captain_ahabb | Lakers

770 | 7 hours ago

Why are redditors so invested in pretending there’s no tanking problem

I_Set_3_Alarms | Celtics

369 | 6 hours ago

I think the overall takeaway is that sure tanking is a problem. But gambling and poor officiating are bigger problems that affect the game and viewing experience, that the NBA is doing nothing to fix

ImNotAndreCaldwell | Warriors

109 | 5 hours ago

I think the overall takeaway is that sure tanking is a problem.

Title if the post:

Dear Adam Silver, There is no tanking problem.

SoaplessTitanic | Celtics

28 | 4 hours ago

Right we can have a nuanced discussion on which problems are more severe and should be prioritized, but this post ain’t it lol

CdnfaS | Knicks

21 | 6 hours ago

This is the point I’m making. Sure, bad teams are bad for the league, but what’s really bad is when the average consumer no longer respects the integrity of the game. Ok, so maybe I used a little hyperbole to make the point, but it’s still valid.

TICKLE_PANTS | Spurs

106 | 6 hours ago

Tanking also reduces the integrity of the game. This was also, not your point, as you titled the post ‘there is no tanking’.

ParrotPirate15

16 | 6 hours ago

Bad teams with poor roster construction are going to be bad. How do you stop a bad team from being bad with poor roster construction? There’s reasons why some of these teams cannot win 20 games and if people watched these games they’ll understand like 5-6 teams this year are legit bad.

Nobody7713 | Raptors

22 | 5 hours ago

There are some teams that are truly dreadful. Ones that will honestly win at most 25 games. There’s other teams that could probably win 30-35 games if they wanted to that are actively trying to be worse to improve their draft stock. The latter is the problem. Two reasons. One, throwing games reduces the integrity of the game. Two, it actually hurts the point of the draft for the worst teams to get the best picks because now there’s mediocre teams muddling it with the bad ones.

EngleTheBert | Nuggets

14 | 5 hours ago

Yeah there’s going to always be a bottom third of the league. Sure some franchises are actively choosing to be in that bottom third as a plan, but even if every team compete to the best of their abilities every game, there would be teams struggling to get to 20-25 wins

ParrotPirate15

8 | 5 hours ago

Exactly. Not to mention out of the four major American professional sports league the nba is the one dominated with smaller rosters and singular talents. One player can change the whole team. Sure one player won’t win the championship but they can will you into the playoffs…

siziyman | Heat

8 | 4 hours ago

there would be teams struggling to get to 20-25 wins

I don’t see anyone saying that those should be punished as long as they’re trying to win (tanking teams are actively trying to lose, which is the issue).

TheTurtleOne | Celtics

5 | 4 hours ago

How do you differentiate teams that are actively “trying” to lose as opposed to teams who are just ass? Doesn’t seem like an easy task.

beforeitcloy | SAC

7 | 3 hours ago

Remove the incentive to be bad and you don’t have to differentiate them. Problem solved.

ParrotPirate15

2 | 3 hours ago

You hit the nail on the head. The lottery itself is the problem. It gives the opportunity to teams that shouldn’t be in the top 5 to be able to pick in the top 5.

siziyman | Heat

2 | 4 hours ago

When teams who are already bad are also clearly underplaying their best available players in favor of objectively worse alternatives, for example.

Like, Wizards are playing Alex Sarr 20-25 minutes a night. They don’t have even remotely comparable players available on his positions that would justify not playing him more when you’re already losing, but the game is not out of reach yet.

To be clear, I don’t suggest widespread punishments, but there are obnoxiously obvious cases, and those shouldn’t happen.

Clemsontigger16

2 | 4 hours ago

Great, then strive to win and still end up near the bottom. Instead of resting guys and pulling them in any close games as they actively try and lose. If all teams are trying then it’s fine…but if team A is allowed to do sketchy stuff, then the other tanking teams will do the same to keep up.

Most of these teams will lose on their own merits even if they tried, so the league should be doing anything possible to ensure teams are trying and not deliberately trying to lose every night.

RspectMyAuthoritah | Lakers

8 | 5 hours ago

Tanking is when a team intentionally puts a bad roster together. Like the Kings are just bad because the front office sucks and Pacers are bad because the lost Hali and had a bunch of injuries. The Nets and Wizards are bad because they’re trying to be.

ParrotPirate15

6 | 5 hours ago

The wizards haven’t made the playoffs for 5 seasons so it’s just constantly bad roster construction cause they want to tank for five years?

RspectMyAuthoritah | Lakers

6 | 4 hours ago

5 years ago was bad roster construction. When they traded Beal and Porzingas was when they started tanking. And next year they’ll be trying to come out of the tank.

siziyman | Heat

2 | 4 hours ago

so it’s just constantly bad roster construction cause they want to tank for five years?

It’s a range of being genuinely bad/unlucky (which is fine) and tanking (which should not be fine).

I wouldn’t blame Wizards for e.g. Beal shitting the bed or Wall being injured. I would absolutely blame Wizards for putting out objectively terrible rosters for as much game time as they can get away with, and actively removing better players from the court (“resting” Trae Young, having Alex Sarr play 20-25 minutes a night when he’s one of like 2.5 players in the available roster who has any future in the league).

Rosenvial5

7 | 4 hours ago

Why do you have to “stop” bad teams from being bad? Some team has to be the worst in the league. It’s a professional sports league, not YMCA ball.

siziyman | Heat

4 | 5 hours ago

How do you stop a bad team from being bad with poor roster construction?

You don’t, but you can clearly disincentivize teams from making choices that cause them far less likely to win intentionally (looking at you, Washington Wizards).

TICKLE_PANTS | Spurs

2 | 4 hours ago

Yeah, they’re bad teams. They’re also actively throwing guys on injury reports every other game who are clearly not injured. They’re not even playing rookies night to night. They’re intentionally losing on top of it. These teams are unwatchable, and aren’t even putting up a fight. They’re G-league teams. You clearly haven’t watched these games.

ormeport | POR

2 | 3 hours ago

The “tanking problem” isn’t that bad teams exist, though. You’re right, there will always be bad teams with bad records, it’s a zero-sum game.

