The NBA’s yucky tanking problem, plus an American speedskating gold

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Good morning! Protect your hamate bone today. Inside: 

Tanking, Evolved: Why NBA teams are tanking so hard this year

Tanking has always been a part of the modern NBA, because the math is too simple: forfeit a season now for a better return (an elite draft prospect) later. Elite players win championships and bring about every form of success this league has to offer. At its base, the logic is flawless. 

The product, however, is ugly. And right now, as Sam Vecenie recently noted, we’re witnessing a confluence of ugly we haven’t seen in a while. A quick overview: 

• The 2026 NBA Draft class is viewed as special, so teams are racing to the bottom of the standings in order to increase lottery odds. BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, Kansas’ Darryn Peterson and Duke’s Cameron Boozer could be superstars. Multiple franchises are willing to forgo competitiveness, or even a shot at the Play-In Tournament, for the chance to draft them.
  
  
• It’s gotten pretty yucky. The 18-37 Utah Jazz are a prime example, as they’ve been trotting out a decent starting lineup — particularly with the addition of Jaren Jackson Jr. at the trade deadline — and then pulling the stars for the fourth quarter, no matter the game status. Winnable games theoretically become routine losses. The front office “wins.” The same idea goes for teams like Washington and Memphis. 

The league, to be fair, has been trying to combat this for years. Lottery odds have shifted to disincentivize the tank. The Player Participation Policy fines teams who sit stars, though the Jazz’s strategy exploits a loophole there. The league even added a Play-In Tournament to increase the playoff field. Remember when the Heat made a run to the finals from the Play-In? 

Franchises are still sprinting away from that possibility, which is a bummer. Add in the NBA’s slow-burn betting issues, and it’s a bleak picture of both teams and players potentially trying to lose on a nightly basis. I thought our roundtable discussion from December really pointed out how serious the issue is. 

For further context, I went to The Athletic’s John Hollinger for some GOAT-level expertise: 

Compared to other modern iterations, how bad is this current strain of tanking?

💬 We’re not quite in “Mark Madsen shooting a 3 on every possession” territory (2006 Timberwolves), but just you wait. The worst and most egregious tanking episodes usually come in late March and April, where teams are closer to realizing their exact place in the pecking order. In particular, two teams with top-eight protected first-round picks (Washington and Utah) will be strongly incentivized to pull out all the stops to reach the requisite threshold of losses.

The discussion on potential tanking solutions is wide right now. The league has discussed eliminating pick protections for slot Nos. 4-14 in the draft, which deters teams from tanking to maintain a lottery slot at all costs (the tanking can get extremely messy here). Another proposal would cement the lottery order March 1, leaving the rest of the season for actual trying. Outsiders have also even discussed eliminating the draft completely. 

I asked John for his favorite solution:

💬 The best one is simple: the pick protections. I’ve seen other, more complex solutions to address tanking, and I’m not entirely sure they don’t just exchange one set of problems for another. But the pick protection adjustment? That’s some exceedingly low-hanging fruit.

Sigh. Brace yourselves for more tankage with months left to go in the season. Let’s move on:

News to Know

Rich Schultz / Getty Images

Inside Tisch’s relationship with Epstein
Last week, Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “brief,” but emails analyzed by The Athletic in a story published this morning show an extensive correspondence between the two men, primarily focused on Epstein scouting young women for Tisch. Their connection also started after Epstein had been sued repeatedly by sex abuse victims. See all the emails here. 

Related: USWNT legend Abby Wambach left the Wasserman Agency yesterday due to its founder’s ties to Epstein. Read more.

Ex-girlfriend speaks out
A day after Norwegian Olympian Sturla Holm Lægreid gained international notoriety due to his confessed infidelity, the victim of said cheating told a Norwegian tabloid “it would be hard to forgive” Lægreid and that “it hurts” to be put in a spotlight for which she didn’t ask. If you’re keeping score, Lægreid did all this after winning a bronze medal in biathlon. Making your relationship an international incident after finishing third feels like the wrong tactic to me. Read more about her comments here.

Jackson willing to testify against Pearce
WNBA player Rickea Jackson is cooperating with authorities and is willing to testify against Falcons edge rusher James Pearce Jr. if the domestic violence charges against him result in a trial, according to a legal filing. Police charged Pearce with five felonies after he followed Jackson’s vehicle in his own car and intentionally hit hers multiple times, per a police report. Read our full story.

More news:

• American Jordan Stolz won the day in Italy yesterday by breaking his own speedskating world record to take home gold. See all the Day 5 Olympic highlights here.
  
• One person is dead and 32 more are injured after a bus crash involving an Iowa college baseball team yesterday. More details here.
  
• Authorities charged BYU wide receiver Parker Kingston with felony rape yesterday in connection with a February 2025 incident. Read the full report.
  
• More hamate bone trouble in baseball, which is something I didn’t expect to write: Arizona’s Corbin Carroll and Baltimore’s Jackson Holliday will both need surgery after breaking their hamate bones yesterday in early spring training activities. Yikes.
  
• Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe said the United Kingdom has been “colonized by immigrants.” See his comments — and the blowback to them — here.
  
• The Big 12 basketball tournaments will feature an LED floor that can change designs in real time. See the pictures.
  
• Angel Reese is returning to Unrivaled midseason. It’s perfect timing.