Late-season tanking is a perennial issue for the NBA, but it has been particularly bad so far in 2025, with teams who have their eye on the draft lottery employing new strategies in an apparent effort to get around the league’s player participation policies.
As Tom Haberstroh of Yahoo Sports and John Hollinger of The Athletic write, one approach that multiple teams have used this month is to hold key players out of crunch-time situations. Haberstroh refers to it as “quiet quitting.”
For instance, while Raptors forward Scottie Barnes has only missed one game this month, he has played more than 30 minutes in just three of 11 outings after averaging 34.7 MPG in 46 pre-March contests. Barnes and other Raptors starters have been on the bench in the fourth quarter of multiple games.
Because players like Barnes and Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen qualify as “stars” under the NBA’s player participation policy, holding them out of games entirely without a valid reason could prompt a league investigation — Utah has already faced one $100K fine for its usage (or lack thereof) of Markkanen.
However, that policy only explicitly applies to players who have made an All-Star or All-NBA team over the past three seasons. That means that the Nets, for instance, were able to hold a “non-star” like Cameron Johnson out of last Thursday’s game for “rest” even though Johnson was healthy and Brooklyn didn’t play on either Wednesday or Friday, Haberstroh observes.
When the NBA flattened its lottery odds several years ago, the goal was to reduce the incentives for losing games. But those changes haven’t been as effective as hoped in part because the league hasn’t incentivized winning for lottery-bound teams, Hollinger argues.
As Hollinger explains, even if losses didn’t improve a team’s lottery odds and draft position, a club like Toronto or Utah may not be incentivized to compete hard for wins at this point of the season, since there’s little reason to push a franchise player like Barnes or Markkanen, who are on lucrative long-term contracts, too hard in games that essentially don’t matter. “Asking a team to put meaningful players at risk in meaningless games is inherently a contradiction,” Hollinger writes.
So what could be done to address the issue? Tim Bontemps and Kevin Pelton of ESPN spoke to sources around the NBA about that subject and came up with a few possible ideas, some more viable than others.
Flattening the lottery odds even further was one of the ideas mentioned. Another was determining the odds based on how the lottery teams fare against one another during the season. However, both suggestions are complicated by the fact that a borderline playoff team may decide that having a viable shot at the No. 1 pick is a better outcome than eking out a playoff spot and being on the receiving end of a first-round beatdown from a top seed.
There would also likely be resistance to any proposal that significantly reduced the odds of the league’s very worst teams having a shot at top draft picks, since the NBA still wants to encourage competitive balance and avoid miring a club in a rebuild that it can’t find its way out of.
Multiple sources suggested to ESPN that removing mid-lottery pick protections on traded draft picks could be one step in the right direction. For instance, one of the most egregious cases of tanking in recent years saw the 2023 Mavericks rest players at the end of the season in an effort to hang onto their top-10 protected pick, even though they still had a shot at the play-in tournament. Allowing a pick to be top-four protected or top-14 protected, without any options in between, could eliminate that kind of scenario.
Another idea posed by sources who spoke to Bontemps and Pelton would be to count team wins instead of losses after the All-Star break for the sake of determining the draft lottery order.
For example, if a team posted a 19-35 record before the All-Star break, then went 18-10 the rest of the way, its “lottery record” would be 29-53, with its pre-All-Star wins added to its post-All-Star losses. If a second team that was also 19-35 at the break went 10-18 after the All-Star game, its “lottery record” would be 37-45, resulting in less favorable odds than the club that performed better down the stretch.
We want to know what you think. Does the NBA need to take steps to address its tanking problem? If so, what approach makes the most sense?
Head to the comment section below to weigh in with your thoughts!
In my dictionary
Definition of tanking is outstanding award.
Definition of Outstanding Award is exceptional achievements
#1 overall pick is worth between $200-$500 million if you have a GM like Sam Presti.
Play-in teams = worst place = fool
Was this put through google translate?
It’s obvious that English is not this guy’s first language, and for some reason everyone thinks it’s hilarious to make fun of him because of that.
Super classy. Don’t ever change.
You’re right and I hear exactly what you’re saying. But it’s not the English part or the language part. It’s the ideas part.
