the beautiful moral standards of proper roster building, they’ll remember the stars that they acquired via that strategy. Nobody will give props to the Knicks either for keeping the moral standards when they complete 20 years with the cumulative worst record of the league and end up with 3 prospects to show for it.

It’s similar to the hack-a-D’Andre strategy of a few years ago. It wasn’t illegal, but it should go without saying that absolutely nobody on earth is paying money to watch D’Andre Jordan try to shoot free throws. It wasn’t cheating to make him shoot 25 freethrows a game, but it shouldn’t have needed a rules change to fix. Just the common understanding that it was a lame, unwatchable tactic that was completely against the spirit of what basketball is.