Teams intentionally trying to lose games is the issue, more specifically that it’s strongly incentivized for them to do so due to the reverse-order draft. Take that away and bad teams still may not care about winning, per se, but they’ll certainly not care to lose on purpose! Bad teams right now are an abomination: multibillion dollar franchises paying hundreds of millions in payroll while exaggerating injuries, resting and shutting down players, trading away young guys who aren’t perfectly on their “timeline” so they can keep losing more…

A 20-62 team full of shitty players trying to lose every night is far less intriguing than a 20-62 team that can actually focus on getting better without sacrificing the draft incentive. That team could roster build with a focus on player development, vet reclamation projects, and second-draft guys. They could freely let a young coach experiment with new systems, push players to learn new roles, and be unconditionally excited to win games.

My Blazers have (mostly) decided to compete the past two seasons. We’ve got a fun roster and it’s been incredibly rewarding to root for these guys to improve and enjoy some success. But over that time our fanbase has been roiled in debate over whether it’s stupid for us to actually try and win, preferring us to keep bottoming out until we win the lottery. It sucks—I hate having to defend rooting for my favorite team to win games, but the “tanking problem” is that the fans advocating for continued tanking have a good point.

dedfrmthneckup | Pacers

23 | 5 hours ago

Then don’t say “there is no tanking problem” if you think there is a tanking problem. You don’t have to diminish one issue to make a point about separate issues.

smalls_1804 | Knicks

16 | 5 hours ago

There are 10 games scheduled for Friday. SEVEN of those games have a team that is actively tanking/trying to lose. That is ABSOLUTELY a major issue for the league when on any given night half of the games functionally don’t matter because only one team actually cares about winning. It can be both friend

siziyman | Heat

8 | 5 hours ago

I think the overall takeaway is that sure tanking is a problem.

This is the point I’m making

Then why the hell did you put “there is no tanking problem” in your post title chief

Rosenvial5

3 | 4 hours ago

You know what hurts the integrity of the game? Teams who intentionally lose games.

sweetbeems | Timberwolves

23 | 5 hours ago

to me, it’s the constant stoppages - 30 second timeouts going 3 minutes, end of game fouling, free throw & out of bounds taking forever. Half of it doesn’t even give commercial value.. it just slows down the game.

Supposed “tanking” teams beat teams vying for playoffs all the time, it’s just such a small problem comparatively. Like the pelicans still have fun games all the time. I live in Asia and watch most games on replay, but when I catch important games live it’s diabolical how slow it is.

Meatloafxx | Warriors

8 | 4 hours ago

I remember when the hack-a-bad FT shooter was sort of an epidemic in the mid 2010s. Seemed like half the fans defended it saying, “make your free throws because the FT shooter is the problem.” Many of those game slogged worse than end-of-game fouling.

Thunderhorse74 | SAS

4 | 4 hours ago

30 second timeouts going 3 minutes,

Well, we have to run a DraftKings commercial and 30 seconds isn’t enough time.

I miss 20 second time outs….

therve

2 | 3 hours ago

Like the pelicans still have fun games all the time.

Partly because they are not tanking, they don’t have their pick.

AmphibianSingle1760

11 | 4 hours ago

Your takeaway from “ there is no tanking problem” being “sure tanking is a problem” is wild. 😜

Clemsontigger16

4 | 4 hours ago

I mean with gambling it’s more so that there could be bigger problems but most of it is just conspiracy theories.

Tanking is real and observable.

CommissionIcy9909 | Pistons

2 | 5 hours ago

Ya but addressing the gambling hurts their bottom dollar. Fixing the tanking issue would improve the game and viewing experience.

Pyju

2 | 2 hours ago

> the NBA is doing nothing to fix

Correction: the NBA is getting paid enormous amounts of money to do nothing to fix it.

Dazzling-Slide8288

171 | 6 hours ago

Because what everyone calls the “tanking problem” is really a league structure problem where you cannot consistently win without a superstar, and superstars are never available in free agency and only go to 5 markets in the rare chance they hit the open market. It’s malpractice for non-competitive teams to do anything but maximize their chances at getting a superstar through the draft, because it’s the only way they can climb out of the abyss.

Confident_Ad_5345

65 | 6 hours ago

more specifically it’s not a league structure problem even, it’s a nature of the sport itself problem.

no amount of salary restructuring or changed incentives will fix the problem that is LeBron James is allowed to play the sport of basketball, he can be your whole offense and a ton of your defense for almost the whole game. this requires you to have a LeBron if you want to win, because somebody out there is going to have one

Rnorman3 | DEN

17 | 6 hours ago

I mean, technically you could do salary cap things to help. Like if you kept the cap as it is now but removed max contracts, you’d have a very different environment. Currently, we just have the max and supermax contracts for players who are eligible for them. Without those in a true open market, prime LeBron would have commanded way more than the max was. His max was the same as Kevin love’s max, and there’s a huge delta between those 2.

Not saying it’s a great idea or fixes everything, but that obviously radically changes the landscape. It potentially pushes some of the other all star (or even the lower tier all-nba guys) down into lower contracts and maybe instead of getting 1 super star you get 2-4 all star types and a couple of really good role players.

There’s also a world where the Supermax isn’t punitive and functions the way it’s supposed to by rewarding teams for good drafting. Like say a small market team drafts a guy and wants to extend him and currently they have to just supermax him to keep him. And it fucks their cap most of the time. Imagine if instead igr still got paid the same, but the difference between the super max and the max didn’t count against the team cap. Or even rewarded the team further. Ex. say the max is 30m and a supermax player is getting paid 40m. Maybe you have the cap hit for that only be 25m as an even bigger incentive to find and develop guys you want to max.

There’s precedent for it - vet minimums fudge the cap in the same way. Guys get paid based on their years of service and it’s more than the vet minimum cap hit.

RotaryRoad

14 | 5 hours ago

It’s 100% this. The league’s problems essentially boil down to two sentences.

Zach Lavine is eligible to make more money than SGA.

Anthony Bennett and Victor Wembanyama were both #1 overall picks.

Unless the NBA fixes these two problems, the league will continue to have a massive gulf between the haves and the have nots and a lot of that comes down to luck. You fix the first sentence by removing the max contract.

You fix the second problem by shifting the draft to an economy-based system, partially based on the PWHL Gold Plan. Teams earn draft tokens based on a combination of where they finish and how they played once they were eliminated (where wins improve your token number). The draft picks (not players) are then auctioned off, so the years the draft is weaker, the draft picks are less valuable. You could also trade the tokens so teams aren’t waiting eight years into the future to cash in on traded draft capital.

