Tanking remains a problem in the NBA and the league is going to take action, again

There are some big games on Wednesday in the NBA.

Atlanta visits Detroit in a matchup pitting a Hawks team that is rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. Oklahoma City plays Boston, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions. Houston plays Minnesota, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding.

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And Washington plays Utah. A team on a 16-game slide will visit a team that would unquestionably benefit from finishing fifth or worse in the league this season.

The tanking epidemic is being discussed yet again this week at the board of governors meeting in New York. The NBA has tweaked the draft process a few times over the years, and it seems like bigger changes are finally on the way. They probably won’t be finalized this week, but they’re coming.

“Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory? Yes, is my view,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said last month, adding that the league is “going to be looking more closely at the totality of all the circumstances this season in terms of teams’ behavior, and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice.”

Silver will speak with reporters on Wednesday and the big news of the day is expected to be expansion plans, with the league’s governors set to vote this week on moving one step closer to adding franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle.

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But once the hubbub of expansion talk dies down, tanking talk will come up. Again.

There have been three 16-game losing streaks in the NBA this season. Washington is on one now, Indiana — a team that made the NBA Finals last season, but knew this would be a reset year the second that Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in Game 7 of that series — snapped such a streak with a last-second win in Orlando on Monday night, and Sacramento went 0-16 during a stretch of January and February.

“We’ve got to get some wins, man. We’ve got to keep building as a team,” Indiana forward Pascal Siakam said in the televised on-court interview after the win in Orlando. “It’s been tough. It’s been a tough year for…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/tanking-remains-problem-nba-league-132624351.html

Author : TIM REYNOLDS

Publish date : 2026-03-24 13:26:00

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