Last year, I watched a review play out at the end of a game for which the fans of both teams would have been justified in hoping the call would clinch a loss.
Toronto Raptors rookie guard Jamal Shead hit a running layup that seemingly gave the Toronto Raptors a 119-118 win over the Washington Wizards in a March 8 game in Toronto, the first in a scintillating back-to-back set. Both teams were far removed from the playoff picture. While the players wanted to win the game, the teams’ fans (and front offices, theoretically) were incentivized to hope for a loss.
Upon review, the ball was still in Shead’s hands as the buzzer sounded, giving the Wizards the win. I wrote about the scene in my piece on the absurdity of March basketball. However, it’s far from the only confounding moment the NBA staff of The Athletic has witnessed that has been brought on by the league’s tanking issues. By the way, the tanking didn’t work: Both teams fell on lottery night.
In that spirit, a few reporters went through their memories, and maybe checked some box scores in the case that their memories were trying to protect them, to come up with some of the most egregious examples of tanking they have ever witnessed. — Eric Koreen
Memphis Grizzlies (48-33) at Minnesota Timberwolves (33-48), April 19, 2006
Give the Minnesota Timberwolves this: They were way ahead of the curve on the NBA’s tanking trend. In the season finale of the 2005-06 season, the Wolves needed to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies to keep their first-round draft choice.
They led by six points headed into the fourth quarter and were tied at the end of regulation. That’s when coach Dwane Casey and lightly used backup center Mark Madsen took matters into their own hands.
Long before “stretch fives” were a thing, Madsen had not attempted a 3 in more than two years. But he started chucking away in that game, hoisting two in the first overtime. When that wasn’t enough to secure the defeat, he shot five more in the second overtime, allowing the Grizzlies to prevail, 102-92. Madsen finished 1 for 15 from the floor, and the Wolves held onto their pick.
The home crowd had a blast watching the disaster play out in front of them, hollering for Madsen to shoot every time he touched the ball. Years later, Madsen expressed some regret for the farce, but he has recovered nicely. Madsen got into college coaching, did a great job at Utah Valley and is now the coach at Cal. He led the long-struggling Golden Bears to a 21-11 record and a spot in the NIT this season.
As for the pick? The Wolves used it to select Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy. Alas, they traded his draft rights to Portland for Randy Foye. — Jon Krawczynski
Indiana Pacers (32-49) vs. Washington Wizards (26-55), April 14, 2010
It’s tempting to think the Washington Professional Basketball Franchise has given its fans a steady trendline of ineptitude over the last four-and-a-half decades. However, some seasons have been more miserable than others.
And 2009-10 was one of them. Those Wizards came into the season with a ton of hope, and it went so poorly that it yielded a documentary on one of the NBA’s darker off-court moments.
The only thing that kept any local fan’s attention for the final half of the season was the possibility of getting the No. 1 pick to draft Kentucky phenom John Wall.
As the Wizards hosted the Pacers in the season finale, they were locked in a tight battle with the Kings, Warriors and Pistons for lottery position. A win could have been the difference between finishing third and sixth in the reverse standings. This was back before lottery reform, when the difference between third and sixth was much more significant.
Down by two with 90 seconds remaining, the Wizards put the ball in the hands of the unlikeliest of players: a 6-foot-3 guard named Cedric Jackson.
Jackson was the 24th and final player to suit up for the team that season. The Wizards had signed him to a 10-day contract two weeks earlier; they were his third team of the season. He had made just three shots in 20 minutes since signing with the team.
If an NBA team were trying to lose in a way that didn’t involve actively refusing to play, they’d probably give someone like Cedric Jackson the ball with the game on the line.
Naturally, Jackson drove hard to his left on Indiana’s Earl Watson, stopped, crossed back over to his right and nailed the 3-point shot as Watson staggered back. You remember Michael Jordan’s iconic shot over Byron Russell in the 1998 NBA Finals? It looked a bit like that — with dramatically lower stakes.
