I wish we'd stop with all the hand-waving about "tanking." It's a concept used by fans to simply berate other teams for prudent management.
Managing with 3 years in the future in mind versus the next game is a fundamental component of a cyclical business like pro-sports with fast deteriorating and difficult to acquire assets in a zero-sum environment. And it always has been.
It's a fan fetish to label what some team is doing as "tanking." In reality no team tells its players to purposefully lose nor could they. Saying a team has tanked is a way to process and judge other teams in a consequence-free paradigm.
And every North American pro-sports league understands the cyclical nature of the business and makes concessions to the worst teams to become better thus creating an environment where teams "tank." The funny thing is that there's absolutely ZERO will to change this model because all of the owners understand that any alternate system would be worse.
|