I get what you're saying. It makes strategic sense, from management's perspective, to dissemble in public statements. However, from the fans' perspective (particularly run-of-the-mill fans and not tanking savants like those here), they can legitimately see this as a bait and switch, enticing them to invest money, time, and emotion into what they think will be a legit attempt to field a competitive product only to be served up yet another season of deliberate, strategic losing. I don't blame them one bit if they get pissed. In fact, I wish more would, showing their displeasure via smaller crowds, lower ratings, and hearty boos during God-awful performances like Charlotte.
This goes to one of my many beefs against tanking – looking at it from the fans’ perspective, not ownership/FO perspective – it exploits the unique dynamics of sports fandom. When owners and front offices intentionally deliver an uncompetitive product while maintaining prices, they leverage the captive nature of their audience. Unlike other entertainment industries, fans develop deep emotional and generational attachments that prevent easy switching to competitors. NBA teams benefit from legal monopolies, public stadium financing, and extraordinary fan loyalty, yet face minimal accountability for deliberately providing inferior entertainment. This arguably creates a fundamental betrayal of the implied contract between teams and fans: organizations make good-faith efforts to compete and provide value-for-investment (financial and emotional) in exchange for loyal support.
The longer the intentional losing continues, the more it resembles a systematic breach of basic consumer trust. Fans continue paying premium prices while receiving a product that ownership has deliberately made inferior, essentially subsidizing a multi-year experiment with a highly uncertain return.
This goes to another of my annoyances about tanking: the almost complete lack of critical discourse around it, including its effectiveness, ethics, and associated reasoning fallacies. I really wish the NBA media landscape were open to a more robust discussion of these issues, or any discussion, for that matter. The collective and uncritical groupthink around tanking drives me crazy.
With that said, I would like to keep our pick next year, so three cheers for the tank, I suppose, though the cheers are offered through gritted teeth and with a healthy dose of self-loathing.
