Friday Rant - Tanking in the NBA

For years and years as a basketball lover, I've tried my best to defend the NBA. My friends who aren't into basketball would always tell me it's a "Mickey Mouse League," that the regular season is boring, that it's poorly run, that they players and organizations don't care as much as other professional sports leagues. And for years I told them they're wrong, and defended the league, saying they had the wrong idea and were non-ball-knowers.

But I've reached my wits end, and I can no longer defend this league.

And that doesn't mean I'll stop watching it entirely -- because for all of the NBA's faults, I still believe they have one of the best postseasons in sports, and some of my fondest sports memories come from watching the NBA Playoffs and NBA Finals.

But seeing what is going on around the league right now with Tanking -- and seeing how incompetently the league is run by it's top brass -- I can no longer defend the NBA from the haters.

In fact, I just may become a hater.

It all starts with the fact that I think the NBA season is structured so poorly. To no fault of their own, they're competing with the NFL on Christmas now for views -- but to their own fault, they've scheduled their trade deadline the week of the Super Bowl for God knows why. And when the Super Bowl's finally over and there's more viewers to be had -- they go on All-Star break the next week.

And speaking of their All-Star Break -- Holy shit is it bad. The NFL doesn't give a shit about their Pro Bowl, and it still might be better than All-Star Weekend. This year they've decided to go with 3 All-Star teams competing in a weird-ass format, have a bunch of no-names in the dunk contest, and will be completely overshadowed by a middling slate of College Basketball games.

But what is really grinding my gears currently is the shameless, egregious, despicable display of tanking occurring throughout the league right now.

Teams like the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, and many more since the trade deadline, have been tanking in their own unique ways -- but all are just blatant. As if there wasn't enough reason to stop watching the NBA regular season -- teams are shutting down their star players, or playing them for 3 quarters and benching them for the 4th, or healthy-scratching groups of stars when they play inferior opponents.

None of this is new to the sport obviously -- there are countless examples over the years of different organizations taking part in tanking. Think of the "Trust the Process" 76ers, or even the Oklahoma City Thunder just a few years ago, when all they had was SGA and they shut him down for the 2nd half of the season to tank and draft Chet Holmgren.

And even though I can clearly see why teams are doing it -- because the 2026 draft class is going to be absolutely stacked with future All-stars and potential face-of-the-franchise players -- doesn't mean I think it's okay.

Maybe it's just from getting older -- I feel like the old man yelling at the wind complaining about it -- but it blows my mind how teams are able to do it without being ashamed of themselves. How can people running these teams, or the people playing on these teams -- not have more competitiveness? If you're a professional athlete, you have to be competitive to get to this point -- and you'd think the people running teams would be too. But instead, they're content to be losers because it might help them get a better pick.

And it disgusts me how they tank without a semblance of repercussions. They get rewarded for trying to suck during the season with an incredible prospect in the next draft, while teams fighting for play-in spots get rewarded with a 4-0 sweep at the hands of a conference 1-seed.

You might be saying to yourself, "Hey Beans, didn't you see that the league just fined the Jazz $500K and the Pacers $10K for 'overt' tanking behavior? The League clearly isn't taking this lightly!"

To which I say, insert name here, you ignorant slut -- a $500K fine to a multi-billion dollar franchise is like fining me 50 cents every time I use a cuss word in my blogs. It's going to add up, but not nearly enough for me to fucking stop doing it.

The Indiana Pacers scratched all 5 of their starters in a home game against the Jazz last week because they're trying to protect their 1st rounder for this year's draft -- which they traded to the Clippers, but remains theirs if it's #1-#4 or #10-#30. So they want to be as bad as they possibly can to get a Top-4 pick.

The Jazz in turn have started sitting their Top-25 player Lauri Markkanen and newly-acquired Jaren Jackson Jr. in the 4th quarters to try and lose. They had a 17-point lead against the Magic and sat their stars so the Magic would come back and beat them by 3. They also are either healthy-scratching or sitting Jusuf Nurkic in every 4th quarter, because all he does is produce when he plays.

Think about this in NFL terms -- can you imagine the outrage if an NFL team came out and said "Hey, I know we're scheduled to play in Primetime, but this season hasn't gone our way to this point, so we're just going to sit our star QB and all our skill guys and try to lose to the Browns." Roger Goodell (noted bad guy) would have them relegated to the UFL.

But unfortunately, the NBA is run by a pussy named Adam Silver, who doesn't actually care about the well-being of the league or the fans who watch it, and just wants to keep the players happy and be everyone's best friend. So instead of giving out real punishments -- like taking away picks, or worsening teams odds in the draft lottery when they tank, or lowering their salary cap for the next season -- he slaps a fine on the team and calls it a day.

There is genuinely no reason for a fan to go to their team's game in person on a night-to-night basis during the 2nd half of an NBA season unless their team is Top-6 in their conference. Everyone else is liable to sit star players, or simply stop trying in the 4th quarter, as we've been seeing.

I haven't watched a regular season NBA game since Christmas when the Knicks played the Cavs in an awesome back and forth game -- and I only watched it because the NFL game didn't kick off until later in the day. The general NBA fan has zero incentive to watch regular season games unless you're just trying to see if Wemby does something cool or you're a Lebron-sexual.

I don't know the best route to fix tanking -- I don't know the best way to fix the scheduling -- I don't know the best way to fix NBA All-Star Weekend -- but I do know that the current plans are NOT working.

I think Bill Simmons and Nick Wright presented some interesting options on his podcast earlier in the week -- specifically for tanking, removing that team's ping-pong balls during the lottery and worsening their chances of getting an elite lottery pick when they've been overtly tanking. I also think Nick Wright's All-Star game idea has legs (black players vs the white/European players -- would at least get people to try hard).

All I know is that for the health of the league, and for the devoted fans that want to support the league but are getting continuously bent over the barrel year in and year out, changes need to be made.

But like it does every year, once the playoffs come around, people will forget about the problems and just focus on the good. And when the draft lottery happens and we start mock drafting Darryn Peterson joining Tyrese Haliburton in the Pacers backcourt, or AJ Dybansta on the wing next to Anthony Davis and Trae Young in Washington -- no one will care that those teams tanked to get here.

Haters, you win this round -- congratulations.