(For example, in the wake of the Gobert trade, the Jazz found some success with Markkanen and Kessler, but it didn’t really make sense for them to be good “yet,” because they were waiting on trade assets to convey. This system would allow them to say “Fuck that!” and immediately try to rebuild using the assets from the Gobert and Mitchell trade. Instead, they waited and now Markkanen/Kessler have been in basketball purgatory for years and they’re going to have to pay Kessler to even keep him, having burned his entire rookie deal while they were tanking.)

Rnorman3 | DEN

11 | 5 hours ago

I do really like the anti-tanking ideas that reward teams for finishing well down the stretch after they are eliminated.

Yeah, you may see some teams soft tanking to get eliminated earlier in the season but it won’t be nearly as bad. And you reward young teams that suck for kind of figuring it out as the year goes along and stringing together some wins. It’s also just better for locker room culture to be piecing together winning habits.

Dazzling-Slide8288

2 | 5 hours ago

I like it better than some others, but that screws teams that are just flat out bad. Too many fans assume every bad team is trying to close. And maybe they are at a certain point. But many would be bad even if they tried to win.

Rnorman3 | DEN

5 | 5 hours ago

It doesn’t really screw them. The truly bad teams get eliminated sooner and rack up more of the post-elimination wins.

Plus, there should be some incentive to actually improve the team on the margins as well.

Confident_Ad_5345

2 | 5 hours ago

i’m not sure this actually does fix the problem because if the salary cap is still in place and teams want a LeBron but have to overpay and thus can’t build a solid contending team then eventually the price of LeBrons will go down (assuming every team actually wants to win and not just market their star, which is a big assumption).

Rnorman3 | DEN

2 | 5 hours ago

Well it at least changes the salary cap math. Currently, a LeBron level star counts the same against the cap as like a Rudy Gobert level star. Despite obviously being wildly different in impact. And you can add 1-2 other max guys around him.

(The current CBA does probably make it too difficult to build around a “big 3” of max guys anymore, but separate convo there).

If you had to overpay for LeBron and you can’t fit more of the former “max level” stars around him, more of those guys trickle down to other teams. The entire economics of the salary sheets and roster construction ideas change. Because you’re no longer trying to compete against LeBron with guys who are making the same amount as LeBron despite being definitively not as good as LeBron.

Max contracts just kind of inherently force everyone into roughly the same kind of roster construction from a financial standpoint (or at least one of maybe a handful of different constructions). Obviously stylistically you can get different guys in place and play a different style of basketball but that’s an aside.

Also if sports has taught me anything, it’s that some owner will always overpay for the best player, even if it might hurt their chances of winning. They may disagree on the winning part or they may think that it elevates their chances of winning by enough and it also sells merch and tickets.

I’m not saying it fixes everything for sure. But it does radically change things. Maybe it fixes some problems. Maybe it creates new ones.

STICKY-WHIFFY-HUMID | Magic

5 | 6 hours ago

But it isn’t the nature of the sport that the top picks have to be given to the outright shittest teams in the league. That’s a league policy that can be changed. The current situation rewards the worst 3 teams over all of the more mediocre ones who don’t make the playoffs, which encourages everyone to bottom out and be as bad as possible. We don’t have to do it like that.

Confident_Ad_5345

11 | 5 hours ago

this works to fix tanking but doesn’t work to fix why tanking is needed. that makes the discrepancy even worse and leads to more teams being bad, not less—just unintentionally bad. you still end up with bad teams, but an even worse scenario where none of them even have the possibility of becoming good again

CurrentCostanza | Trail Blazers

3 | 4 hours ago

only go to 5 markets in the rare chance they hit the open market

Untrue, free agency is dead.

GreatCaesarGhost | Bucks

29 | 5 hours ago

Because (1) everyone has a different definition of tanking; (2) in a league with more than 1 team, there will always be “good” and “bad” teams; (3) bad teams should occasionally be allowed to tinker with lineups and rest banged up players, even if that decreases their odds of winning a particular game; (4) teams that are currently successful, like the Spurs, benefited from the existing system by being bad for several years and acquiring high draft picks; and (5) a lot of the proposed solutions to this alleged problem involve eliminating the possibility that bad teams can improve through the draft, meaning that they could potentially spend far longer being bad.

Honestly, the number of people that are going to watch the 80th regular season game between two bad teams is already vanishingly low, whether or not they are “tanking.” That being the case, what is the point of trying to fix this supposed problem? And what happens if the system is overhauled and teams still “tank”? All of the outrage and time spent focusing on this is not only silly but will probably result in changes that will backfire.

On top of all that, the commissioner can already punish teams that are intentionally throwing games. But that would take actual investigation and actual balls.

altofummuhh | Rockets

19 | 3 hours ago

People are complaining about the Wizards buying low on injured high end talent that won’t play this year, like how the hell else are the Washington Wizards going to get players of that caliber? What was the Nets path to serious contention with what they had after KD left? The reality is that some teams simply have to tank to have any shot.

Also everyone complained about the superteam era and player empowerment but teams following the homegrown path that OKC, Detroit, Houston and the Spurs took is now also a problem.

GardenRafters | Celtics

20 | 5 hours ago

There is tanking but the real reason everyone is so suddenly butthurt about something that has been happening for literal decades is gambling.

The people I see complain the most about teams tanking are the people who gamble, primarily the ones who play fantasy basketball. They want every single player to play every single game so there is now a constant daily whining about players sitting.

To be clear, gambling is the true problem imo. Gambling is precisely the reason why everyone is super suspicious of refs.

belle_enfant | Charlotte Bobcats

12 | 5 hours ago

This is exactly it. Who gives a shit if a team who wasnt even gonna come close to the playoffs plays worse so they have a better chance next year? People do now because “oh no muh parlays!”

nio151 | Warriors

2 | 4 hours ago

People buying tickets

BallIsLife2016 | Cavaliers

12 | 5 hours ago

I sincerely do not care about tanking and don’t really understand why others do.

Don’t you want teams to seek competitive advantages? That’s what this is. Sure, it can have a minor impact on the wins for other teams if you catch a team that eventually tanks early in the year, but it’s not like those tanking teams are good enough to be competitive even when they are trying. That’s why they’re tanking.

It has always felt to me like something people who want something to be mad about turn to. It’s worth considering that most fans do not actually care when their team deliberately tanks—they support it because it’s the most efficient way to gather talent as a bad team (this is very different from a team that is perennially bad, where fans obviously are unhappy). I sincerely believe the lottery odds right now are great. Uneven enough that the worst teams still have a much higher chance of benefitting, while being flattened enough that the worst teams can’t absolutely bank on the draft.