I try to be very fair with everyone, but some of Sillivan’s ideas are from left field. And it doesn’t matter who it is or what is posted, it’ll be pointed out if it’s a strange take. I guess we have to be able to take it if we’re going to comment on a site like this, but that’s part of the fun is it not?
Everyone’s pretty cool here and good natured by the way and a little ribbing never hurt anyone. But yes, I feel ya and you’re not wrong.
Your judgement on the internet is the epitome of class. Don’t ever change.
I like the last idea mentioned, but I feel like adding math always annoys people.
Consecutive years tanking summary
76ers tanking 5 years 2013—2017
Lakers have 3 consecutive #2 oeverl picks 2015, 2016, 2017
Rockets have 4 consecutive top-4 picks 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
In my opinion, if you are top 5 largest cities, you are not supposed to tank
My suggestion on New CBA rules
No team is allowed to tank for 2 consecutive years. Let’s say if your team get #1 overall picks in 2025, you also have one of top-5 picks in 2026. That 2026 pick exchange to the most wins play-in team (the team that make Play-in but not playoffs)
I think no matter what people think of teams will find a way to get around it. What is the goal? To put out a better product? Maybe there are ways to address this that have nothing to do with tanking.
Also even if players don’t play in crunch time, fans who bought tickets still get to watch them play for a bit. I thought that was the point moreso than tanking.
Do away with the draft entirely. Make teams work within the constricts of the salary cap. All new players to the league are free agents.
The idea of a draft is pretty absurd in the first place – why reward bad teams? Why give them the incentive to be bad in the first place?
I think this is a pretty good idea but then you’d have to have a hard hard salary cap. That would mean two stars per team, a couple of great players, then the rest are minimums $$.
So with that just said what came to mind for me is every rookie free agent would be minimum salary? So a new kid wouldn’t get 10 gazillion dollars his first year?
That would make it almost like baseball. They don’t make a whole lot of money the first five years, but when they become real free agents in 5 years, the big bucks are available?
The reason why I’d say it had to be a hard hard cap is because of the danger that no rookie is going to volunteer to play in Indiana Sacramento Charlotte maybe Toronto.., wherever. I am imagining if everyone gets a minimum salary they’ll want to go to Miami or LA or New York? But who knows?
Rewarding losing never works long term.
Have a strict, non-weighted, legitimate lottery every year for the draft. Let the chips fall where they may.
But of course they’ll never do that because the NBA (all major American sports? … don’t even bring up the NFL) is fixed in so many ways. They definitely want certain guys to go to certain teams and they want certain markets to do well.
“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it,”
-John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Just my two cents. Not all will agree, but that’s why we have this great forum and awesome website.
OK, I’m replying to myself because I have several ideas. Not just the one above.
Have a set draft position predetermined for every team every year.
Over 30 years you draft first once, you draft 10th once, and you draft last once.
Mix it up so it’s random. Every team is guaranteed to the first pick in the entire draft at least once in 30 years. But also the second pick and the last pick, etc.
No tanking no losing no ripping off fans.
What about this idea? After the season if I pick 25th, then the next season I pick fifth no matter how the team does. And the team that pick fifth this year picks 25th next year.
That would eliminate half the problem.
We’d have the system in place every other year. I pick 1st this year then I’m picking 30th next year then the third year the league goes back to Won-Loss position and so on.
This will eliminate years of tanking and gimmicks like “the process.”
At least if a team tanks one season you’re not watching them tank for three years.
Like I said it will eliminate tanking half the time. Not perfect and I’m sure it has a ton of flaws but just throwing it out there. This system itself probably has too many gimmicks to fix the gimmicky current system lol
The problem is that many star players only want to play in certain “glamour” markets. There are teams in less desirable markets that have no hope of being competitive if they can’t build though the draft.
The issue with the idea of counting losses as wins after the all-star break is that teams tanking will then focus more on losing games at the start of the season…
The season needs to be shorter…maybe around 60 games per team…and the league needs to be harsher on every player regarding “resting”
Fans who travel and want to see their favourite players play don’t want to see them in street clothes cheering on their team with no starters…
Has to be less back to back games.
A little extra work for the schedule makers to ensure every team plays the same number of games pre and post break, on top of arena availabilities and travel preferences.
The Bulls are too stupid to tank.
