The NBA, ostensibly a pro league organized around basketball competition, spent its All-Star weekend in the spotlight ostensibly admitting that it needs more rules and gimmicks to get its teams and players to compete.
In a session with media members, which followed recent fines for Utah and Indiana for giving less than max effort in the pursuit of victory, league commissioner Adam Silver took a firm stance on the practice of tanking — the way teams circumvent competitive rules to pile up losses in hopes of landing better draft picks.
“(What) we’re doing, what we’re seeing right now, is not working. There’s no question about it,” Silver said. “Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory? Yes is my view.”
Patrick Reusse shared on Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast a theory about how to solve the problem: Give all 30 NBA teams an equal shot at the first 10 picks in the draft, regardless of their record.
Here are a few more NBA thoughts at the start of today’s 10 things to know:
- Silver made those comments before the NBA’s gimmicky new All-Star game format. Players were divided into three teams (young stars, old stars and world stars) and played four round-robin 12-minute games. It didn’t really make sense, but it seemed to at least make the action somewhat more competitive and somewhat less of a farce than it has become in recent years.
- Wolves star Anthony Edwards took home MVP honors as the NBA world continued to watch his star shine brighter.
- Among the highlights of his postgame news conference: Ant revealed that he hung out Saturday with former president Barack Obama, whom Edwards called “my favorite person in the world. ... I told him I was going to put on a show for him.”
- The irony is that of all the players in the league, Ant is probably at or near the top of the list of those who don’t need much additional incentive to compete. But having other players more engaged and having a luminary like Obama in attendance certainly didn’t hurt.
- The Wolves, if you’ll recall, drafted Edwards No. 1 overall in 2020 after entering the lottery with the best odds. It was a strange draft after the previous season was shortened because of COVID. The Wolves didn’t exactly tank their way to the top pick, but they did lose 23 of their final 27 games in 2019-20 before the season was shut down in March.
- The Gophers women’s basketball team continues to make a charge. Minnesota won its eighth consecutive game Sunday with a rout of Wisconsin. On Monday, the Gophers cracked the AP Top 25 at No. 23.
- Chip Scoggins will be my guest on Tuesday’s podcast, and Dawn Plitzuweit’s squad will be a main topic of conversation.
- My favorite story from the weekend? The curling controversy involving Sweden and Canada.
- Byron Buxton doesn’t exactly sound like a happy camper. His mood, performance and ultimate place on the Twins bears watching.
- Twins owner Tom Pohlad said Monday the team pursued star pitcher Framber Valdez before he signed with the Tigers. I’d be curious to know just how serious they were about that.