Long-Region5088

11 | 5 hours ago

Because the nba has had this “problem” ever since they instituted a draft. Unless you can fundamentally alter the game to the point one superstar player cant change an entire franchises value by billions of dollars this will happen and there’s no way to stop it.

Theres also not a tanking problem as tanking works. Aside from the Celtics every good team right now was built by tanking.

It’s just how teams are built. I doubt you’ll hear spurs fans complaining about tanking. It got them Duncan and Wemby. You shouldn’t hear Cavs fans complaining about tanking after they got LeBron.

There’s an example of this for pretty much every team and every year teams tank and every year the league grows and grows and grows.

NickRick | Celtics

5 | 5 hours ago

Tanking is a symptom. And preventing that with even more arcane rules is on fucking up the league. No other American sports has an almost playoff team with chances at the first overall

SmokedGoooda

6 | 5 hours ago

What actually IS the problem with tanking? I think it’s just another strategy to build a team. And one I personally prefer. Does it always work? No of course not. Just like any other strategy for building teams. Worrying about the average fan who wouldn’t pay attention to that anyway, only cares about the prices of a ticket. Now if an NBA team goes all Oakland (Las Vegas?) Athletics and trades away assets every year, then that is a bigger issue. But I personally don’t see the issue with tanking. There’s nothing worse than being in the 8-9-10 range for a decade straight. Sometimes you gotta be real bad to have a chance to get competitive.

pargofan | Lakers

5 | 2 hours ago

Exactly.

Normally, in any business, tanking should affect revenue. What fan pays money to watch a professional team literally try to lose?

But in the perversion that is American professional sports, it doesn’t. Enough fans of tanking teams still attend games. TV revenue is high.

From an owner perspective of caring about making money, why is tanking a problem?

From a fan perspective, if enough of them still watch, why is tanking a problem?

If it lands you a superstar (Wemby, cough, cough) it’s a great strategy. But even if it doesn’t, you don’t get that hurt financially. So why wouldn’t you do this?

So why is tanking a problem?

SmokedGoooda

2 | an hour ago

Yep, agreed. As a Pistons fan, Wemby was “supposed” to be ours. Still a little butt hurt about it lol

Also how else are you supposed to get top tier free agents if your team stinks and that team is located in Utah, Minnesota, Detroit etc? You have to make trades and draft well…by acquiring extra assets. Then you hope to hit with those assets, build a solid team and then free agents may be more willing to play there.

lava172 | Suns

3 | 6 hours ago

Why are redditors so invested in pretending tanking is some new phenomenon that can be “fixed”

Falling4Strangers | Celtics

21 | 6 hours ago

Who is pretending it’s new?

SpookySpagettt

4 | 3 hours ago

Because the nba has more parity then 90% of leagues in the world and that dont do drafts.

Look at soccer leagues. Its dominated by the same teams for decades.

The premier league has had 6 different teams win since 1992. The nba has had 14.

The spurs, thunder, celtics, heat, lakers, Mavericks, bucks, warriors, cavs, bulls, rockets all had players they drafted in the lottery on their team as one of their top 3 players.

American sports are ahead of everyone of giving bad teams shots at getting better and small market teams chances and creating a league not dominated by 6 teams perennial for decades.

bentenmod

3 | 5 hours ago

I think it’s more that people don’t care. There are about 7-8 teams tanking right now. With so many teams tanking it kind of destroys the purpose of tanking.

ridiculousgg | Cavaliers

3 | 3 hours ago

Every league has a tanking “problem”. It’s simply a byproduct of having a draft system. For whatever reason only the NBA treats it as a big deal tho. When the jags lost a shit load of games to ensure Trevor Lawrence, the league didn’t talk about how much things need to change. When the Raiders tanked this past season, the league didn’t talk about how much things need to change. I don’t follow the NHL very closely but I know there was a tank race that happened for Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid. I don’t recall a bunch of conversations about how the NHL needs to change.

We’re looking at a one-off year of really bad tanking going on cuz this draft has a chance to be all time great (which also happens in the other leagues when there’s an all time great class), and we’re gonna radically adjust the system because of it? Was anybody crying about tanking the year Risacher went number 1?

Not every team can be a contender at the same time. I’d hate to see a league where all 30 teams go 41-41, and every night it comes down to shooting variance. If you wanna have elite teams, then you gotta have bad teams too. It’s cyclical. For small market teams, the only avenue to true contention is thru the draft since they aren’t gonna attract marquee FA’s. We have a lottery system in place that punishes truly bad teams even more by fucking them out of getting a guy that can finally turn it around for them. Think it’s a coincidence the pistons sucked for the longest time, UNTIL the balls finally bounced their way in the draft? And now look at that, the Pistons are competitive for the first time in 20 years. If the Jazz or Wizards got coop, they’d be more competitive than they’ve been. The lottery is the issue, not the tanking. I’d also argue that pick protections are the bigger issue they need to address than tanking

RRJC10 | Raptors

2 | 5 hours ago

Yet 100% certain all referees are corrupt and the games are fixed. It’s the same logic anti-vaxxers were using during Covid.

albinotadpole52 | Bucks

566 | 6 hours ago

Dang you sent this letter right to him I hope he reads it

1OO1OO1S0S | Celtics

106 | 4 hours ago

Also there’s a tanking problem.

Also this post had about 8 seconds of thought put into it and reads like it was written by a child.

Anyway, I’m sure Adam Silver is taking it very seriously

Hopsalong | Nuggets

20 | 3 hours ago

If you want to untie draft picks to how bad a team is, then the tanking problem will go away. But in that situation, we’d have teams like the Spurs and the Thunder having the same chances as everybody at the #1 pick.

Most people want the bad teams to get better picks. If the system favors bad teams at all, it will incentivize tanking. I think it’s fine if 6-8 teams tank every year personally if 15-20 stay competitive.

LakerBlue | Lakers

9 | 3 hours ago

There’s a big gap between “untie draft picks to how bad a team is” and “let all the teams have an equal or near equal shot at the number one pick”.

I think a more accurate phrase than “untie draft picks to how bad a team is”, since people seem to take it 100% literally, is the goal should be to disincentivize trying to lose games to earn a higher draft pick. To not have teams “quit” after a month or even go into the year planning to lose.

OldCardiologist8437

2 | 44 minutes ago

It’s more of a “the season is too long” problem, than a pure “tanking” issues. As an NFL fan putting up with a tank is rough but more bearable. Watching an NBA team tank for 80 games is fucking brutal.

