play1:40Windhorst: Jazz tanking more ‘egregious,’ but still within the rulesBrian Windhorst chimes in on accusations that the Utah Jazz have been “tanking” late in games and says they’re not the only franchise doing it.
Stephen A. on tanking in the NBA: It’s on the owners to care (2:37)Stephen A. Smith shares his thoughts on the NBA’s three comprehensive anti-tanking proposals. (2:37)
Windhorst: Jazz tanking more ‘egregious,’ but still within the rulesBrian Windhorst chimes in on accusations that the Utah Jazz have been “tanking” late in games and says they’re not the only franchise doing it.
Brian Windhorst chimes in on accusations that the Utah Jazz have been “tanking” late in games and says they’re not the only franchise doing it.
Anthony SlaterApr 8, 2026, 07:00 AM ETMultiple Authors
“I’m super grateful, but at the same time, I was really surprised,” Garcia told reporters during his brief tenure. “I wasn’t expecting to be here right now.”
The Jazz, trying to protect a top-eight protected pick they owe the Oklahoma City Thunder, were outscored by 69 points in Garcia’s 169 minutes. They signed Bez Mbeng on March 13. Mbeng is currently getting more minutes per game for Utah than he did for the Sioux Falls Skyforce. The team is minus-146 with him on the floor this month.
The Memphis Grizzlies, having lost 15 of 17, have started an NBA record 25 different players this season. In recent weeks, they’ve deployed a similar appearing tactic with the signings of Lucas Williamson, Adama Bal and Lawson Lovering.
It’s a popularizing strategy — adding, activating and overusing midtier G League players — that NBA sources insist spawned in Oklahoma City a few years back.
“It’s a copycat league,” an executive on a currently tanking team told ESPN. “All the models and ideas, there are always further iterations. That’s what happens when it works.”
In the final week of a rapid two-year rebuild, the Thunder signed Georgios Kalaitzakis, Melvin Frazier and Zavier Simpson to their roster to close out the 2021-22 season.
The three, all considered non-NBA level talents, were then given 40-minute per night roles for the final four games. The Thunder were outscored by 85 points in Kalaitzakis’ court time, 92 in Frazier’s and 95 in Simpson’s.
Kalaitzakis and Frazier haven’t been in the league since. Simpson was given a similarly brief cup of coffee on a plummeting Grizzlies team two Aprils later.
Those final three blowouts kept the Thunder at 24 wins, one behind the Indiana Pacers, clinching the league’s fourth-worst record. On lottery night, the Thunder jumped to second and the Pacers dropped to sixth. Oklahoma City drafted Chet Holmgren. Indiana drafted Bennedict Mathurin.
“These teams are doing the whole gamut: sitting guys in the fourth, playing analytically bad lineups, drawing up plays for bad shots,” one Western Conference general manager said. “The creativity is impressive and I don’t blame them. It’s the best strategy to get better. Look at all the most promising teams in the league: Thunder, Spurs, Pistons, Rockets, Hornets. Years of being bad and building up on high picks. It’s painful but worthwhile.”
The strategies are growing in audaciousness and frequency of use. The orders from management are coming in earlier in the season, creating months of competitively compromised and often unwatchable basketball. The average margin of victory in NBA games this season is 13.1 points, the largest spread in history, and a record 89 games have been decided by 30 or more points.
“There is an aspect of team-building that is called a genuine rebuild — a rebuild with integrity,” commissioner Adam Silver said at a late March news conference. “The problem we’re having these days is it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild. … It’s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop. And I want to say that directly to our fans.”
ON THE NIGHT of March 27, seven of the 10 NBA games featured a tanking team. That included a late tip between the Washington Wizards and Warriors.
The Wizards were without Trae Young and Anthony Davis and the Warriors were without Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler III, leaving undermanned rosters and a matchup that remained tight deep into the fourth quarter.
But they had contrasting motivations. Golden State, still clinging to fading playoff hopes, were incentivized to win. Washington, intent on retaining the top-eight protected draft pick they owe the New York Knicks, were incentivized to lose. The sides acted accordingly.
Alex Sarr, the second-year center at the heart of Washington’s rebuild, had two fouls at halftime. He committed his third, fourth and fifth within the first four minutes of the third quarter. Wizards coach Brian Keefe didn’t pull him.
