You won’t hear
this on any NBA halftime show, but professional basketball is in trouble. Consider that 17 out of 30 teams are playing
sub-.500 ball, with eight teams at 15 or fewer wins. That’s in the neighborhood of a .341 winning
percentage.
A big part of
the problem is that the game is based on five players. There’s a powerful temptation to tank because
one superstar can carry a team on his back.
(See: Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem; James, LeBron.) That the NBA has an anti-tanking draft scheme
doesn’t stop front offices from gambling that a #1 draft pick is the one thing
they can get right.
Last night, the
Minnesota Timberwolves visited the United Center to play the Bulls, who won
117-110, giving the T-Wolves a 15-29 record on the season. In the previous fourteen seasons ending in
2018-19, the T-Wolves have averaged 28.5 wins a season, “good” for a .348
winning percentage. They were supposed
to have tuned the corner a few years ago with Tom Thibodeau at the helm after
his firing by the Bulls, but, surprise, it didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen
even with young stars Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, with or without
Jimmy Butler, I might add. Oh, Wiggins
scored 25 and Towns put in 40 last night, only success isn’t measured by points-per-game
alone.
I definitely wouldn’t
want to be a T-Wolves fan. With the Bulls
all of two games better, I don’t much want to be a fan of them, either.
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