03/24/26 01:56:00
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03/24 13:54 CDT Tanking remains a problem in the NBA and the league is going to
take action, again
Tanking remains a problem in the NBA and the league is going to take action,
again
By TIM REYNOLDS
AP Basketball Writer
There are some big games on Wednesday in the NBA.
Atlanta visits Detroit in a matchup pitting a Hawks team that is rolling
against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference's No. 1 seed.
Oklahoma City plays Boston, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions.
Houston plays Minnesota, a game that could factor mightily into Western
Conference seeding.
And Washington plays Utah. A team on a 16-game slide will visit a team that
would unquestionably benefit from finishing fifth or worse in the league this
season.
The tanking epidemic is being discussed yet again this week at the board of
governors meeting in New York. The NBA has tweaked the draft process a few
times over the years, and it seems like bigger changes are finally on the way.
They probably won't be finalized this week, but they're coming.
"Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we've seen in recent
memory? Yes, is my view," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said last month, adding
that the league is "going to be looking more closely at the totality of all the
circumstances this season in terms of teams' behavior, and very intentionally
wanted teams to be on notice."
Silver will speak with reporters on Wednesday and the big news of the day is
expected to be expansion plans, with the league's governors set to vote this
week on moving one step closer to adding franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle.
But once the hubbub of expansion talk dies down, tanking talk will come up.
Again.
There have been three 16-game losing streaks in the NBA this season. Washington
is on one now, Indiana --- a team that made the NBA Finals last season, but
knew this would be a reset year the second that Tyrese Haliburton tore his
Achilles in Game 7 of that series --- snapped such a streak with a last-second
win in Orlando on Monday night, and Sacramento went 0-16 during a stretch of
January and February.
"We've got to get some wins, man. We've got to keep building as a team,"
Indiana forward Pascal Siakam said in the televised on-court interview after
the win in Orlando. "It's been tough. It's been a tough year for us, man. It
shows your character. It tests you. But that's life."
Tanking has been a topic all season. Brooklyn owner Joe Tsai said back in the
fall that the Nets --- who had five first-round picks in last year's draft ---
are rebuilding, noting that the team has only one first-round selection this
year.
"We hope to get a good pick," Tsai said at the All-In Summit. "So, you can
predict what kind of strategy we will use for this season."
The Nets are 17-55, the third-worst record in the league entering Tuesday. In
the current lottery format, that would assure Brooklyn a 14% chance --- the
best odds possible --- of winning the No. 1 pick.
Utah got fined $500,000 last month for not using its best players in the fourth
quarter of games, one of which the Jazz actually won in Miami. The Wizards'
current 16-game losing streak is the fourth such streak by Washington in just
over two years, a run of absolute futility matched only once before in NBA
history. (For the record, in the three other instances since 2023-24 of
Washington losing 16 straight games, it wins the 17th game.)
A bottom-five finish in the league standings would give Utah a 99.4% chance of
winning a top-eight pick in the draft; otherwise, the pick would convey to
Oklahoma City.
Jazz owner Ryan Smith, after the $500,000 fine got levied, responded on social
media saying in part "agree to disagree ... Also, we won the game in Miami and
got fined? That makes sense."
Agree to disagree may as well be the motto for tanking. It happens, like it or
not.
All seem to agree on this: It's bad.
Some teams are out of the playoff race and are thinking about their future,
which is understandable. Milwaukee is mathematically alive but needs a series
of miracles to reach the play-in tournament and its best player, Giannis
Antetokounmpo, has battled injuries all season. It would make sense that the
Bucks don't want to risk him getting hurt again. It also makes sense that
Antetokounmpo wants to keep playing. The National Basketball Players
Association said Tuesday it wants to work with the league on "meaningful new
proposals that will directly address and discourage tanking."
Nobody can say for certain when tanking --- the practice of trying to lose in
order to manipulate draft odds and have a chance at the best player possible
--- really got invented. It goes back to at least 1982, when an owner openly
said that finishing last was a great idea.
The owner was Donald Sterling, the then-San Diego Clippers owner who was
swiftly fined $10,000 for the remark that was caught on tape. Sterling was
kicked out of the league in 2014 and forced to sell the Clippers after it was
found he made racist comments.
The prize Sterling wanted for tanking in 1982 was Ralph Sampson, the superstar
center from Virginia. Sampson wound up staying in school for one more season,
in part because the deadline he faced to enter the draft was before the coin
flip that decided if the Clippers or the Los Angeles Lakers would get the No. 1
pick. Sampson didn't want to take the risk of having to join the Clippers; the
Lakers wound up winning the coin toss anyway.
Tanking didn't work then. It doesn't always work now. And yet, more than four
decades later, here we are.
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Around The NBA analyzes the biggest topics in the NBA during the season.
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