Parity a priority for NBA
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Milwaukee Bucks have the best record with less than two months left in the regular season, the Denver Nuggets had their coaching staff at the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday night and the Sacramento Kings are in position to end the league’s longest active playoff drought.
When it comes to competitive balance, NBA commissioner Adam Silver likes what he’s seeing on those fronts.
But during his annual All-Star address on Saturday night, Silver acknowledged there are still ways for the league to have even more parity.
“You can point to teams like Milwaukee, teams like Oklahoma City, what’s happening in Denver now and Sacramento as signs that the system is working better than it has historically,” Silver said. “I’d say we still have work to do, though. … We can still come up with a better system to create more competition.”
While the Western Conference’s Golden State Warriors are still widely believed to be the favorite to win what would be their fourth NBA title in five years, the Bucks have been a success story all season in the Eastern Conference. Denver was leading the West two weeks ago, which was why Michael Malone and his staff were coaching in Sunday night’s exhibition. And the Kings haven’t been to the playoffs since 2006 — and weren’t picked by many to make it to the postseason this year — but they were three games above .500 and one spot shy of a potential bid at the break.
Those are the examples Silver likes of a balanced system.
“I look at the NFL, which among sports leagues probably has the best parity and the best system in terms of creating competition than any league I’m familiar with,” Silver said. “Yet the New England Patriots have been in the Super Bowl nine out of the last 18 years. And I don’t think anyone points to that as a sign that the system isn’t necessarily working. What people recognize is you want parity of opportunity.”
In some NBA locales, though, that opportunity is already gone this year.
There are four teams — the Chicago Bulls, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the New York Knicks and the Phoenix Suns — on pace to win less than 25 percent of their games this season. The last time the league had so many teams fail to win more than 20 games in the same full season was 1997-98, when six teams went 20-62 or worse. The NBA has tried to combat tanking by changing the odds of winning the draft lottery in an effort to discourage teams from truly trying to lose.
Silver remains unsure if that’s enough to solve the problem entirely.
“We’ve seen this in other sports as well,” Silver said. “There’s a mindset that, if you’re going to be bad, you might as well be really bad. I believe, personally, that’s corrosive for those organizations, putting aside my personal view of the impact it has on the league overall. But, again, we’ll see how this pays out.”