The perfect tanking storm has come to the NBA’s shores, and it’s arriving in the face of league scrutiny regarding both gambling and its own competition balance concerns.
That was my immediate takeaway from the chaos of this year’s trade deadline. Over the next two months, a race to the bottom will ensue, the likes of which the NBA has not seen before, thanks to a confluence of events that has become starker this week.
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First and foremost, the 2026 NBA Draft has multiple elite prospects at the top. BYU wing AJ Dybantsa, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson and Duke forward Cameron Boozer are projected to end up as Tier One prospects for me, or players I think have a significant chance at All-NBA upside. I don’t have any of those three right now with a higher grade than I gave to Cooper Flagg last year, but in the decade-plus that I’ve been scouting the NBA Draft, I’ve never had three players as Tier One prospects in a single class. Illinois guard Keaton Wagler, Houston guard Kingston Flemings, and North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson project as at least Tier Two players, a rating I give to prospects I believe have a significant likelihood of All-Star upside. I’ve never had at least six Tier One and Tier Two players in a draft class.
Secondly, the two draft classes after that are not viewed as particularly strong. In the 2027 class, I would not project any prospect to be rated ahead of the top six 2026 players. Prospects like Jordan Smith Jr., Bruce Branch III and Tyran Stokes are terrific, but they’re not on quite the same level as Dybantsa, Peterson, Boozer or Flagg. I’m not alone in that opinion. When I speak with scouts around the NBA, they are concerned about the top-end talent of the 2026 recruiting class as a whole. While it’s too early to project the 2028 NBA Draft, we have not yet seen a player emerge who looks to be on a Tier One level, either. And by now, we typically have a good sense of those truly elite talents.
Teams seem to have made decisions at the trade deadline with tanking in mind, despite the league so desperately wanting to expunge that tactic. I count no fewer than 10 teams that have very little incentive to win games the rest of the season. Let’s look at how dire the final two months of the season could get:
● The Sacramento Kings are 12-40 and completely out of the Play-In Tournament picture in the Western Conference, 11 1/2 games behind the Portland Trail Blazers. The Kings’ lone trade this deadline was consummated, in part, to give rookie Nique Clifford some on-ball reps. They desperately require the kind of elite talent and upside that a top pick in this 2026 draft would provide.
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● The New Orleans Pelicans (13-40) have no incentive to tank, as they traded away their first-round pick in an ill-conceived swap at the draft last year to select Derik Queen. However, the Pelicans want to play Queen and rookie guard Jeremiah Fears, and the team’s lineups tend to tank when either of those two is on the court.
● The Indiana Pacers (13-38) strongly incentivized themselves to tank the rest of the way by acquiring Ivica Zubac from the LA Clippers on Thursday and including a creatively protected draft pick. The Pacers will keep their 2026 first-round pick if it lands in the top four, will trade it to the Clippers if it ends up in the No. 5 to No. 9 range and will keep it if it ends up outside of the top 10. With Indiana already 10 games back of the Play-In, it’s incentivized to maximize its chances to keep this pick. The Pacers will, at best, have a 52 percent chance to keep it by staying in the bottom three of the standings. Having a 50/50 shot to keep their pick versus a 37 percent chance to it if they drop down to sixth-worst in the standings should tell you where their priorities will lie.
● The Brooklyn Nets (13-37) are arguably in the most dire situation roster-wise in the league and desperately need a player that they can start building around as a true No. 1 option. Lottery pick Egor Demin has been good and looks like a building block, but he does not look like a future top option.
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● The Washington Wizards (14-36) acquired Trae Young and Anthony Davis before the deadline but are still 8 1/2 games out of the Play-In and have very little incentive to win games. Young has not yet played for the Wizards despite being acquired a month ago, and I would bet they employ a similar strategy with Davis, who is out with a left hand injury. The Wizards owe their draft pick to the New York Knicks if it falls out of the top eight.
● The Utah Jazz (16-36) also made a buy-now move to get Jaren Jackson Jr., but they are in a similar position to the Pacers. The Jazz’s pick will go to the Oklahoma City Thunder if it falls outside of the top eight, but future obligations to the Thunder go away if Utah keeps the selection. Some NBA executives have already jokingly wondered what kind of mysterious malady Jackson will come down with during the All-Star break.
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● The Dallas Mavericks (19-32) are officially rebuilding around Cooper Flagg following the Davis trade. They don’t have access to their own draft pick from 2027 to 2030. This is potentially the last time they might have a high draft pick during Flagg’s rookie contract.
