It seems like NBA fans and power brokers have been debating what to do about tanking for decades – really going back to the creation of the draft lottery to begin with – but the debate has become particularly acute this year. In February the NBA fined the Utah Jazz half a million dollars after the team twice benched two stars in the fourth quarter of competitive games, taking tanking to a new level of shamelessness; the Pacers were fined another $100,000 for engaging in the comparatively old-fashioned shenanigans of ruling players out of games entirely. Those are just two of ten teams, a third of the league, that have effectively called it quits on the season, leaving the entire set of playoff-plus-play-in teams locked in before the start of April.
This is in the context of what several analysts are calling one of the deepest NBA draft classes in history; ESPN’s Jay Bilas has said the class could be as much as 20 players deep, with any of those players being potential starters or even stars in the NBA, creating that much more incentive to tank. But as Tony Kornheiser has pointed out, does it really? If even a handful of teams that make the playoffs are in line to get potentially great players, doesn’t that dilute the incentive to tank? Shouldn’t a tankworthy draft class be one with one or a handful of great players, like a Victor Wembanyama? What are teams doing tanking for a class where the 20th best player isn’t that much worse than the best player?