Devils avocado here : What’s tanking done for Utah and who will be better by lets say start of 2027 ?
** Utah had + assets as well Rudy/ Donovan which Chi never had to parcel to begin a glorious tank …
I’m STILL betting Bulls …against All (sarcastic) odds
** Also you just got the 3rd best player last year with the 11th pick in the entire draft Imo. Translation – Ping pong balls are over rated
Im not saying Chi hasn’t made any mistakes the past couple years but Id be careful what you ask for . Theres a lotta light shining into that cave with Chi right now. Utah not so much
Big problem with even bigger hurdles.
Those hurdles being new age fans are more smitten with tanking than actual teams are. I don’t know how to fix that whatsoever.
What I do know would help is cutting the season to 72 games and starting later to avoid more football crossover and give us all of June and July (dry sports season) for NBA to thrive.
This section we are currently in (10~12 games remaining) should be an absoulte Mecca for the NBA with tight races everywhere…….In reality we are getting burnt out teams trying to rest superatrs for the playoffs and other teams trying to lose on purpose…Its really not a great product right now when it should be absolutely peaking
*My suggestion to tanking would be simple adds like you cant be lottery eligible after 3 years in a row- Automatically skip to an arbitrary number like 20th yr 4 no matter the record (unless better ofc) . Theres ofc many other ideas and Im sure we will see Silver make some implementations here in pretty short order of some sorts.
Tanking isn’t complicated, creative or nuanced, nor is the way to end it, as much as Silver and guys like Hollinger like to pretend. Competitive balance? LOL, in a league where more than a third of the teams are racing to the bottom?
Decouple W/L and draft position and Tanking ends on the spot. Until that happens, Tanking will continue. All other “solutions” I’ve heard, if they address the point at all, are the equivalent of suggesting that if 1B was moved back a few feet then all the close plays at there would be eliminated. Unfortuately, in Silver’s NBA, these are the only possible “solutions” to anything that are ever discussed.
Eliminate the two worst teams from the number one pick to stop the tanking making the end of the season competitive all around.
It’s pretty simple. Have a draft. The draft is only 2 rounds anyway. Don’t base the draft on records. Just have a drawing every year. If you get the 1st pick then you get the last pick in the second round. If you get the last pick then you get the first pick in the second round. Snake draft. And you’re not allowed to trade a draft pick for 2 years. Simple. Then you wouldn’t be getting these ridiculous trades with so many conditions you need a degree
……degree in advanced mathematics to figure them out.
The only one of those I could see being implemented seamlessly is the restriction of protection. I suppose that could result in fewer trades (certain GMs valuing their picks at a granularity in between) or more (there is less room for haggling in deals that would otherwise have fallen apart over protection).
No
Make the bottom 2 teams automatically ineligible for the playoffs the following season. Or have them play a one game “play in” against each other – winner gets to keep playoff eligibility, loser is ineligible.
David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Victor Wembeynama tanking works.
There is no fixing it. The draft rewarding bad teams and no relegation system will keep this going forever.
The tanking this year is disgusting and the only real solution is for all non playoff teams to have the exact same odds at number one.
Sending your biggest stars to the worst teams was always a stupid idea. Teams losing on purpose when gambling is so big should be illegal.
The issue is less the tanking than it is permitting players to sit out so many games. When players are on the court, they play to win. They are competitive by nature. The issue is the league allowing all the load management to spiral out of control. Once they dial that back, the tanking problem will subside.
Weakest era ever
They are paid too much to care about petty stuff and peasants like us
Tanking ain’t right, that’s for sure… but, for me what upsets me the most is that in March the games are unwatchable because hardly any star plays for the top teams, which they have many more than the tanking teams, obviously, right?
Top teams rest far too many players for the playoffs and games are meaningless for the top teams in March.
I love the games in January and October to December when games mean something and you see the players have great games.
A team like the hornets should have improved like 5 years ago. They failed to and face no consequences. Pistons improved, rockets improved. Bulls just don’t know how to build a team anymore. To call out the raptors when Ingram is hurt, RJ has dealt with illnesses and other young guys outside of Scottie are playing well…why have Scottie play 40 minutes???? Grady is hurt too, Quickley has been out for most of the season. Call out the jazz, can’t call out raps.