The NBA recently announced plans to enact anti-tanking regulations for next season, sparking widespread media speculation regarding the league’s potential strategy.
Proposed ideas range from minor adjustments, such as capping ticket prices for teams that tanked the previous year, to radical overhauls, such as the total abolition of the NBA draft.
Tanking is the practice of intentionally fielding a non-competitive team to lose games and improve a franchise’s position in the NBA draft lottery.
The tanking issue is currently one of the association’s greatest challenges. In the middle of the season, NBA teams are shutting down their best players and purposely losing games to secure a high draft pick. The Utah Jazz, for example, are currently doing this with stars like Jaren Jackson Jr. and Lauri Markkanen.
This season, tanking has spiraled out of control due to the upcoming “monster” draft class. There are at least 10 teams actively trying to lose games to better their position in the lottery and secure more ping-pong balls.
Traditionally, the period following the Super Bowl is when the NBA dominates sports ratings. As the league heads into the All-Star break and the second half of the regular season, fan engagement should be at its peak.
However, when 10 teams are actively trying to lose games before the All-Star break, it creates a significant problem: the product the league is putting on the floor is objectively bad. There is a desperate need for a fix.
The fix starts with the NBA lowering the season to 70 games so that each game has more meaning. By reducing the sheer volume of games, the league increases the stakes of every single matchup, making it significantly harder for front offices to justify “punting” a season when every victory or loss carries more weight for the fans and the standings.
Additionally, the league should mandate that a team cannot be in the top four of the lottery in consecutive years to promote a culture of improvement. This “cooling off” period would prevent franchises from camping out at the bottom of the standings for years on end, forcing them to actually scout effectively and develop the talent they have already acquired.
A new tax should be implemented for teams that remain in the lottery for more than two years in a row, and the league must eliminate protections on draft picks. This would make teams more cautious about mortgaging their futures, a practice that often results in decades of mediocrity.
Furthermore, teams in the lottery should be prohibited from raising season ticket prices, and if they do so for more than 2 years, they should be forced to drop prices for their fans. This creates a direct financial incentive for owners to field a winning product. If you aren’t providing a quality product on the court, you shouldn’t be allowed to charge premium prices to the local community.
Critics argue, however, that some organizations are so poorly run that they could simply never get out of the lottery, and these restrictions would prevent them from ever becoming competitive. There is a fear that the “bad” teams would simply be stuck in a cycle of financial penalties and poor draft positioning without a way to climb out.
There is also the reality that teams with rich owners could bypass these rules if they are willing to spend the money to rebuild slowly. For a billionaire owner, a “lottery tax” might just be the cost of doing business.
Despite these concerns, ultimately, something needs to be done about tanking. These parameters would put the NBA in a good spot and ensure fewer teams choose to lose on purpose, leading to a more competitive association.
Michael Tatten is a sophomore sports media and communications and broadcasting major. You can reach him at michaeltatten@dailynebraskan.com.