The NBA knows that it will “need to do more than levy fines to dissuade tanking,” and “every potential fix is on the table,” according to Robert O’Connell of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. O’Connell noted the league “faces a challenge: How to punish teams trying to lose while still helping those franchises that genuinely need it.” On a conference call with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and all 30 team GMs, even those who participated in tanking acknowledged that it was “an issue the league needed to fix.” A “primary goal” of the NBA’s competition committee this offseason “will be to try to solve that riddle.” The league could “escalate from fining teams to outright revoking their draft picks.” It could “rewrite the rules that divvy up the ping-pong balls for the draft lottery.” It could even “reach for a nuclear option: abolishing the draft altogether, and making incoming rookies free agents.” O’Connell noted “tanking is extremely effective” because a “single superstar player can ensure a franchise’s relevance for a generation.” That has led to some franchises becoming “infamous for their attempts to bottom out.” Silver also noted that new “cutting-edge front offices are built to identify and exploit every possible avenue” — no matter how “unorthodox, or even embarrassing.” Tanking used to be the territory of GMs “who assembled lackluster rosters, not of coaches who sat healthy players in the crunch time of games” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 3/1).
NO CLEAR FIX: In Chicago, Scoop Jackson wrote “trying to end or find a remedy for or fix” tanking “won’t work because the chances of having another draft class this dope and deep be available won’t happen again until the league announces it’s NBA100 team.” With all of the “anti-tanking cries and campaigns to de-emphasize losing,” there is a “quiet hope that overzealousness and overreach don’t cloud the changes that will be enforced” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 2/27).
APOLOGY IN ORDER: In Indianapolis, Gregg Doyel wrote Silver needs to “apologize” for fining the Pacers $100,000 for tanking last month. Despite local talk radio hosts and sports columnists “begging the Pacers to stop trying so hard to win,” the team “refused to listen.” The Pacers “kept making moves, kept trying.” But now, with the 2025-26 NBA season “gone — the Pacers cannot compete — this franchise, for the first time in decades, for the first time ever, is pulling off the gas.” Doyel: “It’s not fair to ask Pascal Siakam to carry the load … every game. He needs the occasional rest. Same goes for Andrew Nembhard. ” (INDIANAPOLIS STAR, 3/2).