Piats99 | Spurs

22 | 3 hours ago

The NBA doesn’t have a tanking problem.

Even though there are exceptions, tanking to garantee higher chances of top picks has always been the way to go and the best way to rebuild a weak franchise.

People were laughing at Utah because they didn’t tank enough for Wemby and tried to win with a medriocre team lead by Markkanen. They went anywhere. Now they pulled the tank and people are freaking out. Why?

What’s their solution? Damned if you do, damned you don’t. People will always complain about something.

JonahTheProducer

9 | 2 hours ago

Not only that, Silver has shot himself in the foot by now allowing teams who don’t even ethically tank to have a real shot at the No. 1 pick. Which gets MORE teams to “soft” tank either pre or post all star break.

ManINtheScreen | Lakers

10 | 3 hours ago

Saying the NBA doesn’t have a tanking problem made me completely uninterested in anything else OP had to say lol

terry-tea | Celtics

4 | an hour ago

Dear Adam, I wrote you but you still ain’t callin

MonkMajor5224 | Timberwolves

2 | 3 hours ago

When they met in Denver, Adam said if he write him, he would write back…

Life_Teaching6499 | Lakers

199 | 7 hours ago

Stop reading at “there is no tanking problem”.

Potential_Dealer7818

42 | 6 hours ago

OP has never heard of two things being true at the same time.

To look at some of today’s NBA teams and say that there isn’t a tanking problem indicates an utter disregard for the rules of vocabulary and human language. Learn what tanking means, OP. Maybe research how other professional leagues (for example, the Premier League and the Champions League) try to encourage honest competition in every single game.

Mind1827

7 | 6 hours ago

The funny thing is gambling is forcing them to deal with the tanking problem, which might be the first positive all these gambling deals are actually doing.

qotsabama | DAL

39 | 6 hours ago

Personally I’d rather them fix the gambling and most importantly officiating issues vs tanking. Maybe they can fix all 3, but I doubt it. Silver has no spine.

Death_Or_Radio

2 | 33 minutes ago

What exactly is the gambling problem? Are you saying gambling is making you question the integrity of this season or it just has the potential to in the future?

How would Silver even do anything to stop players from gambling?

If your point is you don’t like gambling ads, then we just disagree on how much that’s impacting the quality of the NBA product.

lava172 | Suns

12 | 6 hours ago

There’s a play-in problem that instantly divides the standings into 3 categories by November and there’s no mobility within the standings aside from contenders fighting for seeding. You can implement all of the esoteric “anti-tanking rules” you want but there will never be an incentive for the 12-35 Jazz to win a game apart from personal pride

StampDaddy | GSW

3 | 6 hours ago

I stopped reading at Dear Adam.

84breaks | Thunder

113 | 7 hours ago

They all 3 are a problem. Tanking, officiating and the gambling.

spiraldrain

83 | 5 hours ago

And a giant ass problem with clippers circumventing the cap that apparently no one gives a fuck about anymore lol.

False_Dimension9212

12 | 3 hours ago

It’s so weird. I thought it was going to be a huge story, and the reaction instead was ‘meh’

radi0head | Vancouver Grizzlies

11 | 3 hours ago

I actually think most people are concerned about it, but the billionaires will probably protect themselves and we have little power. My faith in the nba is definitely low right now.

BogotaLineman | Nuggets

19 | 5 hours ago

Seeing spurs and thunder flairs talking about how “something needs to be done about tanking” is so fucking gross

Not_A_Bot_Am_Human | Spurs

4 | 4 hours ago

Couldn’t agree more. Fans seem to have the memory of a goldfish with this.

I’m assuming they weren’t watching during the tanking years or something, because idk how you could look down upon any franchise after some of the Ls we took for several years. Thank you for your final gifts Pop ❤️

BogotaLineman | Nuggets

14 | 4 hours ago

Not even just with Wemby either! Packing in the season after Robinson got hurt got you guys Tim Duncan. There is no team that has benefited more from extremely smart, timely tanking and some lotto luck than the Spurs

Not_A_Bot_Am_Human | Spurs

5 | 3 hours ago

Absolutely, not to mention jumping up in the lotto for Harper. I don’t even know who would be 2nd place in lotto luck, maybe the Cavs?

This season shows how silly it was for some fans and media to be pushing the Spurs to make win now trades in Wemby’s first couple years. That’s the only thing the front office should get credit for. The lottery gods get the rest.

Dazzling-Slide8288

1 | 6 hours ago

True. But officiating and gambling are in a totally separate, higher tier.

NickRick | Celtics

3 | 5 hours ago

Tanking is a symptom of the cap problem. There’s no way to get better besides blowing it up and hoping to get a super star, which causes tanking. The NFL/NHL/MLB don’t have this issue

SpookySpagettt

6 | 3 hours ago

Nfl teams do this all the time?

Literally the dolphins had a slogan “Tank for Tua” before. They literally are blowing their team up as we speak to be awful next season.

Nfl teams shutdown players in the last games all the time.

Everyone made fun the texans coach that won a game at couple years back that caused them to lose the 1st pick in the last game of the season

Old_Tap_7783 | Bucks

52 | 5 hours ago

Gambling has compromised the integrity of the game

Practical-Banana7329 | Pistons

4 | an hour ago

My dad said this in the 90s about the mafia

msf97

2 | an hour ago

Redditors are so dumb on certain things. Gambling has existed for years and years in other countries. The US Is not the only country in the world

tron7 | Nuggets

1 | 13 minutes ago

Adam Silver invented gambling

YupThatsMeBuddy | NBA

28 | 6 hours ago

Uh, there is an obvious tanking problem. Another problem doesn’t automatically erase that.

MaccTHC | Spurs

24 | 7 hours ago

…why not both? There are teams with “apparently” like 8 players out putting out g leaguers every game. There is also a tanking problem lol

waffle-winner | Spurs

22 | 7 hours ago

officiating epidemic

Yes, more and more I see officials officiating games! What’s that all about??

CrunchyKorm | 76ers

11 | 5 hours ago

This is the one that’s hardest for me to buy into.

Does officiating need to improve? Sure. Has anyone liked officiating for any sport at any point in time? No.

It’s a perpetual need and there will never be a consensus moment where people are like “Yeah, the refs are pretty good now!”

josefjohann | OKC

3 | 4 hours ago

Right. There are bad ones, AND, even the best will still be imperfect. I’m a bit more familiar with baseball, so for one example, even the best umpires will call the strike zone with something like 95-97% accuracy. You literally can’t substitute them out for better ones.

