Michael Porter Jr. broke his podcast hiatus last week. When asked about the No. 1 rule change he would like to see the NBA make, the Brooklyn Nets forward pointed to the league's tanking epidemic.
“They gotta do something about this tanking situation. I don't like how teams are deliberately trying to tank to get a good draft pick,” Porter said on the Emily Austin Show. “I just think that throwing full NBA seasons down the drain is not the way to go. It's not very ethical to the game. People pay a lot of money to watch the best players in the world compete, and you want to see teams competing to their fullest ability every single night, and when teams do the stuff that they are doing nowadays, it can be tough.
“I understand for teams rebuilding, but I think there's an ethical way to do it and a non-ethical way. So hopefully they can change it. I just feel like the best players should be on the floor night to night.”
After numerous deep playoff runs with the Denver Nuggets, Porter is experiencing his first rebuild this season.
Michael Porter Jr. urges NBA to fix tanking amid historic draft lottery race
Tanking has been the most-discussed problem surrounding the NBA over the last few months. The Nets are among the third of the league angling for a top pick in a loaded 2026 draft.
The dip in the quality of play during the final months of the season has been a talking point for years. However, the issue became glaring as early as the trade deadline this year.
An outcry from fans, media and others led Adam Silver and the league office to forecast significant rule changes next season.
“We are going to make substantial changes for next year,” Silver told The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov while speaking on a panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “I think where I’m on the fence — on one extreme, you could completely divorce the draft from teams’ records. Just argue we could take all 30 teams regardless of the outcome, that would completely disincentivize tanking. You could win the finals, you know, and get the first pick. But then there’s gradations of that.”
