As the NBA returns to everyday play post All-Star break, fans begin to dread the worst brand of hoops the league offers all year: late February-March basketball.
The teams that are already out of the playoff hunt, or are just on the cusp of making the play-in tournament, are now turning off the jets and rolling out the tanks in an attempt to secure higher odds at a better draft pick.
It’s a yearly occurrence, and this season’s biggest perpetrators are the Utah Jazz.
Tanking At Its Lowest
After making a win-now move during the trade deadline to acquire Jaren Jackson Jr., Utah began sitting its star players during the fourth quarters of close games.
Utah’s matchups against the Orlando Magic (Feb. 7) and Miami Heat (Feb. 9) were close affairs, until the fourth quarter, when the coaching staff removed key players such as Jackson Jr. and Lauri Markkanen.
Despite this, Utah still beat Miami 115-111, but the move to bench key starters drew heavy criticism from league circles.
The league fined the Jazz $500,000 for conduct detrimental to the league, a slap on the wrist and a slap in the face to fans who want to watch a good product.
The NBA Wants To Curb Tanking
Tanking is far from a new concept. In the NBA, it dates all the way back to the 80s, and there’s still no real solution.
But that doesn’t mean the league isn’t trying, on Feb. 19 ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the NBA plans to make anti-tanking rules in order to finally put a stop to the tanking epidemic.
According to Charania, officials have discussed the following rules as possible solutions:
- First-round draft picks can be protected only in the top four or top 14+
- Lottery odds would freeze at the trade deadline
- Teams cannot pick in the top four in consecutive years
- Teams can’t pick in the top four the year after making conference finals
- Lottery odds calculated based on the previous two years
- Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
- Flatten odds for all lottery teams
None of these ideas are written in stone, but they’re possibilities that the league could install to prevent teams from purposely tanking games in order to receive better draft capital.
Is There A Real Solution?
The real question is whether these measurements would solve the tanking crisis or create new problems.
Freezing the lottery odds after the trade deadline, for example, could either cause teams to tank earlier in the season or allow teams just outside the playoff picture to make a late-season push and still have high odds to obtain a premium draft pick.
There seems to be no real answer to the tanking epidemic— all four major sports leagues have different strategies for the draft, with varying results.
The league’s highest offices will likely implement some of these proposed strategies, but there will always be a workaround.
There will be another Trust The Process, there will be another Sam Presti, until the results change— it just doesn’t seem like there’s a real solution to tanking.
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