The leader of the 14th-seeded Nets squad isn't a fan of tanking.
A key member of one of the NBA's worst teams this season is absolutely against tanking.
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In his recent appearance on The Emily Austin Show, Brooklyn Nets star Michael Porter Jr. offered candid thoughts about the controversial practice that has dominated the narratives across the league this year.
"They've got to do something about this tanking situation," Porter Jr. said. "I don't like how teams are deliberately trying to tank to get a good draft pick. I just think that throwing full NBA seasons down the drain is not the way to go.
"It's not very ethical to the game, and people pay a lot of money to watch the best players in the world compete. So you want to see teams competing to their fullest ability every single night. And when teams are doing some of the stuff that they're doing nowadays, it can be tough."
Tanking is defined as an intentional losing of games to secure greater odds of obtaining the most talented prospects in the draft lottery.
This 2025-26, the NBA has been marred by chatters out of several teams' obvious tactic to lose games. Infamously, from last month, the league office dropped the hammer by fining the Utah Jazz $500,000 and slapping a $100,000 punishment against the Indiana Pacers for violating the player participation policy.
Commissioner Adam Silver already revealed that he and the rest of the league leadership are already looking for ways to combat tanking.
Porter Jr.'s sentiments are quite intriguing out of his and the Nets' current situation. They are currently positioned for a strong lottery probability this year as the 14th-seeded team in the East with a 16-47 record.
Apparently, Porter Jr. and the Nets have silenced tanking allegations on Saturday, beating the top-seeded Detroit Pistons with a 107-105 dramatic comeback road win from being down by as much as 23 points.
"I've seen some people have certain thoughts on how that should change. But I just think that you may tank for a whole season and then you might not even get the draft pick you want. Even if you do get the draft pick you want, that player might not pan out to what you thought he would pan out to, and now you just set your program back years and years and years," Porter Jr. argued.
"So I understand teams rebuilding, but I feel like there's an ethical way to do it and a non-ethical way to do it. So hopefully they can change that a little bit. I just feel like the best players should be on the floor night to night."
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