The Wizards’ players unironically celebrated as if they had won a playoff game. Several tossed miniature gold basketballs into the crowd; most of the fans who stuck around chose to appreciate a rare win and worry about the lottery implications later.
I remember Jackson beaming after the game, oblivious to the possibility that he — the “little guard, I don’t even know his name. No. 9,” as Indiana’s Danny Granger called him after the game — might have extinguished the one ray of hope many fans had left at the end of that abysmal season. It was the last NBA game he ever played.
The Wizards finished with the fifth-most ping-pong combinations after losing a random tiebreaking draw with Golden State. A month later, they won that lottery and got John Wall. And none of it would’ve happened if not for Cedric Jackson. — Mike Prada
New Jersey Nets (22-43) at Toronto Raptors (22-43), April 26, 2012
Both the Toronto Raptors and New Jersey Nets entered the final game of the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season with matching records. The winner of the game would finish with the sixth-worst record in the league, and the lottery odds that came with that distinction. The winner risked tying the Golden State Warriors for seventh and eighth places. The Raptors owned their own pick, while the Nets had traded theirs for Gerald Wallace, keeping it only if it landed in the top three.
Players such as Wallace, Deron Williams, DeMar DeRozan, Amir Johnson and José Calderón sat. Raptors reserve centre Solomon Alabi played 40 minutes, and then never again in the NBA. The Nets shot 29.2 percent from inside the arc.
But Raptors fans remember this game mostly for Ben Uzoh, a journeyman point guard. In the last of his 60 career games, Uzoh had 12 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, the eighth triple-double in Raptors history, and the first in more than 11 years. For the rest of his career, Uzoh reached double digits in points four times, once in rebounds and never in assists. The Raptors won 98-67. Uzoh is now a scout for the Raptors.
The Nets got the loss they wanted, but it didn’t matter. They stayed in the sixth slot in the lottery, which Brooklyn GM Billy King was reportedly fine with because he thought there were just three studs in the draft. That list didn’t include Damian Lillard, who Portland took with Brooklyn’s pick. Meanwhile, the Raptors lost a coin flip with the Warriors, who took Harrison Barnes, and ended up taking Terrence Ross eighth instead of having a shot at Lillard at six.
At least the Raptors could eventually make peace with the fallout. If the Raptors got Lillard in the draft, maybe they wouldn’t have traded for Kyle Lowry that offseason. — Koreen
Sacramento Kings (32-48) at Phoenix Suns (22-58), April 11, 2016
Sacramento Kings (33-48) at Houston Rockets (40-41), April 13, 2016
Back in 2016, the Sacramento Kings had already decided to fire head coach George Karl at season’s end. There were two games left in the season — road games in Phoenix and Houston. When Karl boarded the flight, he discovered key players such as DeMarcus Cousins and Rajon Rondo were not on the flight. The front office had told them they could stay home.
They neglected to tell that to Karl. Must have been some honest miscommunication.
The Kings won in Phoenix, but had one more game, one the Rockets had to win to make the playoffs. By the time the game started, Kings veterans such as Caron Butler and Rudy Gay were held out, too, and I didn’t get the impression anyone wanted to be a part of the tank show.
The Kings pieced together a lineup, including Seth Curry playing a career-high 40 minutes, that helped Houston make the playoffs. Utah, eliminated by the Rockets win, still had to play the Lakers in Kobe Bryant’s last game — a bit more memorable than the one in Houston — and it didn’t matter because the Kings kept their best players away from the Toyota Center.
The lottery produced no changes from the reverse standings that year. At eight, the Kings selected Marquese Chriss. — Jason Jones
Los Angeles Clippers (47-24) at Oklahoma City Thunder (21-50), May 16, 2021
The Clippers lost their regular-season finale to the Thunder, 122-117. It looked like an innocuous game on the surface. Looking deeper, it was their most important loss of that season.
You see, the Utah Jazz were the top seed in the Western Conference that season. Heading into the regular-season finale, the Clippers were in the No. 3 spot in the Western Conference. They wanted to be on Utah’s side of the bracket. Accordingly, they tanked the game against OKC.
