It’s been a week off of basketball and a week of FREAKING OUT over hockey???? Those hockey people love chaos, because oh my god the stress?? As I sop up my tears from the Canadian Women losing the gold medal earlier today, another interesting bit of news hit my feed.
Apparently, Adam Silver is about to bring the hammer down on TANKING.
As someone who has been following the Toronto Raptors the past few seasons, I know a thing or two about the tank machine. It’s a miserable ride. Yet, if done right, it can result in some good good stuff. See: Scottie Barnes.
The overall product, though, while you’re mid-tank, is awful. Understandably, the league wants to try to combat it. They need to do something because the enthusiasm to pay 2026 NBA game prices to watch a tanking team is low. No one wants that. It’s one thing to pay money to go see a good game, and then your team ends up losing — it’s entirely different to pay hundreds of dollars to go watch a team deliberately lose so that they might be able to get a good 19-year-old player and be a good team in 3-ish seasons. It’s not a good system.
I also admit I don’t have the answer. I’m genuinely curious how the league tries to get stricter about tanking, on top of what they are already doing. Being strict about injury management tactics, taking away awards for players who only play a certain number of games, it all helps, but clearly not enough. Ultimately, there will also be a pro-tanking group as well — the kind of people who are willing to sacrifice a season of good hoops in exchange for a generational player.
My two cents here come from the fact that I watch a lot of WNBA basketball. The WNBA, because it’s a smaller league with shorter seasons, uses the last two seasons of data to create their draft odds. That means that a team can’t just tank one season and then have the best draft odds. You need to be the worst for two seasons to have the best draft odds, and well… you’re not really trying to do that, it just happens. In the WNBA, it’s happening at the moment because certain franchises are behind in terms of facilities and player treatment, making them unideal free agency destinations, meaning they don’t get the best players. That leads to you not being a very competitive team, and well, then you get good draft odds.
For example, the Connecticut Sun. They made it to the WNBA semifinals in 2024, but didn’t make the playoffs in 2025. They were the third-worst team in 2025, but went into the lottery with the fifth-best odds because of how well they did the year before. Not sure if expanding draft odds to be two-years in the NBA would help or hinder their problem.
So tell me, what do you think of the NBA cracking down on tanking? Can they? Is it a good idea? Plus, what’s your big idea for exactly WHAT they do? Let me know in the comments:
