The NBA had a record-setting trade deadline earlier this month and celebrated its biggest stars at All-Star weekend in Los Angeles this past weekend. However, tanking has been perhaps the most popular subject of discussion during the break in the regular season schedule.
A report 10 days ago indicated that the NBA is increasingly concerned about the issue and discussed it extensively at the most recent meeting of the league’s Competition Committee in January. Three days later, the league hit the Jazz with a $500K fine and docked the Pacers $100K for behavior that “prioritizes draft position over winning.” And two days after that, commissioner Adam Silver told reporters at his annual All-Star press conference that the NBA is considering “every possibly remedy” to reduce the practice of tanking.
As Adam Zagoria writes for Forbes, Silver acknowledged that tanking may be worse this season due to the widespread perception that the 2026 draft class is significant stronger than the ’27 and ’28 classes will be. Still, the league doesn’t seem content to sit back and let the issue sort itself out in the coming years.
According to Joe Vardon of The Athletic, approximately 10 potential solutions were discussed by league officials during All-Star week. Abolishing the draft entirely wasn’t among those possible rule changes, per Vardon, but Sam Amick of The Athletic says the “draft wheel” concept first proposed more than a decade ago by Celtics executive Mike Zarren has reentered the discussion.
Of course, any significant changes would require the approval of the NBA’s owners and likely the players’ union as well, Vardon notes.
Here’s more on the tanking dialogue that has taken off in recent weeks:
- In a pair of lengthy tweets, Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban offered his thoughts on why it seems like tanking has gotten worse in recent years and makes a case for why the NBA should embrace it – or at least live with it – as a legitimate team-building strategy. By contrast, Suns majority owner Mat Ishbia strongly opposed the idea that tanking is a legitimate strategy, arguing (via Twitter) that it’s “much worse than any prop bet scandal” and that Silver and the NBA should be willing to make “massive changes” to fix the issue.
- ESPN’s Tim Bontemps is in favor of tweaking the lottery system so that after a certain point in the season – perhaps at the trade deadline, the All-Star break, or after a set number of games – wins would essentially count as losses for the sake of determining a club’s lottery record. For instance, if the cutoff were 50 games and a team opened the season by going 22-28, then tanked late in the year and went 4-28 down the stretch, that team’s record for lottery purposes would be 50-32, with those late-season losses added to the win column. The logic, Bontemps explains, would be to penalize – rather than reward – teams that are aggressively trying to lose during the last couple months of the season.
- Sam Quinn of CBS Sports breaks down several of the hypothetical tanking solutions that have been floated by fans and pundits, breaking down the positives and the negatives of each suggestion.
Bill Simmons proposed the Ping Pong Ball of Death, which immediately knocks a lottery team to the 32nd pick. I kinda like it
U can’t get rid of tanking. It’s part of the game. Teams that stink know the best talent(is almost always at top of the draft). However the nba needs to find ways to teak the rules.
The only way to end tanking is to stop rewarding teams for losing. Turn the NBA Cup in a 20 game, season long tournament, and use the standings from those 20 games to hand out the picks. Put some sort of language in that limits the amount of top picks any one team can win in successive years for parity sake.
As long as rewards are offered for failing, there will always be someone willing to fail intentionally because giving up is easier than trying.
Just do the draft behind closed doors and bring the envelope out. Or, just let Silver decide the draft order…oh wait…
The most effective way to eliminate tanking is fairly easy… Flatten the draft lottery odds evenly for all 30 teams in the NBA, so each team has a 1/30 chance to get the number 1 pick….Do a live lottery show for all 30 team, Put 30 ping pong balls in that pong shuffler… the first ping pong ball picked is chosen to get the 1st overall pick, the 2nd pong is the 2nd pick and so on ánd so forth all the way to the 30th pick all pick protections still apply… it would make the draft lottery more exciting for all teams in the NBA because any team can get a high pick now
So now it’s pointless to tank, every team has even chances at all picks… with this method it forces teams to build teams properly ánd compete night in ánd night out you don’t get awarded to suck… a playoff team can get lucky ánd get the first overall or a lottery pick so now teams can’t be cheap you have to spend in free agency ánd be open to trade to improve your roster because there is not a given that you improve from the draft if u suck…best part of all it limits load management, why rest guys when u trying to win every night now
But that makes too much sense. You’ve lost the plot. It needs to be more convoluted than that. Are you new here? Where’s the complexity?
Exactly it makes too much sense why does it have to be so hard… I’m a new poster but I’ve been coming to this sight for 15 years now just never cared to post until today because I have the perfect remedy for this issue
If a team is “caught” tanking they should have their traded picks protections taken away. This year Washington has a 1st rd pick top 8 protected and they are tanking to keep it. They tank and lose their protection on the pick. There would be no reason to tank. And if they know that before hand teams will be less likely to trade their FRPs for anything less than win-now trades
I don’t mind teams that “tank” for only one year. I’d like to see teams being unable to participate in the lottery in successive years.