Astros, who lost an average of 108 games between '11-13, just won the World Series this past yearGetty Images
The NBA is "not alone" in their issues with teams tanking, as the NHL and MLB -- and to a lesser extent the NFL -- also are "dealing with controversies involving the practice," according to Dave Sheinin of the WASHINGTON POST. The "steady rise of tanking as a franchise-building model has called into question the binary nature and ethical foundation of sports" and has "presented fans with a difficult choice between supporting their favorite team's long-term mission in hopes of a big future payoff or getting fed up with the short-term misery and bailing out." One or two teams tanking each season "might be an unobtrusive, acceptable reality, but with analytics now fueling its spread, leagues are seeing scenarios in which one-third or more of their teams are writing off entire seasons at the same time." MLB agent Scott Boras said, "[A] team can say, 'We don't particularly want to win for a three- or four-year period, because we can go get draft picks.' That is not a reason to come to the ballpark. ... We (should) never want to reward non-competitiveness. It's a cancer. It damages the brand of baseball." Sheinin noted in the NBA and NHL, which have "hard salary caps and floors that force teams to spend a defined minimum on payroll, tanking is little more than a case of bad optics." But in MLB, which has "no payroll floor, the spread of tanking as a business model -- and the bare-bones payrolls that some teams field as a result -- has helped fuel a growing labor crisis." In the case of the Astros, who lost an average of 108 games between '11-13 but just won the World Series this past year, the "cost of tanking can be severe in terms of eroding your fan base, but the payoff can be euphoric" (WASHINGTON POST, 3/3).
