NBA Moves to End Tanking

While the NBA is in the midst of a competitive, highly compelling postseason, this past Sunday's Draft Lottery served as a reminder that much of the league's regular season lacked the same level of intensity.

With the perceived wealth of talent in this year's draft class, many teams across the league went all out in their efforts to secure a top pick. 

In a process commonly known as "tanking," many teams deliberately made decisions that would likely result in additional losses, thereby increasing the odds of securing a top pick.

At this point, tanking has been a problem the league has sought to address for quite some time. Though you can certainly argue that tanking makes sense for the organizations, many fans are understandably averse to the idea of their favorite team losing games intentionally.

When fans feel their team is going out of its way to lose games on purpose, their interest significantly wanes, causing tremendous financial losses for the league as a whole. 

Instead of sitting back and watching teams embrace this negative strategy, the NBA has been working fervently to remove the incentive for teams to tank in the later stages of the regular season.

Reports surfaced earlier this week indicating the league believes it's close to finalizing a new Draft Lottery setup that could punish teams that attempted to tank during the regular season. 

The new proposal, called the "3-2-1" proposal, would actually decrease the odds that the league's worst three teams have to win the lottery. Instead, teams that finish 4-10 at the bottom of the standings would have higher odds to secure the top overall pick.

The rationale is simple: If you disincentivize teams from losing as many games as possible, they will be more motivated to keep competing throughout the regular season, thereby increasing fan engagement and interest.

Though this proposed system wouldn't be perfect, it's nice to see the league taking measures to prevent teams from losing. They don’t want teams to accept tanking as okay or beneficial. Instead, they want to push them and encourage them to pursue winning as much as possible.

As followers of Jesus, we need to realize that we don't want to be complicit in enabling or accepting sinful behavior in our fellow believers.  

When we join the body of Christ by placing our faith in Jesus, we immediately have responsibilities toward the rest of the body. That means that, in addition to serving our fellow brothers and sisters and encouraging them in the Lord, we must lovingly confront them in their sin so they don't persist in it. We want to push them toward “winning”!

Jesus gives us instructions on the process we should follow to address the clear, observable sin we witness in the lives of fellow believers. 

In Matthew 18:15-17 (ESV), Jesus said, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."

Although many of us may not be thrilled about confronting someone in their sin, we ought to understand that lovingly and gently confronting someone in the spirit of restoration is a tremendous blessing. We don’t want to sit back and watch others embrace negative sin patterns.

If we fail in our command to address the observable sin we see in the lives of our fellow believers, we are enabling them to continue down a wayward path of “losing.”

Our heart in confronting people should never be one of retribution or making ourselves feel self-righteous in comparison to the people we are correcting. In fact, Galatians 6:1-4 speaks of testing our own actions and ensuring that we aren't comparing ourselves to the person we are confronting so that we can speak to them with gentleness.

But even when we do speak to people with gentleness and sincere intention, there will unfortunately be times when a person continues to persist with their sinful behavior. 

It's at precisely those times that we must understand the Bible is very clear in commanding us never to allow a professing believer to feel comfortable in their sin. As much as it is up to us, we must take steps to disincentivize the sinful behavior that is “tanking” them.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 (NASB) explains, "For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either."

In that case, believers were told to stop enabling people's laziness and unfaithfulness by ceasing to support them if they continued to refuse to work despite being physically able to do so.

The goal, naturally, was that the lazy person would no longer be incentivized to be unfaithful in working, but would be encouraged to faithful labor as unto the Lord.

It bears repeating once again that anytime we must confront sin in the life of another believer, we want to do so very gently, humbly, and lovingly, and only when we are certain that the behavior is truly sinful. We never want to assume the motivations or intentions of others.

Additionally, we need to understand that our confrontation should be restorative and not retributive. Our goal is for people to repent of their sin humbly. That must always be our prayer and earnest desire, and we should be so eager to rejoice and maintain fellowship with believers who respond biblically when confronted. 

Just as parents have a calling to discipline their children's sinful behavior, hoping that their children will turn from their wicked ways and walk on God's path of blessing, so we should confront our fellow believers with the same attitude. 

Today, let's give serious thought to whether we might need to have difficult conversations with another believer. Of course, let's not be hasty or rash about it.

But as we pray carefully and God leads us in Scripture, may we learn to have difficult conversations well, lovingly confronting people in hopes that they will repent and walk on the paths of righteousness to the glory of God…and realize it’s so much better to win than to tank!

I'm Matt Osborne, and you can UNPACK that!  

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for the forgiveness that I have received in Christ. Lord, please help me be both wise and gentle in confronting fellow believers about sin. Teach me not to be self-righteous and to have a heart that longs for restoration. I pray that You would use any difficult conversations that I must have to bring about godly transformation in the lives of others. In Jesus' name, I pray, Amen.