You can’t expect perfection, what you can do is have a respected mechanism for challenging calls.

TGBooks

16 | 7 hours ago

This morning is the argument for the mods waking up earlier.

HipGuide2 | Nets

15 | 6 hours ago

Everything is a conspiracy to a moron.

jwn0323 | Hawks

10 | 7 hours ago

Well, there absolutely is a tanking problem. So your title is just objectively wrong. The gambling/officiating bit is an issue. The two aren’t exactly mutually exclusive though.

Not sure why we’d pretend openly tanking isn’t also very much a problem that is entirely separate from questionable gambling affiliations and bad officiating tbh. I don’t get the angle you’re going for.

Lifesgood72727 | Wizards

11 | 6 hours ago

Dear random NBA fan, the NBA is a $90 billion dollar industry, the gambling industry brings in $75 billion a year on a bad day. So you can stop b!tching and keep paying $500 for Nosebleeds at Madison square Garden cuz you ain’t gone do sh!t

Sincerely, Adam Silver NBA Commissioner

Irvsauce | Jazz

9 | 4 hours ago

“There is no tanking problem” is an insane thought

JustBlazee | Timberwolves

6 | 7 hours ago

Adam Silver doesn’t care though. Gambling lines the NBA’s pockets as well.

lalakingmalibog | Mavericks

3 | 7 hours ago

Facts. Silver’s job is to make the owners money. Gambling makes money. Therefore Silver allows gambling because money.

Robinsonirish | Finland

7 | 7 hours ago

Dear /u/CdnfaS there is no officiating problem, it’s just an incredibly hard sport to referee.

In contrast to soccer or NFL the whistle has to be blown instantly, 100 times per game, whereas in those other sports, they can take their time until they throw the flag or blow the whistle. If the ref is even late by 1s it looks weird and the broadcasters will even comment on it. They are the best referees in the world, they’re not all in some conspiracy, but fans have zero leeway in how they treat them.

If you just accepted the fact that referee mistakes are part of the game, that they are human and make mistakes, then you wouldn’t be writing this dear diary letter to Silver. It’s no coincidence that every single big sport, every fanbase seem to have a generational issue with refereeing right now with fans whipping themselves into a fury.

hfusa | Heat

12 | 6 hours ago

Referees are amazing in general in the sport. The players and coaches are constantly working the refs, and players fouling without the refs noticing is a part of the craft. Improvement is also harder, as fouls happen so fast and there is (currently) no objective way to grade refereeing like there is in baseball. The referees are part of the entertainment, give fans something to gripe about (“villains” are important too!), and they are proud of what they do.

Robinsonirish | Finland

2 | 6 hours ago

Well said.

Majestic-Pickle5097

6 | 6 hours ago

How the FUUUUCK is there no tanking problem???

SignalBed9998 | Bulls

5 | 6 hours ago

Stop betting on this league. They have the integrity of Don King

platinum92 | Hawks

6 | 5 hours ago

Stop betting full-stop and the world will be a better place.

PeakyBlinders2026_ | Celtics

5 | 5 hours ago

this subreddit is so fucking cringe. Like Adam Silver or anyone in the NBA is going to read this shitty note.

asouthpawasouthpaw

3 | 5 hours ago

Thank you. I agree.

KembaWakaFlocka

4 | 5 hours ago

Reads like an 18 year old wrote this. Give Officating a try yourself before going off into conspiracy land

BurnedUp11

4 | 6 hours ago

Nba teams have been tanking for high picks forever. Refs have been bad for forever.

StanVanGhandi | Magic

4 | 5 hours ago

Do you guys even like this league?

Commercial_Ant9320

3 | 5 hours ago

There is absolutely a tanking problem. When bad teams play each other and choose not to play their best players because they’d rather lose, that is the definition of tanking.

allgrownzup

3 | 5 hours ago

There absolutely is a tanking problem.

MiscellaneousDanger

3 | 4 hours ago

Morons gonna moron. Officials haven’t changed, players change in order to get more calls. It directly leads to their ability to earn playing a game. Shai’s dad said it directly if you don’t like the way he plays, change the rules.

When female refs entered the league they were the best officials… by the rule book. Players, coaches, and fans complained because calling everything slows down the game. Players take liberties with how much contact they apply to someone because they get paid for winning. So female refs had to find the balance between the rulebook and the “let them play” style of the men’s game.

Players don’t play “fair” they play to win. Literally.

LurkerFailsLurking | Nuggets

3 | 4 hours ago

There is absolutely a tanking problem.

There is also an officiating and gambling problem.

Detonation | Pistons

3 | 3 hours ago

Injuries are also a far larger problem than tanking. The schedule needs to be changed. Back to backs are causing far more issues than load management ever would.

Opening_Classroom_46

3 | an hour ago

“there is no tanking problem…” and now I disregard the rest of your opinions.

THE-ONE-DONGLER

2 | 6 hours ago

There can be a tanking problem and a gambling problem. The league is big enough to have multiple issues.

Mental-Scientist-393

2 | 6 hours ago

I wonder if people who don’t gamble on the games don’t see the extent of the tanking problem because they just ignore the bad games while gamblers at least look at the game to see if it’s worth betting. I don’t bet on games when there’s at least one team tanking, which is about 40-50% of the games at this point of the season.

I’m sure Silver sees that as part of the problem, because I know I’m not alone in that (i.e., less gambling revenue). I get and respect that a lot of people think the social ills of gambling are too much or just find gambling talk boring- but the same thing applies to watching any of the games as a fan.

If a player/team has a bad night, we can’t tell if it’s for legal reasons (tanking) or illegal reasons (gambling).

Adorable-Bike-9689

2 | 5 hours ago

Julius Randle shoved off with his full strength last night for that game winner. He knew the refs wouldn’t call it.

ThatHotAsian | Timberwolves

2 | 5 hours ago

? Jazz, Grizzlies and Wizards (to name a few) are blatantly tanking. How can you say there is no tanking problem lol

NickRick | Celtics

2 | 5 hours ago

Also a cap issue. If teams could get better without blowing it all up and starting over in the draft they would. But they can’t. If you prevent them from tanking they have no way to get better. Plus look at Philly and the process, it’s not even like it will always work

MrMeritocracy

2 | 5 hours ago

And the aspire issue

sidestyle05

2 | 5 hours ago

Facts

verysimplenames

2 | 5 hours ago

“There is no tanking problem” disagree

-KFBR392 | Raptors

2 | 4 hours ago

There is also a tanking problem

Clemsontigger16

2 | 4 hours ago

There is a tanking problem, it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. All 3 are significant issues.

wl6202a | Celtics

2 | 4 hours ago

My add on the Reddit app for this post is Kalishi lol. I think they need to ban advertising for AI.

munchcat | Pistons

2 | 4 hours ago

What’s your supported evidence that “there is no tanking problem” ? I think gambling, officiating and tanking all need to be looked at in the NBA.

