Tanking OK, but don’t talk about it

Every year, the subject of NBA teams tanking for the best possible draft position becomes a hot topic. And every year, the league does everything it can to stop people from talking about it. Everything, that is, except putting in any substantial reforms to actually stop it.

Take the current situation involving the tanking. Before the team resumed play after the allstar break, John Paxson, the Bulls president of basketball operations, met with local reporters and told them that Chicago’s two veteran starters, Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday, were going to be healthy scratches.

The truth was clear to see: The actual goal was for the Bulls — in the midst of a nine-way tanking battle — to lose as many games as possible.

The problem was that the Bulls were too obvious. In response, the NBA recently ordered them to start playing Lopez and Holiday so the team doesn’t run afoul of a rule about resting healthy players. The league instituted the rule after the Phoenix Suns sat starting point guard Eric Bledsoe for the final month of last season. When Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently admitted that “losing is our best option,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver hammered him with a $600,000 fine, even if what Cuban said is blatantly obvious to anyone watching his team or the league.

The NBA’s rationale in announcing the fine? It was a public statement that was “detrimental to the NBA.”

It was actually a statement of fact, one acknowledging the obvious situation in Dallas — and for the other teams at the bottom of the standings.

The league forced through lottery reform changes this past summer, which will go into effect in 2019, levelling out the odds for teams at the top of the lottery.

Those changes, though, accomplished what the league wanted by eliminating some of the debate about the topic.

What it hasn’t stopped is the hilarity of this season’s race to the bottom. In the final season with the current rules in place, more teams than ever are doing everything they can to lose.