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By Harrison Bray

In recent years, there has been an increase in tanking within the NBA. Tanking is when a sports team purposely loses in order to gain something. Some teams within the NBA have been doing this in order to try and get a higher pick within the player draft, the process in which teams select players for their team. The main question is whether or not tanking should be allowed or not.

Victor Wembanyama.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons user Thomas Savoja.

This year, during the 2022-2023 NBA regular season, there was an increase in tanking. Everybody was set on trying to acquire the number one pick. One reason behind this is that this year there is generational talent in the draft. Victor Wembanyama, a 19-year-old, 7-foot-2 French basketball player, is the consensus number one by a long shot. Some have even said that this is the best player in the draft since LeBron James. He has the ability to play within the paint and hit deep threes. There is also Scoot Henderson, a 19-year-old playing for the G-League team Ignite, who would be the first pick in this and any other draft if it wasn’t for Wembanyama. This year’s rookie class has some real talent that teams want to get their hands on.

Recently, in April, the NBA fined the Dallas Mavericks for not playing their starters in an elimination game. The team was hit with a $750,000 fine, which ultimately won’t change much. The NBA made a statement on April 14 saying how “The Dallas Mavericks’ decision to restrict key players from fully participating in an elimination game last Friday against Chicago undermined the integrity of our sport.” While this does make sense as to why Dallas was fined, it seems that the team management doesn’t mind as long as they are able to secure a strong draft pick in the upcoming NBA draft.

The NFL used to have issues like this with tanking but was able to make changes that would favor non-playoff contenders who still perform well. The NBA hasn’t quite gotten this under control yet, as teams fight to be part of the lottery. The lottery is basically for the teams that missed the playoffs, and it is what will determine the draft order. Only the first four picks are determined by this lottery, and the 14 teams that missed the playoffs are a part of it.

The NBA Draft. Photo credit: Wikimedia user bikeride.

The NBA and others have been talking about different possibilities for preventing tanking from happening. In an article for Bleacher Report, Josh Martin talks about the different possibilities of the draft, such as removing the lottery system and having a completely randomized draft. This obviously removes the need to tank, but some fans think that some teams undeserving of a top pick would end up with one. There is also the idea that the NBA replace the lottery with an auction. To do this, each team would receive credits to use in the auction, and teams that performed worse would get more than those that performed better. This would lead to more teams having a chance and opportunity to get a top draft pick.  

A much different idea is to just remove the entire draft as a whole. Teams would then go after all players as if they were free agents. This would be interesting but could possibly lead to certain teams getting much more stacked than others.

The issue of the draft structure and the fact that teams want to tank is something that definitely needs to be fixed. Although there are currently many theories and propositions for what could be changed or fixed, they all come with their own downsides.