Built to Lose: How the NBA's Tanking Era Changed the League Forever

by Jake Fischer

Overview

“From front offices to college campuses, Jake Fischer takes you on an engrossing tour of the NBA in its latest golden age, when some of the most captivating teams won by losing.” —Lee Jenkins, former Sports Illustrated NBA writer 

An insider account of modern NBA team-building, based on hundreds of exclusive interviews. 

A single transcendent talent can change the fortunes of an NBA franchise. One only has to recall the frenzy surrounding recent top pick Zion Williamson to recognize teams’ willingness to lose games now for the sake of winning championships later. It’s a story that weaves its way behind closed doors to reveal intricate machinations normally hidden from public view.  

Backed by extensive reporting and hundreds of interviews with top players, coaches, and executives, Jake Fischer chronicles secret pre-draft workouts, feuding between player agents and executives, surprising trade negotiations, interpersonal conflicts, organizational power struggles, and infamous public relations fiascos, making for a fascinating look at the NBA. 

Updated to include new material, this is the definitive account of the NBA’s tanking era, when teams raced to the bottom in the hope of eventually winning a championship. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637271735
Publisher:	Triumph Books
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	248,250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jake Fischer is a basketball journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, SB Nation, SLAM, and more. This is his first book.

Editorial Reviews

“A fascinating, fly-on-the-wall examination of the risks and rewards that come with tanking in the modern NBA. You’ll view the notion of tanking in a much different light after reading this.” —Chris Herring, senior NBA writer for ESPN/FiveThirtyEight 


“From front offices to college campuses, Jake Fischer takes you on an engrossing tour of the NBA in its latest golden age, when some of the most captivating teams won by losing. A deep dive into taking —er, team-building —with reverberations still felt today.” —Lee Jenkins, former Sports Illustrated NBA writer 


“Jake Fischer is one of the smartest NBA reporters working today. Built to Lose will impress anyone who loves basketball and appreciates dogged reporting.”—Mirin Fader, staff writer at The Ringer 


“Jake weaves a meticulous account of the NBA’s inner workings—and an era that massively shaped the league as it is today—in a way draftheads and casual fans alike will appreciate.” —Jeremy Woo, Sports Illustrated staff writer and NBA draft insider 


“From high-level conversations about team-building to the petty dramas that fester behind the scenes, I was captivated through the final chapter. Jake’s reporting helped me see the NBA through a new lens, and I’m a smarter fan because of it.” —Emily Kaplan, ESPN reporter 

From the Publisher

2021-02-20
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.

Kirkus Reviews