Tanking to Cuban

Conventional wisdom’s instinctive reaction to tanking has always been moral outrage. Lose on purpose? Undermine competition? Betray the paying public? The arguments are familiar, the tone indignant. And yet, when Mark Cuban recently urged the league to not just tolerate tanking but to embrace it, he did not sound like a provocateur. He came off as a realist. In the wake of renewed crackdowns and escalating fines, he framed the practice as strategy, as an inevitable feature of a system that rewards long-term asset building over short-term optics. His point was simple, if uncomfortable: Teams do not tank because they want to fail. Teams tank because there is reason to give the structure of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

This perspective runs counter to the urgency coming from the league office. Commissioner Adam Silver has warned that tanking has worsened “in recent memory,” with penalties already imposed on franchises manipulating lineups and stronger sanctions under consideration. His concern is institutional: competitive integrity, public trust, nightly credibility. In contrast, Cuban’s counterargument cuts deeper into the business logic of modern sports. Fans, he suggests, do not merely buy wins. They buy possibility. In closed competition sans promotion or relegation, protagonists ultimately sell either contention or hope. And taken in this context, rebuilding, however unappealing in the moment, is invariably the most rational path to both.

The tension, then, is not between virtue and vice; it is between two competing definitions of fairness. The NBA wants honest effort every night. Front offices want the flexibility to maximize long-term competitiveness. Cuban’s willingness to admit he has embraced tanking himself strips away the pretense. The practice is not aberrational; it is systemic. If poor records yield premium draft position, and if elite young talent remains the most reliable pathway to contention, then losing strategically becomes an investment. Punish the behavior without changing the incentive, and teams will simply grow more discreet, not more competitive.

Cuban has floated what might be his most intriguing idea yet: redesign the draft to resemble free agency, allowing prospects to choose destinations rather than be assigned by reverse standings. Such a shift figures to fundamentally alter the calculus. Losing games would no longer guarantee access to top talent; organizational appeal, development infrastructure, and market strength would matter more. In theory, it would redirect competition away from the bottom of the standings and toward institutional excellence. In practice, of course, it would also risk concentrating power in already attractive franchises, a dilemma the league has historically tried to avoid.

Which leaves the NBA confronting an old truth expressed in a novel way. Tanking persists not because teams lack competitive spirit, but because the architecture of competitive balance makes it rational. Reforming deportment without changing inducements rarely works, in sports or elsewhere. The league can fine, warn, and threaten. Owners can defend, rationalize, and strategize. But until the reward structure itself changes, the gravitational pull toward calculated losing will remain. Cuban’s argument may sound disruptive. In reality, it is diagnostic. And diagnosis, however inconvenient, is often the first step toward a cure. Or, at the very least, toward accepting that the condition is chronic.

Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.