TheFurryMenace | Knicks

2 | 4 hours ago

Oh no, there is a tanking problem.

So far, there is no gambling problem that is showing itself as a problem on the court. The constant ads are a pain however.

Officiating is not a problem either. You can live in conspiracy theory fairytale land as much as you want.

george_cant_standyah | Mavericks

2 | 4 hours ago

Cat is out of the bag. No going back because companies don’t willingly cut off profit once it’s already being generated.

LeekAccomplished3733

2 | 4 hours ago

Not just an nba problem

ctoal1984

2 | 3 hours ago

Sports betting has been around forever it’s just recently legal. People have always accused players of throwing games or just straight up think that all the sports are rigged. Strangely enough u hear this most from people that gamble on sports and they continue to do so

O2C | Knicks

2 | 3 hours ago

I think that as fans, we want to see our teams try their best to win every game.

Tanking is a problem because there’s an incentive to lose a game. Gambling is a problem because there’s an incentive to lose a game. Officiating is a problem because we feel the poor officiating is causing us to lose games.

That’s also why the fan favorite player is the one trying hardest to win games, hustling on every play and diving for every loose ball. That’s why everyone hates the flopper on the other team.

Fixing tanking is just going to make the other problems even more obvious.

McKnightmare24 | Lakers

2 | 3 hours ago

Both can be true and both are true. Tanking is in fact and issue but I wouldn’t say it’s the main issue

salamanderman10

2 | 2 hours ago

Why do you believe their is an officiating problem?

rawman200K | Spurs

2 | 2 hours ago

Your issues with gambling other than the commercials have always existed, literally since the beginning of the league, and there isn’t a way to solve it

Spare-Shake-2999 | Hornets

2 | 2 hours ago

There is clearly a tanking problem like what lmao

Texas_Kimchi | Lakers

2 | an hour ago

No you’re all wrong. There is an Adam Silver problem.

QuintsHat1975

1 | 6 hours ago

So if a player has a bad game, he’s throwing a game and that’s bad? But it’s not bad purposely not playing your best players to lose? Isn’t that also throwing the game?

News flash: they’re both bad. The NBA is a bad product becoming worse as tanking and “rest” days become a daily occurrence for teams.

beachbummeddd

1 | 6 hours ago

The gambling situation is insane. I no longer watch the nba except for kNick games and I set sail for those games. It’s honestly disgusting. The lead in to the official game broadcast is always a 10 minute gambling run down. And then literally throughout the game, while the players are running up and down the court, they will minimize the game and again advertise for you to gamble your life away at the tap of a finger from your couch or toilet. Everyone on the broadcast acts like it’s totally cool, okay and normal.

It makes me SICK. I hate Adam silver and everything about his grim reaper skeleton ass.

Tiger_Sh8rk_Diver

1 | 6 hours ago

Tanking, gambling, officiating and scandals. League is cooked.

Navetz

1 | 6 hours ago

“epidemic” …

Shepher27 | Timberwolves

1 | 6 hours ago

Both can be true. There is also a tanking problem

TwinFrBrooklyn | Lakers

1 | 6 hours ago

That’s a bad take. Tanking is a serious problem for the NBA.

SuperVaderMinion | MIN

2 | 6 hours ago

I think this subreddit’s insistence that there is no tanking issue shows how casual the major of the NBA fans are here, they simply choose to ignore the 1/3rd of NBA teams that are actively trying to lose and shutting down their stars that fans pay money to see on TV or in arenas.

THAT’S why the sports journalists were making such a big fuss about it, because they actually have to watch the games and so many of them rightfully said “Gee this sucks can we make it less bad”

sum_dude44 | Heat

1 | 6 hours ago

officials yes please

BIGMCLARGEHUGE__

1 | 6 hours ago

More gambling please

Schwalm | Suns

1 | 5 hours ago

You’re a degenerate, call the number

Baguettes9

1 | 5 hours ago

it baffles me that anyone watches this league at all

Expensive-Reward-952 | Knicks

1 | 5 hours ago

Because the nets definitely haven’t been tanking since they left New Jersey

SmitherPablo

1 | 5 hours ago

There is totally a tanking problem and it’s probably unfixable

Aerospaced0ut | Warriors

1 | 5 hours ago

There is tanking going on but I wouldn’t say it’s “problem” level yet. Maybe “annoyance”. The league incentivizes being bad and has too many playoff teams, they could “fix” the tanking “problem” by going back to 8 teams make the playoff, dump the play-in. Right now it’s dumb with a team like Golden State being locked into the play in but also on the fringe of the lottery. With like 5 injured players, their season is obviously over. Steph needs the rest but yeah… If Butler was healthy he’s probably out there playing, so I guess they’re “tanking”.

Agreed on gambling, of course it’s leading to corrupted results. I bet on sports… But I also realize it’s ruining those sports. Sports betting probably shouldn’t have been legalized if we want legitimate results.

Officiating has been a mess, but Shai being such a disproportionate benefactor of that is waking people up to how bad the problem has gotten. When you watch all these touch fouls where he flies through the air… It’s just like… “Where are these calls for <insert favorite player>”. I’ve been a Warriors fan for 20+ years, Steph has never gotten a whistle like he or Luka gets. It’s biased officiating. There’s no way getting around that… Other than not watching.

I went from watching 200+ games a year to now… I watch maybe 30-40 Warriors games, and that’s it. The officiating is the reason I’m watching less and less. They’re ruining basketball imo. Silver needs to go.

And we haven’t even mentioned Kawahi’s extra payday lol. What ever happened with that $50M example of cheating. Errrmmm…. Nothing, because it’s a corrupt ass league.

bizarroscrooge

1 | 5 hours ago

Tanking was a thing way before the gambling stranglehold.

SharpEdgeBets

1 | 5 hours ago

The gambling framing is interesting but the actual problem is structural incentives. Teams at the bottom of the standings have nothing to play for in March. That is not a gambling problem, that is a design problem with the lottery system and guaranteed contracts.

