The NBA’s Tanking Problem Is Getting Worse — Not Better

Sacramento Kings coach Doug Christie missed only four regular-season games across four full seasons as a Sacramento shooting guard in the early 2000s.

So it’s easy to joke about activating the 55-year-old bench boss for Thursday’s visit to Utah with six Kings players ruled out due to illness or injury.

What’s far more difficult is determining whether to take the injury report at face value — especially with cellar-dwelling Sacramento facing a Jazz team that’s undeniably in tank mode and, perhaps, forcing Commissioner Adam Silver to consider reforms.

A recent CBS Sports mock draft projected collegiate freshmen going with the first eight picks in June. Hoops diehards can recite the names, even if they’ve wandered off on a Boozer, er, bender for a while.

Elite talent emerges every draft cycle, so the projected depth of this class isn’t the point. The issue is the manipulation of the NBA’s player participation policy — and the lack of an end in sight.

Initiated for the 2023–24 season, the policy was designed to curb load management — teams resting stars as often as possible, ostensibly to reduce injury risk and preserve health for the playoffs.

“This is ultimately about the fans, and that we’ve taken this [load management] too far,” Silver said at the time. “This is an acknowledgement that it has gotten away from us a bit.”

As the Jazz have demonstrated, however, there’s a workaround — even for teams at the bottom of the standings and even in the closing minutes of games.

The policy may regulate whether stars begin contests, but ensuring they finish them is another matter entirely. That distinction matters for a franchise like Utah, which will lose its first-round draft pick to defending champion Oklahoma City if it falls outside the top eight — the Jazz’s current predicament.

Utah coach Will Hardy exploited that loophole for the second straight game Monday. The Jazz led Miami by three entering the fourth quarter but sat recent blockbuster acquisition Jaren Jackson Jr. along with Lauri Markkanen and Jusuf Nurkić for the final 12 minutes.

Asked whether he considered re-inserting Jackson or Markkanen down the stretch, Hardy replied, “I wasn’t.”

That’s shameful, to put it mildly — though it arguably reflects more on the organization than its coach.

The Heat weren’t spared embarrassment either, losing to a team that appeared to be conceding victory.

“We’ve got to find a way to win against teams that are, I guess you can say, trying to lose,” Miami center Bam Adebayo said.

Utah is hardly alone under that dubious label. The Milwaukee Bucks remain within reach of the Eastern Conference play-in tournament and still employ Giannis Antetokounmpo, strained calf and all.

But will Milwaukee give in to projections that give it a 1-in-5 chance at landing a top-four pick? Wanna bet?

The lottery odds are even more enticing for several other clubs — namely Sacramento, Indiana and Washington — who share equal chances at the No. 1 selection with the All-Star break approaching.

As the league gathers in Los Angeles to celebrate what’s good about the game, conversations about what’s broken won’t be far behind.

This tanking mess is rotten.

Can losing teams truly play out the string with draft-obsessed executives pulling it?