Nba should let teams loan out players, Lauri gets sent to the bucks for a year or something if tanking teams are gonna do this

Lauri, JJJ, AD, Trae all not playing to tank is insane

Unfortunately Ainge wouldn’t accept anything less than 4 firsts, 4 pick swaps, and 2 starters on rookie deals.

It’s the difference between assembling a team that can’t win, and trying not to win.

Ultimately fans want to believe that both teams are competing at tip off. The tanking team might be bad, and some of their injuries might be suspect, but you want to believe that the coaches and players on the floor are trying to win.

Tonight features IND v WAS. I guarantee you tanking will still be talked about.

Lauri is resting tonight, needs rest from resting during all star break

Ok but do you think Antman is the face of the league?

Na. I liked this emphasis on tanking. You know how shitty it is for fans who pay $400-600 for tickets and accomodations for their kids only for the star to not play?

Shit is exhausting

Don’t worry. You’ve got Mavs vs the Pacers, Nets, Kings and Grizzlies to look forward to over the next two weeks. I’m sure those will be fantastic match ups for the tanking discussions.

It’s still going to be Giannis and LeBron speculation. Zero chance they focus on actual games.

Fixing games implies players are intentionally trying to lose. They aren’t. We put in a lineup of young developing talent against the Heat and they played their asses off and won the game.

If changing lineups = “fixing games” then every tanking team that’s ever tanked has been fixing games, because there is zero difference between giving your players fake injuries and playing them 0 minutes, and playing them a restricted 25 minutes. You could argue it’s much more ethical to just play stars on restricted minutes and let the youth develop rather than force a Zubac to lie about some new injury preventing him from playing.

Perhaps the most absurd narrative of this whole saga is that its somehow more noble or “ethical” to sit your players entire games on fake injury reports every one knows are fake, rather than just letting them play but with limited minutes.

Yeah if the front office is fielding a garbage team it’s one thing. I don’t like it. I never liked “The Process” because they were actively choosing to field a worse product. But at the end of the day the team on the floor was still trying to win. They were just set up to fail. And if they won, cool! Good for the players. The fans are showing up knowing their team isn’t the best but they still believe they’re trying to win. 

But a team who, during the course of a game, especially when in a position to possibly win, actively chooses to lose, is worse. As you note, that is actually, by definition, ‘throwing the game’. At that point why not just forfeit every game? If your singular goal is to lose just write an L in the column and let’s all just stay home and not waste our time and money.

Both are a farce to the game, but one is so much more brazen and stupid than the other. 

To add to that, when a player purposefully misses a shot, is he match-fixing? Yes, because if he tried making it, there’s a 40-50% chance that he would.

So, when the team on an organizational level purposefully does everything it can to lose, what’s the difference exactly?

OK, but who is harmed by it?

I get that it goes against the spirit of competition, and makes for a bad watching experience, that isn’t what I am talking about. Fans of tanking teams generally understand that the team is doing it to try to improve in the future, so they don’t really care.

If we remove gambling (which franky I don’t think should be a concern) who actually suffers any tangible harm if the tanking is fully transparent?

at the end of the day sports are entertainment, sitting players who can play deliberately means you are putting out an intentionally shittier product, who cares about a potential player a year from now.

Well the Jazz could offer more money since it’s not a desirable market.

Jk. They can’t. It’s tank or GTFOH.

The new draft system Silver came up with is also WAY worse when it comes to tanking. At least before, only the truly bad teams were willing to do it. Now? We have fucking play-in teams getting the #1 pick. Even mid-tier teams have to consider throwing games because it increases their chances. It’s complete bs. Meanwhile the actual bad teams get fucked over time and time again. The lottery just feels like it was created to rig the draft when necessary.

No one does and no one talks about it lol. No one also talks about where they’re going to field like 40 new NBA players from to create competitive teams if they do add two new franchises. This is the current state of the NBA, but they’re still going to add two new franchises?? Somehow ??

Jazz drafted AK47 and traded for Jeff Hornacek. The other two are correct.

Yeah, how will the Jazz ever win…

How could they ever get top quality players like Mitchell, Gobert, AK47, Boozer, Stockton, Malone unless they tank their ass off and get a top four pick.