● The Memphis Grizzlies (20-29) just traded Jackson and are clearly also rebuilding now around Zach Edey and Cedric Coward. They need to find a No. 1 option in the draft and are equally incentivized to lose.
● The Milwaukee Bucks (20-29) did not trade Giannis Antetokounmpo and are just two games back of the Play-In. But Antetokounmpo is out for the foreseeable future with a right calf injury, and the team is 5-14 in games he has not played this season. The Bucks might find themselves out of the Play-In picture by the time he gets back. They should also want the highest draft pick possible to either build around him, move forward without him this offseason or offer it in a trade for a star to persuade him to sign the four-year, $275 million extension they can table him in October.
● Finally, while the Portland Trail Blazers and Charlotte Hornets are trying to win, the Chicago Bulls (24-28) just did a fire sale even though they’re currently in the Play-In. The team has two healthy bigs (Guerschon Yabusele and Jalen Smith), neither of whom is taller than 6-foot-8. They desperately need to find a centerpiece to build around Matas Buzelis and Josh Giddey.
We will see games in March and April featuring players who even the most ardent NBA fans did not know were in the league. We’re going to get games in which the Kings experiment with Maxime Raynaud as the featured option, and games in which the Nets empower Demin to really explore the studio space as a lead guard — even though he has made as many 3-pointers as he has attempted 2-pointers this season (107). I’m not sure we’ve ever seen this many teams in February that might push the tanking boundaries.
The real question is how the league will respond over the next two months. At December’s Board of Governors meeting, the NBA sounded out teams on ideas about how to modify the rules regarding tanking. Will the league aggressively investigate and pursue sanctions with fines for teams that sit players out? One NBA executive asked this question: Will teams even care if they get fined?
“The value of confirming a top-five pick or improving your chances at a top-two pick in this draft class is very large,” said the executive, who was offered anonymity in exchange for his candor. “Is it worth $5 million if you keep getting fined by the PPP (player participation policy) and the price tag rises? Is it worth $10 million if you’re successful? We haven’t done modeling on that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a team has and comes to the conclusion that getting access to one of the top players in this draft is worth a certain amount in fines.”
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The NBA’s player participation policy gets extreme in a hurry. If a team rests a player who is subject to the policy without an approved reason, the league can issue a $100,000 fine for the first violation, a $250,000 fine for a second violation and up to $1 million for each successive offense. Teams can model value in dollar figures all they want, but it would take an owner who was extremely bought into the process to burn cash like this.
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In that Board of Governors meeting, the NBA also presented ideas to combat tanking that will be stress-tested throughout this final two-month period. One of them was limiting pick protections to either the top four or Nos. 14 and higher. That would have prevented the Pacers and Clippers from meeting in the middle of the lottery in their creative deal. Another possible solution was to lock the lottery order after March 1, so that teams would tank until then.
I’ve spoken to about a dozen NBA executives about tanking reform in the last month and a half, and opinions are split on the idea.
Some executives — even ones representing teams currently slotted within the lottery — are strongly in favor of the league’s actions. The idea of competitive balance for teams vying for playoff spots and how schedule imbalances can affect those races are obviously brought up. Several executives have also noted that games in March and April are sometimes difficult to evaluate properly because of the level of talent and the experimentation that coaches are employing. No one ever accuses players of not playing hard, but the games just tend not to resemble early and midseason NBA action. Among league sources I’ve spoken with, locking the lottery on a certain date — be it March 1, March 15 or even at the trade deadline itself — tends to be the most popular solution.
And yet, other executives think things should stay as they are. It’s not that they don’t see the problem; it’s rather that they worry about unforeseen side effects of potential solutions. They worry, for example, that more teams will simply tank to start the season and choose not to field competitive teams from the outset. These executives also appreciate the flexibility and creativity required to come up with deals involving draft capital.
More than anything, some executives don’t believe there is a real solution. They say that acquiring elite players in the draft and having them locked under often under-market contracts for nearly a decade is simply too valuable. Because basketball is such an individually driven sport, players like recent No. 1 picks Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards and Victor Wembanyama bring too much value to an organization, and teams will always work within whatever constraints the rules present to land such players.
Lottery reform has, in some ways, worked as intended. But in other ways, it has created more problems. Because it’s so hard to win the lottery now, teams like the Jazz, Wizards and Nets have embarked upon long, multi-year tanks because they have gotten so unlucky with the ping-pong balls. Meanwhile, teams like the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs continually get lucky and move up. Multiple years of non-competitive play wear down fan bases while not actually changing the behavior of teams all that much.
Regardless, we’re about to see one of the all-time races to the bottom. Whether the league seeks safety from the storm will be a significant question for commissioner Adam Silver to answer.