The NBA’s Board of Governors passed new rules on Thursday that are aimed at stopping teams from tanking and players from resting in regular season games when healthy.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the news that the draft lottery reform plan drafted by the league’s competition committee weeks ago would indeed be going into effect in 2019. Along with lottery reform aimed at teams tanking, the league also made a rule that gives the commissioner the ability to fine teams that rest healthy players in the regular season, especially on the road or in nationally broadcast games.
There are those that support the anti-tanking legislation and others that point to it being extremely punitive to small market teams, but it’s not the law of the land for now. When it came to tanking, no franchise did so more overtly or for longer than the Sixers under Sam Hinkie. Philadelphia earned the third overall pick three times in the last four years and a first overall pick (they traded their third plus more to the Celtics for No. 1 this year), as they went through what has become affectionately known as “The Process.”
Hinkie is no longer in Philadelphia, but his fingerprints are all over the organization. Hinkie’s former boss, Daryl Morey, is still the Rockets general manager and on Thursday, after news of the new rules dropped, made sure to let his old friend Sam know that the NBA had finally solved the problem Hinkie “started.”
@samhinkie tanking is solved
— Daryl Morey 🗽🏀 (@dmorey) September 28, 2017
It’s a very funny tweet and delivers a strong message in a succinct format. While the league may be pleased with the new rules, it is far more divisive among teams and front office personnel as to whether it will succeed in its goal, or be detrimental and create more competitive imbalance.
We won’t know that for a few years, considering it won’t take effect until 2019, so for now Morey is going to get these jokes off.
