Losing games at the professional level is bad. You’d think
we’d all know that given the severity with which we treat the outcome of every
youth game we watch. But, as sports fans, we’ve got this all
upside-down.
I was at the Giants-Bears game this past weekend. It was
probably the most exciting, albeit bizarre, Giants games I’ve ever attended.
The G-Men pulled out an overtime win over a near-definite playoff team after
blowing a 10-point 4th quarter lead. Each team had a passing
touchdown from a non-quarterback, Chicago had a defensive lineman rush for a
touchdown a la The Fridge. The Giants had a defensive touchdown. The Giants
kicker set a franchise record for longest field goal. Saquan Barkley hurdled a
guy. It was big play after big play all day long.
During the 4th quarter of the game, I heard the
fans in front of me talking about how much better it would have been if the
Giants lost. The same two fans had a conversation earlier in the game about their
kid’s youth football team being terrible because of a 3-6 record. So, to make
sure we have this straight, they paid to attend a professional game that they
wanted their favorite team to lose so they could potentially get a better draft
pick who could potentially help their team in the future, yet they’re fed up
with the local Pop Warner coach because his team was 3-6.
At the professional level, sports fans crave the opportunity
to develop. At the youth level, we want results. I know this might sound crazy
to some of you who want to trust the process, but I think it you had some
patience to allow the youth coach to develop skills in younger players, you’d
be less likely to have professional players who still need to “develop.”
Tanking is wrong. It’s against everything we should be
teaching kids. Losing does not lead to winning. Learning winning habit and
reinforcing winning behaviors leads to winning. Sure, some of the best players
of all time were first overall picks like LeBron James, Peyton Manning and Alex
Rodriguez, but how about guys like Eric Fisher, Anthony Bennett and Mark Appel?
Those three were first overall picks in the past decade, and I bet most sports
fans don’t even recognize their names.
The 76ers told us tanking and unloading talent to be a champion
some day in the future is the “process.” Let’s take a quick look at what the
process has accomplished now that Philly says the process is complete. The 76ers currently sit in 3rd
place in the Eastern Conference, which is the NBA’s version of junior varsity.
They finished 3rd in the east last year after four seasons of being
one of the worst teams in basketball including a 2015-16 season that was one of
the worst seasons in the history of the game. Upper deck seats were selling for
$0.11 on the secondary market that year. Eleven Cents!
So that’s the current result of tanking: third place in a
sub-par conference. Is that really the goal? Let’s go through 4-5 abysmal
seasons so you can be better-than-average for a few years?
Maybe I’m the idiot here, but I want my pro teams to try to
win every damn game and I want to get rid of every player who’s not on board
with winning culture. If that guy was
coached well as a kid and his development was nurtured back when improvement
meant everything and final scores meant nothing, He’d know exactly how to play
like a winner. Unfortunately, some guys grow up in a backwards sports culture.
What is winning culture? Simply defined, it's doing your job well. It's doing exactly what's asked of you to the best of your ability, then finding out how you can do it even better next time. That's how teams like the Patriots contend for a title every year. The players are not required to be All-World talent. They're required to do exactly what's asked of them to the best of their ability, and continue to improve on that. That will never go out of favor with coaches, and that will never not be the best path to athletic success.
Winning is contagious. So is losing. Lose on purpose and you
are a loser. Attempt to win by instilling winning habits and committing to
winning efforts and you’re a winner. Simple as that.