How egregious was this? Well, consider that Paul George and Kawhi Leonard didn’t play. Neither Marcus Morris nor Nic Batum suited up. That isn’t what made this one so laughable.
The Clippers played Daniel Oturu a whopping 37 minutes, accounting for 19.7 percent of his career minutes. They ran their offense through Oturu, ensuring the loss. He ended up shooting 5 for 21 from the field that game. He took four 3-pointers. The Clippers isolated him for almost the entire game, and the result was predictable. The Thunder had huge performances from notable players such as Josh Hall (25 points and 10 rebounds in 43 minutes), Aleksej Pokusevski (29 points and eight rebounds in 41 minutes) and Moses Brown (24 points, 18 rebounds and seven blocks).
As it turns out, the Clippers were right to tank their way into the No. 4 seed. They would go on to defeat the Jazz in the conference semifinal in six games. It was more than them wanting to see the Jazz. They also wanted to avoid the Phoenix Suns as long as possible. They advanced to their only conference final of the Kawhi era that spring — all because they allowed Daniel Oturu to cook. — Tony Jones
Oklahoma City Thunder (24-57) at Los Angeles Clippers (41-40), April 10, 2022
You all might have heard about this trade that the Oklahoma City Thunder and the LA Clippers made in the 2019 offseason that sent Paul George to the Clippers in exchange for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and the rest of LA’s future in the form of seven first-round draft picks. For the next three seasons, the Thunder and Clippers would meet in the regular-season finale in three different arenas.
The meeting in 2020 happened in the bubble. No tanking there, with both teams preparing for the playoffs, even though both teams held out their best players either eventually or entirely. My colleague filled you in about the memorable 2021 clash.
A year later, the Clippers needed a win to finish the season with a winning record. The Thunder were running back the aggressive tank. By the time they visited LA for the final game of the season, they were playing just six players. Against the Clippers, the best of those players was Isaiah Roby, and he played just 18 minutes. The other five were north of 40 minutes: Zavier “Captain Hook” Simpson, Georgios Kalaitzakis, Vit Krejci, Jaylen Hoard and reserve Melvin Frazier. Not only did the Clippers win, but they beat the Thunder by 50 points, 138-88. That final margin allowed the Clippers to finish the season with a point differential of plus-two.
The Thunder benefited tremendously from the tanking — and the Clippers trade. LA wound up failing the Play-In Tournament, which gave the Thunder an extra lottery pick in 2022. They used the Clippers pick on Jalen Williams, and won a lottery pick and drafted Chet Holmgren second overall. So, it worked out OK for them. — Law Murray
Dallas Mavericks (21-44) at Memphis Grizzlies (23-41), March 12, 2026
I wasn’t covering the Dallas Mavericks in 2023 when they were fined $750,000 for resting Kyrie Irving and playing Luka Dončić only 13 minutes in their second-to-last game of the season, which happened to be the franchise’s second-annual “I feel Slovenia” night — a move they made in an effort to hold onto their top-10 protected first-round pick.
So I’ll go with a more recent example. The March 12 game between the Mavericks and Memphis Grizzlies was nasty. Specifically, the lineups the Grizzlies put on the floor at home were nasty. Memphis had only eight players available, and one of them — Tyler Burton — signed a 10-day deal that morning.
The Grizzlies started a Javon Small-Rayan Rupert backcourt. Olivier Maxence-Prosper, whom Dallas waived in August, was also in Memphis’ first five. Grizzlies rookie Cedric Coward was out because of “right knee injury management.” Cam Spencer sat out due to “low back soreness.” G.G. Jackson, a 6-foot-9 wing, was the tallest player Memphis started. Mavericks center Daniel Gafford predictably feasted against the mini-Grizzlies, going for 22 points and 14 rebounds.
Even with 11 Memphis players out, Dallas had a mere two-point lead going into the fourth quarter and needed Khris Middleton to score 22 points in the final 12 minutes to win the game. Middleton’s scoring binge will stick with me years from now. So will the sight of all those empty seats in the lower bowl of FedEx Forum. — Christian Clark