The art of tanking is nothing new for the NBA. Teams have been finding ways to lose games in an effort to improve their Draft position at least as far back as the early 1990s when the league implemented weighted odds favoring the worst teams. Prior to that, there was an outright coin flip between the worst Eastern and Western Conference teams, then an unweighted lottery where all non-Playoff teams had an equal chance at the first pick. More recently, the worst team had by far the best odds to win
the lottery until the NBA attempted to course-correct. They flattened the odds for the three worst teams and expanded the lottery to determine the top four picks instead of only the top three.
Despite it all, teams find ways to lose games in hopes of getting a coveted pick high in the Draft. On February 12th, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for conduct detrimental to the league. Both teams made questionable roster decisions in otherwise winnable games. With the incidents taking place relatively early in the season and social media jumping all over it, it was only a matter of time before the NBA took further action.
Shams Charania recently reported that the NBA has proposed three options to the Board of Governors to combat tanking.
We will take a look at each of the three proposals in turn over the coming days, but first, a commentary on the overall notion: There is no outright “fix” to the concept of tanking. So long as there is an incentive for a bad team to get something good as a result of being worse, the NBA is going to have teams racing to the bottom.
As of March 27th, 2026 when Charania broke the aforementioned news, there were ten teams in the NBA with fewer than 30 wins. That is one-third of the league. The Indiana Pacers were officially eliminated from Playoff contention on March 10 when they fell to 15-50 on the season in a loss to the Sacramento Kings, who themselves were eliminated the following night when they fell to 16-51 after a loss to the Charlotte Hornets. For perspective, that is two teams completely out of the mix with only about 80% of the season in the books to that point. By March 27, eight teams were eliminated from Playoff contention, with two others having virtually zero statistical probability of making the Play-In Tournament.
When you have that many teams made irrelevant a full month before the end of the regular season, most of whom knew where they were headed months earlier, you’re going to have a lot of franchises looking to lose. Most teams are not going to want to destroy their chances at a franchise-altering pick, simply to stumble through the Play In Tournament for the honor of getting annihilated by the top seed in the conference.
Ironically, as the league talks about curbing tanking for the sake of the game’s integrity, they are on the cusp of expansion with the likely addition of two new franchises. Surely this will only add to the number of teams with more incentive to lose than to win. It’s difficult to take the league’s tanking-related pearl-clutching seriously, as their desire for more teams and more revenue run contrary to competitiveness. Adding two new franchises means you’re adding 30-plus players to the NBA that wouldn’t otherwise be “good enough” to be there prior.
Regardless, the wheels of change are turning, so we’ll take a look at each of the three options and what they could mean for the Mavericks throughout the next few days.
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