Tanking was a hot-button issue during this NBA season and the Utah Jazz became the poster child for the team that was taking advantage of the current incentivization structure within the league.
Recently, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that the league would be making changes this offseason to curb tanking, with a special meeting and vote slated for sometime in May.
“It’s been a really interesting few weeks. We’ve had a lot of dialog with the NBA and with other teams. In the NBA we’re competitors, but we’re also partners, and so we’ve had a lot of interesting discussions. There’s some really good ideas and proposals out there. We’re still trying to narrow those all down as a group.”
— Utah Jazz president of basketball operations Austin Ainge
A number of anti-tanking solutions have been reported as having been bandied about during league board of governors and general managers meetings.
On Monday, I asked Jazz president of basketball operations Austin Ainge what he thought about some of the proposed solutions and how discussions have been going.
“It’s been a really interesting few weeks,” Ainge said. “We’ve had a lot of dialog with the NBA and with other teams. In the NBA we’re competitors, but we’re also partners, and so we’ve had a lot of interesting discussions. There’s some really good ideas and proposals out there. We’re still trying to narrow those all down as a group.”
Though Ainge wouldn’t get into specifics about the proposals and whether he believed they would hurt non-destination teams, he said that he believed that the conversations across the league were heading in the right direction.
“We had a good general managers meeting, and then there’s been countless calls and texts and spreadsheets sent back and forth with things between teams,” he said. “I’m optimistic that the NBA is pushing us in the right direction, and that we’ll have a solution that (is) looking at short-term and long-term solutions.”
Silver said that the expectation is for a new structure to be voted on this offseason and implemented for the following year, so that the 2027 draft would operate under the new structure, whatever that turns out to be.
