Tanking is one of those words that makes NBA fans roll their eyes, but if you follow the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, or Chicago Bulls right now, it is basically the air you breathe. You can call it rebuilding, asset accumulation, a youth movement, or whatever branding the PR staff prefers, but the incentives in the current draft system make it pretty simple: if you are not contending, losing on purpose — or at least not doing everything possible to win — is often the smartest path back to relevance. The league has tried to address it before, but every tweak to the lottery odds still leaves a big reward for being bad.
At its core, tanking just means a franchise is doing less than everything it can to win in the short term because the rules reward losing with better draft odds and cheaper young talent. The NBA flattened lottery odds and added the play-in tournament, but executives can still look at the math and see that a few truly awful seasons can be the price of drafting a superstar, which is why tanking has become a permanent part of the NBA vocabulary, not a one-era trend. That is the backdrop for what Utah, Washington, and Chicago are doing — three different flavors of the same strategy, with the first two basically waving a neon WE ARE TANKING sign and the Bulls trying to pass it off as a competitive reset.
Start with Utah, where this all really kicked off when Danny Ainge decided the Gobert–Mitchell era had hit its ceiling and detonated the roster in 2022. Coverage has laid out a clear timeline that frames the current stretch as part of a long teardown, with the real push to contend still years down the road. The Jazz have repeatedly turned solid veterans into picks, swaps, and developmental minutes, a choice summed up neatly in think pieces about how they are trying to end tanking by doing tanking.
This season, Utah has moved from quiet teardown to tank artistry. One breakdown of the Jazz and Wizards literally calls it a competitive tank-off, pointing to Utah limiting stars like Lauri Markkanen, giving Jaren Jackson Jr. short stints, and closing games with rookies even when the score is tight. When a team repeatedly pulls its best players in winning time in a crowded playoff race, it is hard to argue this is just about development.”
The Wizards, meanwhile, are running a masterclass in the extra-obvious version of tanking. They already moved off their old core in previous seasons, then doubled down by slow-walking supposed win-now additions like Trae Young and Anthony Davis back from injury, with coverage openly noting how their absences protect Washington’s own pick and its lottery position.
The Chicago Bulls on the other hand look almost respectable on the surface. They are not proudly announcing a teardown timeline or sitting healthy stars in street clothes every other night. They even have to be mindful that the league has started cracking down more aggressively on blatant tanking, with reports that any obvious race to the bottom could mess with their draft plans or bring fines. But look under the hood and it is pretty clear Chicago has quietly joined the party — just with a softer, more deniable version.
The Bulls finally broke up the long-stagnant core and shipped out key veterans, taking back picks, young fliers, and salary flexibility instead of proven win-now help. One analysis described it as Chicago stumbling into something most teams can only dream of — a roster so unbalanced and inexperienced that you do not even have to announce a tank because the losses take care of themselves. One breakdown framed the current path as a soft tank or strategic reset, where the franchise can talk about “evaluating talent” while quietly letting the standings slide
And this is where the fan perspective really starts to matter. For all three fan bases, tanking turns regular-season games into a weird, hollow experience. You sit down for Jazz–Wizards, and instead of wondering who can close in the fourth, you are wondering which coach is going to pull the better players first. You watch the Bulls grind through another close game, knowing the front office might be happier with a good loss than an ugly win. It becomes harder to invest emotionally in the outcome when, deep down, you know winning might actually be the thing management is trying to avoid.
Tanking also wrecks the basic entertainment value of the product. The NBA sells itself as a league of competition and drama — rivalries, playoff races, every game matters. But if you are a season-ticket holder in Utah or Washington right now, a sizable chunk of your home schedule is essentially a development camp dressed up as an NBA game. Stars get managed, young players are thrown into roles they are not ready for, and coaches make rotation choices that prioritize lottery odds over trying to come back from 10 down with six minutes left. That is not drama; it is a long commercial break between draft lotteries.
On top of that, hinging your whole organizational plan on a better shot at the number one pick is a brutal way to treat fan loyalty. The flattened odds mean that even the worst team in the league is basically playing the lottery in a casino where the house still wins most of the time. You can suffer through an 18-win season and still end up picking fourth. From a fan’s standpoint, that is a terrible bargain. Months of unwatchable basketball for nothing more than a slightly better envelope on draft night. It is not a sustainable way to keep people emotionally — or financially — invested in your product.
Here’s the thing folks: Having a fixed lottery wheel that cycles draft positions regardless of record keep coming up. The details are debatable, but the instinct behind them is simple. if the league keeps rewarding losing, teams will keep tanking, and fans will keep getting stuck with meaningless games and half-honest messaging. Utah and Washington are just the clearest versions of a system problem. Chicago is the softer, more politically correct version.
With that… Until the NBA finds a structure where being mediocre or bad is not the most rational path to a superstar, this cycle is not going away.
If you cannot play with them, then maybe you should stop rooting for them too!