Here a Tank, There a Tank, Everywhere a Tank Job

 And now the middle-aged crab will hold forth on the epidemic of tanking that seems to be sweeping over professional sports.  Exhibit A, Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban, who was fined $600,000 by the NBA this week after he admitted that losing games is the best way for his team to get better.

A moment here to appreciate the irony of that statement (and to gloat over the inability of agent Scott Boras to get his baseball clients the fat deals they were expecting).  Remember when Cuban was the cutting edge in sports’ ownership, someone willing to venture outside the box in the quest for championships?  He was the thinking man’s Ted Turner.  Well, those days are long gone.  Since winning the NBA title in 2011, the Mavs have lost in the first round of the playoffs four times and not qualified twice; this year’s 19-44 mark should make that three failures to qualify for the postseason.  But at least Cuban still has money to burn as he pleases.

Yes, the Mavs are tanking and so are the Bulls, and the Hawks and the Kings and the Suns….It’s the same in baseball, with as many as fifteen teams in rebuild—or do you say tank?—mode.  Part of the reason is that it’s easy in both sports.  Owners have steady revenue streams that allow them to gamble their teardown will work.  Nothing will change unless those revenue streams are threatened.

A strike is one way to do that, but dangerous.  A number of paying fans will walk away for good, and advertisers won’t be so ready to spend if they sense the sport is damaged.  But, hey, let everybody strike.  And while both sides are yelling at each other across negotiating tables, maybe the federal government could get involved.

How about a law that prohibits public bodies from owning or building professional sports’ venues?  And a law that institutes a nice, big capital-gains’ tax on the sale of sports’ teams or requires paying off the cost of that publicly owned stadium from the proceeds?  And a graduated income tax to take more from players and owners than it does from regular folks?  Just asking.

In the meantime, consider that there’s no law that mandates teams have to win.  As God is my witness, I picked the year 1985 out of the blue to check.  In the NBA, 11 of the 23 teams finished under .500, and four of those losers qualified for the playoffs; talk about an exciting postseason.  Over in baseball, things were marginally better, with 11 out of 26 teams under the .500 mark.  At least the 57-104 Pirates didn’t qualify for the postseason.

Maybe the good folks at SABER could do a spread sheet on the last 50-75 seasons to see what the average number of sub-.500 baseball teams was in a season, before and after the advent of free agency.  I have a sneaking suspicion that both agents and sportswriters have forgotten just how much losing goes on in sports.  As for owners, they just want to keep it a secret, as ever.