Silver’s instinct to blame gambling is predictable – leagues hate admitting their own incentive structures produce bad games. The solution is something like a play-in for all teams or guaranteed incentive bonuses for overperforming your projected win total. Change the incentives, change the behavior.

yup_goodtimes | Timberwolves

1 | 5 hours ago

Sat behind two dudes at the wolves game last night, they each had multiple phones and betting on next points scored. They were clearly winning large. It was weird because they were trying to hide what they were doing.

Chicken_and_a_fan

1 | 5 hours ago

Do what I did, stop watching.

MiscellaneousDanger

2 | 4 hours ago

What you do is way worse, you don’t watch any basketball, yet still wallow in the shit that made you stop watching in the first place by reading reddit threads about it.

theomegachrist | Knicks

1 | 5 hours ago

No, there is both

differential32 | Wizards

1 | 4 hours ago

All I’ll say is this - tanking is a problem because it reduces watchability for the game, but it also is the obvious solution to being bad and wanting to get better. We can admit it’s a problem while also admitting that teams would be stupid not to do so. It’s not that fans want bad teams to stay bad, every fan wants every team to be good because it makes every game competitive and exciting. But we want the methods to which teams can get better to change. Especially as fan of a tanking team.

This sub has relentlessly clowned on teams that refused to tank for years (Bulls, Wizards until a few years ago etc). “They need to blow it all up!” The league that we have now is what everyone wanted teams to do!

dajadf | Bulls

1 | 4 hours ago

NBA rigging and gambling has always been a concern. Now legal gambling makes it so idiot players get caught

WaveOfTheRager | Suns

1 | 4 hours ago

I am adam silver. I will take this into consideration. Thank you for your email, youre a true mensch.

TheWorldsOnlyHope

1 | 4 hours ago

The integration of gambling within professional sports is the beginning of the end in regard to their credibility. They’ll make an absolute boatload of money for a while. A horrible scandal will surface, and everyone will lose interest in the league.

Competition will become theater. Money ruins everything.

This is my prediction.

RandoMcNoob

1 | 4 hours ago

Why not all three? The NBA is thriving, but deeply flawed. Tanking makes gambling easier, officiating makes gambling easier, gambling motivates both tanking and sketchy officiating. Ahhh… wait. It’s gambling, gambling is the problem and the rest are symptoms? Welcome to my thought process.

LilNello1

1 | 4 hours ago

Yeah there’s definitely a gambling problem and them having gambling sites as sponsors definitely doesn’t help

john0_0 | Knicks

1 | 4 hours ago

And flopping! Which I guess can be rolled into the officiating part of this but still

xGvPx

1 | 4 hours ago

If there is an officiating problem, he probably orchestrates it 🫠

Low-Investigator7720

1 | 4 hours ago

It’s definitely rigged I’ve seen a team lose because a guy didn’t tie his shoe so they called it out and turned the ball over to the other team in the last seconds like 5 seconds so they lost when they could have won then I seen players lose shoes and continue to play on like nothing so idk bias refs definitely exist I’ve even had seen games where if the refs didn’t ref sga doesn’t make it past his overs and bam making it past Kobe In points was because of the refs so yeah they definitely move pieces you can tell when you watch from a non bias perspective who and what are favorites being guided lol someone said 50% sport and 50% entertainment couldn’t agree more

Hungry-Quote-1388 | Knicks

1 | 4 hours ago

MLB umpires have terrible strike zones, NFL has terrible penalties, UFC/boxing think their refs/judges are blind, I assume soccer fans hate the officials too.

If every official is terrible, maybe it’s not the officials but the process. Using human eye to judge sports will always be an issue, especially as athletes keep evolving.

s0ysauce09 | Kings

1 | 4 hours ago

Watch NCAA march madness, College Basketball is a MUCH better product and watch. First off there no incentives for tanking. Second, foul baiting is at minimum. In the NBA, you can jump into the defensive player and get rewarded. Yesterday I literally watched Brandon Podz jump from the 3 point player and lunge into the defender and the ref literally called a foul on the Nets defender. NBA is a disgusting watch.

kyriadietrama | Hornets

1 | 3 hours ago

its not a problem if it makes him money

PM_ME_EMPANADAS | Mavericks

1 | 3 hours ago

There is no tanking problem

aka

I’m an idiot and I’m proud!

bigson | Raptors

1 | 3 hours ago

Braindead post. Tanking is a way bigger issue than the other two.

A-FED

1 | 3 hours ago

No tanking is a problem

jerjerbinks90 | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

I genuinely miss when gambling was widely illegal. I’m usually pretty chill about most things, but all this mass online betting really gives me the ick.

Awoken_Thoughts07

1 | 3 hours ago

Adam Silver doesn’t care about the love of the game all he cares about is revenue

finndego

1 | 3 hours ago

There is a tanking problem.

jsquiggles23

1 | 3 hours ago

A) He’s not reading this.

B) It works just as intended.

legendaryboss14

1 | 3 hours ago

I’m with you on the gambling part, but nothing is being done about it by the league. That’s why I put a bet on Kalshi’s that Adam Silver will not see this post

Also, download Prize Picks for free

No_Permission1386

1 | 3 hours ago

I like gambling

greg-maddux

1 | 3 hours ago

Literally the only way to get through to the chuds is by not following the garbage ass NBA anymore. It’s just not a good product, and I for one have been sick of it for years at this point. Trash ass league.

QuietMonsoon3314

1 | 3 hours ago

All 3 is a problem bud

tidho

1 | 3 hours ago

there is also a tanking problem

by_yes_i_mean_no | Warriors

1 | 3 hours ago

Incorrect, there is obviously a tanking problem.

Seve-love

1 | 3 hours ago

Dang, you basically wrote this straight to him—hope he sees it.

Vitex1988 | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

OKC lost a game and the entire subreddit imploded
amazing

AleroRatking | Vancouver Grizzlies

1 | 3 hours ago

There is absolutely tanking problem. All of these things can be an issue. Teams are shutting down players who could play and intentionally benching starters to lose.

OkGo_Go_Guy

1 | 3 hours ago

Oh there is certainly a tanking problem too

AvailableReporter484 | Heat

1 | 3 hours ago

Silver reading this like

these posters are right! I should destroy our multi billion dollar deals in order to appease the subreddit!

Dear Adam Silver, There is no tanking problem. There is, however, a gambling and officiating epidemic.