The NBA took a drastic step, sanctioning the Utah Jazz with a $500,000 fine and the Indiana Pacers with a $100,000 fine, specifically for the management of their rosters in recent games. This action came amid an uproar from the fanbase. Ahead of Saturday’s All-Star Weekend action, Commissioner Adam Silver spoke about his plans to counter tanking, shed light on its origins, and, oddly, defend the practice while discussing team incentives.

“It’s been part of this league for a long time, back in the 1960s, there was a coin flip,” Silver told the media. “At some point, I think it was in the 1980s, we moved to a lottery. That lottery has been changed, I think roughly five times over the years, to try to stay ahead of the behavior of our teams. The incentives are not necessarily matched here. I think that the tradition in sports where the worst-performing team receives the first pick from their partners, when any economist comes and looks at our system, they always point out you have the incentives backwards there. That doesn’t necessarily make sense.”

Silver also took a leaf out of modern analytics to highlight the lottery system as flawed.

“I think there was a more classical view of that in the old days, where it was just sort of an understanding among partners about in terms of behavior,” Silver said. “I think what we’re seeing is modern analytics where it’s so clear that the incentives are misaligned.”

Silver, in an attempt to be candid with the fans, oddly ended up defending the malpractice rather than speaking strongly against it. It raised further questions about why the league allowed itself to reach a point where teams find more benefit in losing than in going all out to make the playoffs.

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However, to address this situation beyond just imposing fines, Silver believes the NBA is discussing several solutions, including the one suggested by the reporter: taking away draft picks. There were also rumblings that the Commissioner planned to organize a tournament among lottery teams to determine the draft order. This would be yet another attempt to curb tanking, following the NBA’s effort to flatten the odds by introducing the play-in tournament.

While it’s all in the ideation phase, it will be interesting to see how the NBA manages scheduling in an already stacked season.

Adam Silver believes the Jazz’s behavior was worse than that of teams in the past

The Jazz have a clear motive to tank this season as they owe a top-eight protected pick in the 2026 NBA Draft to the Oklahoma City Thunder. If the pick falls between No. 1 and 8, the Jazz keep it. Otherwise, it gets moved to OKC. As of today, Utah has the sixth-best odds to land the No. 1 pick at 9%.

Therefore, they received widespread attention when they benched star player Lauri Markkanen and newly traded forward Jaren Jackson Jr. Both players missed the entire fourth quarter in consecutive games against the Orlando Magic on February 7 and the Miami Heat on February 9. The decision was heavily criticized, as the Jazz were leading by 7 points against the Magic and holding a tight three-point lead against the Heat heading into the fourth quarter.

The Thunder have also been included in this fiasco, with some insiders claiming that the reigning champions have been pressuring the NBA to act behind the scenes. It is shocking because the Thunder themselves had a 22-50 record in the 2020-21 season and a 24-58 record in the 2021-22 season, which in turn helped them get favorable picks (Josh Giddey, later traded for Alex Caruso, and Chet Holmgren) to win the league last season.

However, despite all the stats, Silver believes the teams’ behavior this season was worse than in recent years, and hence the NBA decided to impose these fines.

“Not just those fines, but to my statement that we’re going to be looking more closely at the totality of all the circumstances this season in terms of teams’ behavior, and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice,” Silver added. “There is a bit of a note when you see the quality of this. We spend a lot of time at the league office going back and forth with teams on injury reports, on coaches’ decisions. It’s not a position necessarily we want to be in.”

Overall, it remains to be seen whether the Jazz and the Pacers continue to stick to their tanking plans this season. The former has already announced that Jackson will miss the remainder of the 2025-26 season as he is reportedly set to undergo surgery on his left knee to remove a growth and secure his long-term future with the team. This leaves the league office with a significant scheduling puzzle to solve.