Tanking in the NBA is totally out of control right now. Until last night, the bottom 10 teams in the NBA had combined to lose 44 consecutive games as everyone positions itself for the best odds to draft Duke's Cameron Boozer, BYU's AJ Dybantsa, and Kansas's Darryn Peterson.
That streak was snapped last night thanks to wins by the Jazz, Pelicans, and Bulls, though Utah and New Orleans beat two other teams in the bottom 10, so somebody had to win.
The NBA is preparing to make some radical changes to the draft lottery system to prevent such blatant intentional losing in the future, though, with a prospect like Boozer available this year, it's hard to blame teams for doing what it takes to try and land him and the others.
"We are going to make substantial changes for next year, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, per Mike Vorkunov. "On one hand, you can completely divorce the draft from teams' records...That would be a major shock to the system. Not to completely forecast where we're going, but I am an incrementalist."
Silver went on to reference how the WNBA handles it, taking into account the record of teams over the past two seasons when doing their lottery.
Cameron Boozer is worth tanking for, even if it irritates Adam Silver
Boozer is a generational prospect. The same could be argued for Dybantsa and Peterson. Anytime there are generational prospects available - especially when there is more than one in the same draft - teams are going to do what it takes to try and position themselves to land on to accelerate rebuilds and give their franchise a face.
Boozer is in the midst of one of the greatest individual seasons in college basketball history. In the very least, it's far and away the best of the KenPom era. Boozer is the runaway favorite to win the National Player of the Year, outperforming both Dybantsa and Peterson by a considerable margin.
For the most part, he's been seen as the 3rd best prospect behind those two, though sentiment is beginning to swing on that front as Boozer prepares to lead Duke on a run in March Madness. If the superstar freshman can lead the Blue Devils to the national championship, it will strengthen his case to be the No. 1 pick in June.