NBA Finds Kings Innocent of Tanking, Guilty of Bad Coaching

The NBA’s tanking discourse hit a new peak earlier this week thanks to Kings coach Doug Christie.

Sacramento was fighting valiantly against the Warriors on Tuesday night and held a one-point lead with just over three minutes remaining. At that point Christie directed his team to intentionally foul Seth Curry (playing with his brother Steph for the first time since high school), even though they’d gift Golden State two free throws because the Kings were in the penalty. Sacramento would go on to lose its 59th game of the season, 110–105.

It was such a baffling decision it led to accusations of tanking from every corner of the NBA universe, including from one of the players who watched it unfold with his own eyes; Draymond Green teed off on basketball’s tanking epidemic during his postgame availability after the Warriors pulled out the win. Apparently the egregious nature of this action reverberated through league offices and the NBA quickly launched an investigation into what could have been the most obvious coaching decision yet that prioritized losing over winning.

On Thursday, the results of that invesigiation were revealed. The Kings are not guilty of tanking—just bad coaching.

Golden State Warriors guard Seth Curry looks to pass against Sacramento Kings guard Devin Carter. — A questionable foul by the Kings on Warriors guard Seth Curry led to an investigation into potential tanking by Sacramento. On Thursday, the NBA cleared the Kings. | David Gonzales-Imagn Images

Backing up reporting around the situation, the NBA confirmed Sacramento was not executing a high-level tanking decision by intentionally fouling Curry. Instead, evidence confirmed Christie had just made a mistake.

Per the league announcement, the Kings coach thought he had a foul to give before putting the Warriors on the line. At the three-minute mark Sacramento would lose a timeout. So he tried to be smart and had Doug McDermott foul Curry in order to give Christie an opportunity to call that timeout, rather than automatically lose it.

In simpler terms, Christie thought he was saving the Kings a timeout by having McDermott foul Curry and that would be the end of it. Instead he put an elite free throw shooter at the line in a one-point game. Normally this would be derided as one of the more consequential coaching mistakes in the NBA this season but because Sacramento has been one of the worst teams in the league everybody (including the league itself) thought there was a more nefarious purpose at play.

The full statement from the NBA’s PR team:

“The NBA has completed an investigation of the Sacramento Kings and Head Coach Doug Christie's decision to foul intentionally late in the team's game against the Golden State Warriors on April 7. The league's investigation determined that Christie mistakenly believed that the Warriors were not in the penalty and therefore instructed his team to foul in an attempt to stop the clock and utilize one of the team's remaining timeouts. The investigation found that Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game.”

Now that the NBA has found the loss was earned in a fair and just way the Kings are officially 21–59 with two games to go. As it stands they are tied with the Jazz for the worst record in the West and tied for the fourth-worst record in the league.

NBA’s investigation shows danger of trying to “solve tanking”

While it’s undeniably a little funny that Sacramento was on the receiving end of a full-fledged NBA investigation for what could aptly be described as a brain fart by its head coach, it highlights the ridiculous heights the tanking conversation has reached.

Where does the buck stop if they’re launching investigations into mistakes on the court? Will the next inquiry come after a team near the bottom of the standings misses a game-winning shot? Or if the defense screws up a switch and leaves someone wide-open? Mistakes made are part of the game. Putting every single one under a microscope in order to determine whether it was actually a mistake or an ill-intentioned effort to lose a game is an impossible task for the league and one that indicates we’ve all lost the plot entirely.

The tanking problem is more egregious than ever. But micro-analyzing decisions made during a game in order to determine what’s a valid losing effort and what’s not won’t lead anywhere the league wants to go.

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