The NBA General Managers’ Meeting on Tanking Was ‘Throwing S--- Against the Wall’

Editor’s note: This first appeared in the Open Floor newsletter, a free, twice-weekly publication straight to your inbox. Subscribe now.

Greetings, from a chilly Las Vegas, where I am most definitely not reporting on the NBA’s planned expansion to Sin City, though most team officials believe that (and the $10 billion franchise fee windfall) is most certainly in play. I have my boxing hat on this weekend—if you’re a fan of the sweet science, subscribe to Sports Illustrated’s new boxing newsletter—before heading to Detroit for what should be a terrific matchup between the Pistons and Spurs on Monday.

Pod Alert

Evan Turner is back with some final thoughts on the All-Star Game, if he thinks star players would participate in a Saturday night one-on-one competition, what Cleveland will look like in the second half with James Harden, and if Turner, a close friend of Jayson Tatum, believes we will see Tatum play this season. Listen here, here and here.

NBA explores tanking fixes

On Thursday, representatives for the 30 NBA teams gathered on a Zoom call to discuss a budding crisis: tanking. The league’s race to the bottom has become a nightly distraction for league officials. At All-Star weekend, NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that tanking had reached never before seen levels. “Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory?” asked Silver. “Yes, is my view.” Last week, Silver slapped Utah and Indiana with six-figure fines.

Thursday’s call formally began the process to address it. Team officials threw out a number of proposals, from limiting pick protections (a popular change among top league officials, sources say) to freezing lottery odds to not allowing teams to pick inside the top four in consecutive years. It was “idea gathering,” said one top team executive briefed on the call. Added another, “I’d call it throwing s--- against the wall.”

Indeed, none of the proposals have any real force behind them. While the NBA is committed to instituting fresh anti-tanking rules next season, what those are will be decided by the league’s competition committee, a mixed group of team executives, head coaches, players and league officials. This week’s meeting was about “giving feedback,” says a source, and giving reps from each team a chance to speak.

It was also a warning. With roughly a third of the season remaining, this Zoom call was a reminder to the tanking teams—which number nearly a third of the league—that the NBA is watching. While Silver doesn’t believe subjective punishment is a long-term solution (“It will lead to very unhealthy relationships between us and our teams,” said Silver), the league is willing to bring out the stick again if they see similar situations.

Jayson Tatum circling March 1?

Evan Turner was a popular player during his 10-year NBA career, and remains so even in retirement. Among the players Turner has a relationship with is Jayson Tatum, the Celtics star who continues to work toward an in-season return. With fresh rumors swirling (thanks, NBC) of Tatum’s comeback, I asked Turner for what he is hearing on the most recent Open Floor podcast.

“It’s going to take confidence, 1,000%, just confidence,” Turner says. “Everybody wants reassurance to make sure we are not rushing this thing. Because it is [mental]. When you sit back and everybody says, ‘Yo, he got hurt last May,’ and now he is back 10 months later? That is kind of crazy.

“He has been practicing, he has been working out, he has been doing his thing. You heard Jaylen Brown say he heard he looked great in practice. The hooper that I know, the person that I know, he’s itching to get back. NBC [which flexed the Celtics-Sixers game on March 1 onto its schedule] ain’t stupid. It’s his birthday [on] March 3. Jayson, he likes to give himself nice gifts. An early comeback against a team he usually puts 35 points on, that could be one of them.”

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