{"id":1874626,"date":"2026-04-09T19:18:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1874626"},"modified":"2026-04-09T19:18:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:18:58","slug":"nba-clears-sacramento-kings-of-tanking-allegations-in-loss-to-warriors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1874626","title":{"rendered":"NBA clears Sacramento Kings of tanking allegations in loss to Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The NBA cleared Doug Christie of tanking accusations levied at the Sacramento Kings coach after he instructed his team to intentionally foul Seth Curry in the fourth quarter of the Kings\u2019 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The coaching decision \u2014 in which Christie directed Kings guard Doug McDermott to foul Curry with 3:15 left and put the Warriors guard on the line for two free throws as a result \u2014 sparked a social media firestorm in which the Kings were accused, by fans and media members alike, of blatantly tanking. The Warriors\u2019 Draymond Green escalated the situation after the Warriors\u2019 110-105 win when he criticized Christie\u2019s move and claimed it was further proof of the NBA\u2019s tanking dilemma<\/a>. The league, in turn, launched an investigation into the matter.<\/p>\n

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However, Christie and Kings officials have insisted since the accusations emerged that this was nothing more than a good, old-fashioned coaching blunder. As one Kings official put it, \u201cIf we wanted to tank, we\u2019re doing an awful job of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Christie, who had three timeouts remaining and would have lost one of them when the game clock dipped below the three-minute mark, ordered the foul with the intention of preserving the timeout and then being able to draw up a play for the next possession. However, the Kings were already in the bonus \u2014 a fact Christie was unaware of \u2014 meaning Curry was awarded free throws rather than a side-out inbounds.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe investigation found that Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game,\u201d the NBA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

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Despite the one-sided nature of the online discourse, the evidence strongly favors the Kings. For starters, they have looked nothing like a tanking team for quite some time. Since Feb. 21, when they were 12-46 and had a three-game \u201clead\u201d on Indiana for the league\u2019s worst record, Sacramento has gone 9-13 while \u201cfalling\u201d into a fourth-place tie with Utah in that department. What\u2019s more, Christie has been adamant publicly that he refuses to support a tanking effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cTanking is the last thing (I\u2019d do),\u201d Christie said after a win over Utah on March 15. \u201cI respect the game too much. These young men, in my opinion, when you do things like that, it hurts them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A closer look at the facts in the Warriors game appears to support that stance. After trailing by 13 points with 1:38 remaining in the third quarter, the Kings went on a 17-2 run and took the lead with 9:40 left in the game. The Warriors had sent Steph Curry and Green to the bench after the third quarter, with the game seemingly in hand, but had to reinsert them at the 5:53 mark because the Kings had taken the lead (97-95 at that point).<\/p>\n

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As it relates to Christie\u2019s ill-fated decision to order the foul on Seth Curry at the 3:15 mark, it\u2019s worth noting that the goal which inspired it \u2014 utilizing the third timeout so that he could draw up a set play \u2014 actually worked. A play that was designed for McDermott, fittingly, led to a corner 3-pointer<\/a> and a three-point Kings lead with 2:53 left.<\/p>\n

This situation, silly as it might seem, is the latest reminder that the NBA is struggling mightily to take on the tanking problem. There have been some attempts at controlling it in recent months, with the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers both fined ($500,000 and $100,000, respectively) in mid-February for violating the league\u2019s player participation policy. Still, as Green highlighted in his postgame commentary, there is no shortage of examples of blatant tanking elsewhere that have been overlooked by the league.<\/p>\n

As the NBA Commissioner has made abundantly clear, most recently at the league\u2019s Board of Governors meetings in late March<\/a>, there is significant change coming to the league\u2019s lottery system for next season and beyond. Those anti-tanking measures will be implemented in the hope that competitive integrity will be restored.<\/p>\n

For now, though, the issue remains. As The Athletic<\/em>\u2019s John Hollinger wrote recently<\/a>, when he explored the vast divide between the many tanking teams and the NBA\u2019s elite, there have been a historic number of blowouts this season as a result of this practice. The Kings, by all appearances, are not guilty of being among that group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NBA cleared Doug Christie of tanking accusations levied at the Sacramento Kings coach after he instructed his team to intentionally foul Seth Curry in the fourth quarter of the Kings\u2019 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night. The coaching decision \u2014 in which Christie directed Kings guard Doug McDermott to foul Curry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1874626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1874626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1874626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1874626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1874626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}