(Commentary)
The perfect tanking storm has come to the NBA’s shores, and it’s arriving in the face of scrutiny regarding gambling and competition balance.
That was my 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, because of a confluence of events that has become stark.
First and foremost, the 2026 NBA draft has multiple elite prospects at the top. Brigham Young wing A.J. Dybantsa, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson and Duke forward Cameron Boozer are projected as top prospects who have a significant chance at eventually becoming All-NBA players. Illinois guard Keaton Wagler, Houston guard Kingston Flemings and North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson project as perhaps future NBA All-Stars.
Second, the two draft classes after that are not viewed as strong. In the 2027 class, 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 and Boozer.
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 out of the play-in tournament picture in the Western Conference. The Kings’ lone trade this deadline was consummated, in part, to give rookie Nique Clifford some on-ball reps. They require the kind of elite talent a top pick in this 2026 draft would provide.
The New Orleans Pelicans 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. But 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 strongly incentivized themselves to tank the rest of the way by acquiring Ivica Zubac from the Los Angeles Clippers last week 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 9 range and will keep it if it ends up outside the top 10. The Pacers will, at best, have a 52% 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% chance to keep it if they drop down to sixth worst in the standings should tell you where their priorities will lie.
The Brooklyn Nets desperately need a player whom 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.
The Washington Wizards acquired Trae Young and Anthony Davis before the deadline but have little incentive to win games. Young has not yet played for the Wizards despite being acquired a month ago, and Davis 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 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 the top eight, but future obligations to the Thunder go away if Utah keeps the selection. Some NBA executives have jokingly wondered what kind of mysterious malady Jackson will come down with during the All-Star break.
The Dallas Mavericks are rebuilding around Cooper Flagg after 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 just traded Jackson and are 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 did not trade Giannis Antetokounmpo and are just outside the play-in tournament. 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 offer him in October.
Finally, while the Portland Trail Blazers and Charlotte Hornets are trying to win, the Chicago Bulls just did a fire sale even though they currently have a good chance at the play-in. The team has two healthy bigs (Guerschon Yabusele and Jalen Smith), neither of whom is taller than 6 feet 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.
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. 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 are fined? The NBA also presented ideas to combat tanking that will be stress-tested during 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 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 do not 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 multiyear tanks because they have gotten so unlucky with lottery position. Meanwhile, teams like the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs continually get lucky and move up. Multiple years of noncompetitive 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 greatest races to the bottom. Whether the league seeks safety from the storm will be a significant question for Commissioner Adam Silver to answer.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company