So Sarr, the 2024 No. 2 pick, hacked away and committed his sixth with 5:31 left in the third, disqualifying him after 22 minutes of action and more than 17 minutes still left in the game.
It’s an example of the casual hoops many around the league warn as a side effect of tanking, generating bad and sometimes unbreakable habits for players marinating for months in meaningless hoops with little consequence.
“Losing leaks into your DNA,” a former NBA general manager said. “I mean, it can really, really f— kids up.”
They both watched the entirety of the fourth quarter from the bench as a five-man lineup of undrafted Leaky Black and four bench players logged all 12 minutes together and a five-point lead became a five-point loss.
The Warriors have seen plenty of it over the past month: The status of their depleted roster has kept them in competitive fourth-quarter games against the league’s worst teams, forcing them to get creative with their lineups. The Wizards, Grizzlies, Jazz, Brooklyn Nets and Chicago Bulls all went away from their better players in the second half.
The NBA delivered the Jazz a $500,000 fine in February for this practice after they benched Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarter of tight road games in Orlando and Miami.
“Overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning undermines the foundation of NBA competition and we will respond accordingly to any further actions,” Silver said in a statement.
In the two months since, there have been no fines for the midgame benching tactic despite its frequent and increased usage. Like the Wizards, Utah coach Will Hardy used the minutes cap explanation as reasoning.
“I get fined when I do wrong,” Warriors’ Draymond Green said on Tuesday. “Just fine the hell outta people. They love taking money from players. Keep fining teams. I’ve seen two fines. As players, they snatch that money in a heartbeat. Why isn’t it the same? Everybody love money.”
Several members of coaching staffs across the league tell stories of these tanking teams yanking even their midrotation players the moment one of them gets hot, essentially searching for the worst possible combination for the given moment. Others have noted that the advent of the three two-way roster spots has made it easier in recent seasons to generate these G League level lineup combinations.
Almost every franchise has been guilty of tanking in the past few decades. Former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined $600,000 in 2018 after admitting on a podcast with Julius Erving that he was in the process of executing the strategy that would later help them acquire Luka Doncic.
The Mavericks were fined again in 2023 for tanking in an effort to keep a top-10 protected pick, which would help them secure Dereck Lively II. The Warriors have had a front office executive later admit to a purposeful tank late in the 2011-12 season to keep their top-seven protected pick, which became Harrison Barnes.
“It’s been going on for so long, but people have just sort of ignored it because one or two teams were doing it at a time — not 10,” an East executive said. “If it didn’t work, 10 teams wouldn’t be doing it.”
THE INDIANA PACERS were also fined by the NBA in February for what the league deemed a violation of the player participation policy. They ruled that Pascal Siakam and two starters “could have played under the medical standard” but didn’t.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who served a two-decade tenure as the president of the coaches association, bristled at the league’s unilateral medical ruling, indicating a franchise priority to take a cautious injury approach in a lost season without Tyrese Haliburton, their best player.
“[The NBA] asked if we considered medicating [Aaron Nesmith] to play in a game when we were 30 games under .500,” he told a local radio station. “So I was very surprised.”
This isn’t the first season a Haliburton absence has altered the Pacers’ motivations. Haliburton missed 13 of the final 15 games in the 2022-23 season because of ankle and knee injuries and — as has been common practice for decades — the Pacers leaned into losing late when realistic playoff hopes faded.
“It was an extension year,” Hield said. “Then when it comes to extension talks, it was like, ‘Oh, the numbers, X, Y, Z.'”
Hield believed his value had been manipulated and, three years later, wonders whether that brief late-season tanking strategy sent his late prime down an altered path.
“It f—ed up the money,” Hield said. “Me and Rick are still close, but that really rubbed me in the wrong way. Tanking just f—ed everything up for everybody.”
The Pacers benefitted from the brief pivot. They earned a higher value draft pick to help remake their roster and made the conference finals the next two seasons and the NBA Finals in 2025.
But the shrapnel from tanking has generated collateral damage across the league. It’s a common complaint from countless veterans in their private moments. Multiple midcareer NBA players detailed their frustration to ESPN but noted that the problem would often only surface in the last week or two of the season earlier in their careers. Increasingly, the losing strategies are forcing them out of the picture in March, February or even January.