Built to Lose

March 15, 2021
An investigation of the NBA's so-called "tanking era," in which teams engineered losing seasons for future gain. In his first book, sports journalist Fischer, who has written for Sports Illustrated, SLAM, and other outlets, takes us back to the 2013-2014 season, when bad teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Orlando Magic began to arouse suspicions that they were tanking their seasons in order to collect higher picks in the next year's draft. This was a time when the NBA draft lottery still overtly favored the worst teams, so it was likely inevitable that a few coaches and executives would find subtle ways to exploit the system. However, the author suggests that this is a deep-seated, leaguewide problem, painting a picture of an endemic culture of purposeful losing, but the problem of tanking seems to apply to only a few teams. Fischer maintains a specific focus on Philadelphia and the legacy of its former front-office statistics guru Sam Hinkie, who served as general manager of the team from 2013 to 2016. The author makes a pointed effort to connect Moneyball-style analytics with the culture of teams like the 76ers, whose players were supposedly being silently groomed by management to play at a suboptimal level in order to better position the team for a top pick in the subsequent draft. Never mind the fact that the majority of NBA players--not superstars like LeBron James and Stephen Curry, who represent a small percentage of the league--are working diligently just to retain a roster spot in the cutthroat league. Although Fischer provides an intriguing, meticulously detailed insider's look at the complex, chesslike logistics of the NBA draft, he fails to prove the existence of a conspiratorial "race to the bottom." NBA die-hards will find enough to entertain, but there's not enough hard evidence to support many of Fischer's claims. A provocative but ultimately unconvincing indictment of the NBA.

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