The issue of tanking is a hot one in NBA circles, as teams such as the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards, among others, have blatantly been holding out a few of their best players or at least limiting their workload just so they could boost their chances of losing more games and therefore improving their lottery odds. It's gotten so blatant to the point where the NBA is proposing a few countermeasures to tanking, all of which sound complicated.
For NBA insider and student of the game Bill Simmons, he believes as though blowout losses should carry some penalty in the lottery sweepstakes — with the NBA penalizing those with more defeats by around 15 to 20 points.
“If they were able to put in game penalties and rewards in all these different ways. If you lose by 20 points or more, [there's some sort of penalty]. … So if you have something in their like, if you lose by more than 15 points, there’s also some other penalty that comes with that,” Simmons said in the latest episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast.
“You could either do it there could be bonus pools for every team. … So if the Wizards are like, ‘We’re just blowing these games, we’re just throwing them away.' It would actually cost them part of their salary because they didn’t care. [If this was the case], those guys would obviously care more. Or if you had with the teams, every 15 point loss you lose five ping pong balls.”
Tanking will always be part of the NBA as presently constructed
The best way to build a contending team is through the NBA Draft; the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, and Detroit Pistons all assembled their young cores through the draft while supplementing that core of theirs with the veterans they need.
But without the Thunder drafting Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, and Josh Giddey (who was traded for Alex Caruso), they would not be the powerhouse of today. The Spurs would not have Victor Wembanyama if they didn't bottom out. Suffice to say, tanking will always be part of the NBA.
