The broken windows theory of tanking

Has purposeful losing become a contagion? Can targeted punishment deter the most anti-competitive behaviors until meaningful reform is achieved, or will it prevent meaningful reform?

Good morning. It's still the All-Star Break. Let's basketball.

NBA teams have become wholly unafraid of Adam Silver. His office has handed out fines for violations of policies related to player availability in recent years. The Mavericks famously received a fine for allegedly manipulating player availability to lose crucial games when they were technically, slightly still in a play-in race a couple years ago. The Jazz picked up a fine last season for resting Lauri Markkanen outside the auspices of an actual injury. The Jazz and Pacers were just fined before All-Star Weekend, Utah for sitting stars in the fourth quarter and Indiana for giving DNPs to three starters (including All-Star Pascal Siakam) when facing ... the Jazz.

We'll see what shenanigans continue. Certainly plenty of other teams have engaged in efforts as offensive as those of the Jazz or Pacers; it's become well-documented that the Jazz's practice of benching their two best players in the fourth quarters of winnable games was used multiple times by the Raptors with Scottie Barnes last season. Fewer people noticed, perhaps due to the point in the season in which the tactic was deployed, perhaps because it was Toronto and not a team led by criticism-magnet Danny Ainge. Beyond the details of individual efforts, he issue Silver and the NBA are facing is that tanking activities are becoming pervasive less than a decade after Silver and the NBA claimed victory over the nefarious forces of tankdom with the draft lottery reforms.

Those draft lottery reforms, which flattened the odds to reduce the benefit of being the worst and deter multi-year full-on tank jobs, seemed to do the trick for a bit. Intentional teardowns after the reforms took hold seemed to last less time. We've seen multiple teams in the mid- to late-lottery rewarded with high picks and, by extension, very bad teams punished with picks outside the top four. The Jazz in particular seem to get screwed by the lottery every year, no matter how awful their record. But whatever progress was made early in the aftermath of the reforms, the pervasiveness of anti-competitive tactics has reached a fever pitch.

The Wizards, now in the third season of a deep foundational dismantling and having picked Nos. 2, 6 and 7 over the last three drafts (the No. 7 pick was acquired via trade for the No. 8 pick, for what it's worth), straight-up traded for two former All-Stars who it appears may miss all or most of the rest of the season, allowing Washington to pick up another top-8 pick.

The Kings are talking about putting Zach LaVine under the knife for what appears to be a finger injury that sure sounds like it could probably wait until the summer, and it's unclear whether Keegan Murray or Domantas Sabonis will suit up again in 2025-26.