Commissioner Adam Silver has finally had enough. And honestly? It's about time.
According to Shams Charania, Silver informed all 30 general managers on Thursday that the NBA plans to implement anti-tanking rule changes for the 2026-27 season. The league is done watching teams race to the bottom.
And look, we all know which teams we're talking about here. The Kings. The Jazz. The Wizards. The Pacers. The Nets. All of them facing accusations of tanking - sitting healthy players, making "coaching decisions" that just happen to help them lose games, playing guys who have no business seeing NBA minutes.
It's killing the integrity of the game, and Silver finally has the backbone to do something about it.
"Stakeholders have intensified dialogue about combatting tanking," the report says. Translation: The owners, the players, and the fans are all sick of watching teams intentionally lose.
Here's what drives me crazy about tanking: Fans deserve better. These people are paying hundreds of dollars for tickets, buying jerseys, watching every game - and the team is actively trying to lose? That's not just bad business. That's a betrayal of trust.
I get the incentive structure. The draft lottery rewards losing. If you're at the bottom, you get the best odds at a franchise player. But that system has created a perverse incentive where teams are rewarded for being terrible instead of rewarded for trying to win.
Some teams have taken it to absurd levels. We've seen healthy All-Stars sitting out for "load management" when their team is fighting for lottery position. We've seen coaches mysteriously benching their best players in the fourth quarter. We've seen rosters constructed to maximize losing.
And you know what? The players hate it too. Nobody wants to be part of a tank job. These guys are competitors - they want to win. But when the front office is incentivized to lose, it creates this toxic environment where effort doesn't matter.
The details of Silver's plan aren't clear yet, but I've got some ideas. Maybe you flatten the lottery odds even more. Maybe you penalize teams that sit healthy players down the stretch. Maybe you reward teams that barely miss the playoffs instead of punishing them.
Whatever the solution is, it needs to happen now. The tanking epidemic has gone from a few bad teams to a systemic problem. When five or six teams are actively trying to lose, that's not a competitive league - that's a broken system.
Adam Silver deserves credit for finally addressing this. The NBA is at its best when every team is trying to win every night. That's what fans want. That's what players want. That's what sports is all about.
Time to stop rewarding failure and start rewarding effort.
