With the NBA draft’s first round set for Tuesday, this seems like a good time to bring up a sore and tiresome subject: tanking.
The NBA had a half-dozen teams falling all over themselves trying to get to the bottom of the standings during the 2025-26 season so they could have an early pick in the draft. It’s the same story every year.
There are two races in the NBA — one to the top, and one to the bottom. The Utah Jazz made tanking an art form for four years. The winners for being losers this year are the Washington Wizards, followed by the Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls.
The NBA has tried everything to stop tanking — including the current cockamamie lottery system with its ping pong balls — and will implement another new system starting next year, but there’s one thing the league hasn’t tried: relegation.
Relegation works for professional soccer. It would work for professional basketball. This is how relegation works: The worst team or teams in the league each season are dropped from the NBA into a lower league and are replaced by the two best teams from another league — teams from Europe, teams from the NBA G League, etc.
Problem solved. Talk about incentive not to tank. Relegated teams would lose a fortune — NBA teams pull in $300M-$800 million in revenues per season, depending on the size of their market.
Tanking — trying to lose — is one of the biggest travesties in sports. It’s a form of game fixing, which, under other circumstances, is a crime (ask former Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby).
The Jazz have essentially told their fans, “We’re going to put an inferior product on the floor for four seasons but please keep supporting us. We’re going to try to lose so that some day we can win.”
Imagine a restaurant doing the same thing. Sorry, we’re going to serve food that’s past its expiration date and the service is going to be really slow while we rebuild our business. Bon appetit.
With the threat of relegation hanging over the league, every team will play hard and every game will matter.
The flaw in the plan is that it requires more depth and quality in the “minor” leagues from which to promote teams. On the other hand – stick with this — if investors and non-NBA cities know that G League teams have the potential to be promoted to the NBA and a huge payday, they are going to start pumping money into the G League immediately and applying for new franchises.
There are more investors and cities that want franchises than there are franchises. If the NBA decided to promote teams from Europe, it has the added benefit of making the NBA an international league, which is the goal.
There’s a perfectly good model overseas for the NBA to copy. The Premier League, the English-based soccer league, exchanges promotions and relegations with the English Football League.
The three teams that finish at the very bottom of the 20-team Premier League at the end of the season are automatically relegated to the English Football League, an inferior league – like Triple-A baseball.
The three best teams in the English Football League – usually, the two teams that played in the championship, plus another top team – are promoted.
The 34-year-old Premier League has demoted three teams annually with one exception (four were relegated in 1994-95). While most of the demoted teams return to the Premier League after one season, many teams have had to wait anywhere from five to 22 years to return.
Relegation has devastating financial implications — via the loss of sponsorships, broadcasting contracts, ticket revenues, etc. To avoid losing relegated teams to bankruptcy and keep demoted teams afloat, the Premier League provides “parachute payments” via a percentage of TV money.
Look, the NBA is running out of ideas to stop tanking. Over the years the league has tried coin tosses and territorial picks and finally, beginning in 1984, the lottery system. Nothing has worked so far.
More teams than ever are tanking. It’s time for a new plan.