The NBA sent the Bulls a message recently that they couldn’t so brazenly be tanking by making Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday, two of their better veterans, inactive for the rest of the season.
The league reportedly warned Chicago that if they didn’t start playing Lopez and Holiday they would face the consequences, so on Friday night the two were back in the starting lineup. However, what the Bulls did against the Pistons on Friday was arguably just as obvious an effort to tank as simply having those two listed as inactive and not playing them.
Lopez and Holiday played all 12 minutes of the first quarter, in which Chicago took a 26-21 lead over Detroit. They combined for 15 points and four rebounds in the opening period and then never saw the court again. The result for Chicago was a 99-83 loss, dropping them to 22-43 on the season.
There are no guarantees the Bulls would have held on to win had Lopez and Holiday played a normal amount against the Pistons. Those two played a lot early in the season and Chicago was terrible then too, so it stands to reason they would’ve lost anyways, but it might not have been as lopsided a loss and, most importantly to the NBA, it wouldn’t have been so obvious that they were tanking.
That seems to be the NBA’s biggest issue. Tanking is viewed as unsportsmanlike. It goes against the entire idea of sport, which is to compete in an effort to win. The argument for tanking is that, in the long haul, it is in an effort to win and do so on a high level. The NBA wants there to at least be a facade of effort to win, and for teams to not be so obvious in their quest for ping-pong balls. Its why new lottery rules will go into effect next season, why many believe Sam Hinkie was pushed out of Philadelphia and why the Bulls were issued a warning in the first place.
As we look ahead towards a world in which sports betting is legalized, it will only turn up the pressure on the NBA (which is hoping to be in partnership with legal books to pull in one percent of ticket revenue on their games) to ensure teams are competing to win on a nightly basis. The question is, what can the NBA do about what the Bulls did on Friday night.
Chicago complied with the league’s request to play its players that are healthy and they simply fell out of the rotation for the final three quarters on a coach’s decision. Whether that decision was obviously part of a larger plan or not, if the NBA were to punish the Bulls it would set a precedent that the league can and will try to dictate in-game coaching decisions, which would almost assuredly lead to push back from teams and also could be a slippery slope to go down.
What’s most likely is the league has to sit on its hands and watch the Bulls continue to do this because they in a way asked for it by insisting Holiday and Lopez play. When they’re on the bench in street clothes, their absence from action is honestly less obvious than when the two play briefly and then sit for the final three quarters.
The NBA can only dictate so much when it comes to playing healthy players and the Bulls are going to take that to an extreme and highlight how easy it is to circumvent the rules. I’d expect the NBA to think twice about requesting any other tanking teams to play guys that are in and out of the inactive section, because the alternative looks even worse.