Oh, Malone was picked 13th? Mitchell also at 13? Stockton 16th? AK47 24th? Gobert 27th?

This widespread notion that you have to have a #1 pick in a generational draft in order to stop tanking is so misguided. It’s combined with this toxic “ring culture” mentality, so it apparently doesn’t matter if you draft a surefire HOF guy like Dame and have a decade of playoff appearances and relevance. Didn’t win a ring, might as well throw the whole decade away and spend the next 10 years trying to lose until we hit the right lottery combo a few times over a 3-4 year span. I’m sick of it.

Draft better. Develop better. Stop trying to intentionally lose by flagrantly throwing games.

IMO they have to essentially restructure how the cap system works, separating the “allowance” on signing free agents/drafting players from resigning existing players

I think this could lead to a path where we could eliminate the draft, and undesirably franchises become the top dogs in the “rookie free agent” market by having the most money to spend on new players since they are unlikely to get free agents

This would also require removing the cap on rookie contracts

You could try not beating on them

Yeah and they still beat us lmfao

Don’t worry, everyone will get what they want, and Lauri will now play 30 less minutes instead of 5.

Ill never understand this argument. It’s not any different than a front office purposely creating the worst roster possible that’s intended to lose from day 1. At least one side gets to watch real talent play for 3 quarters while the other gets a pile of shit for 4 quarters

I thought it was going crazy eariler in the season thinking that. The few games I watched it felt like they were intentionally putting in losing lineups. I know sitting players is a thing, but intentionally throwing games while playing them seemed way too blatant. I cant believe that was actually what they were doing.

They own the league they don’t have to do shit publicly lmfao, this is posturing

Bruh the Jazz are literally throwing winnable games in the 4th Q. It’s a disgrace

It literally is fixing matches by definition

If an outside source paid the Utah coach to do the exact thing he is doing, you’d call it match fixing. His actions are fundamentally the same.

Only they are

There’s only an incentive for 10+ teams to tank because of the lottery. Most teams would put on a competitive performance for their fans and try to make the playoffs for tons of reasons if it was between that and a 5th overall pick or worse.

But when cooper Flagg goes to an 8 seed, there’s every incentive to tank for teams even well into the playoff rankings if they don’t think they have a real chance to win it all.

I get the argument — both involve a party being willing to lose a game for some benefit.

But the MAJOR difference is transparency — everyone knows that a tanking team is trying to lose. But if a player is covertly throwing possessions or games, it completely erodes fans trust in the sport.

The prop betting shit is worse because it means entire teams can get wrecked by 1 or 2 rogue actors. With tanking typically it’s not a team that’s going to push for a ton of wins even if they were trying, whereas prop bets incentivizes any number of people to take certain aspects of their performance and mold it to match whatever they’re betting. The fact you can do it on the fly is even shadier.

So you think an entire organization choosing to fix matches is better than one player choosing to fix their stats for a game?

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Where did Ishbia say anything suggesting he cares about bettors?

I agree but damn, majority in this thread seem to think that illegal prop betting is somehow better than tanking, which isn’t sanctioned by the league due to not being defined well enough; I mean, it sucks but perhaps change some rules first before malding like Ishbia, who also traded away all of his picks? tl;dr hate the game, not the player

He runs a firm that cheated the system with backdoor illegal deals to gain market share and steal from regular people who needed mortgages. I don’t want to hear his opinion on anything to do with ethics or morality.

Select players purposely try to lose - huge scandal.

Whole organization purposely try to lose, just strategy. 

A Jazz fan getting upset about that is just hilarious 😂😂 obviously a Jazz fan

What he’s saying is true tho

He’s a typical billionaire vulture but I’m not sure how he said anything wrong here. He’s right about tanking

He’s right. I don’t give a shit about Jontay Porter subbing out after playing 5 minutes instead of 8. Obviously, you have to ban him, but it’s not super consequential overall.

Teams throwing games is way more impactful.

Most prop bet scandals have involved scrubs in garbage time not changing the outcome of the game.

If all owners called each other out publicly on bad shit the other is doing, the league would be much better for it.

Throwing matches on an organizational level is worse than a prop bet scandal by definition.

Name the 10 teams intentionally trying to lose

Obviously tanking is an issue. But it’s only being made to be an issue now because the small market teams are doing it.