Nikola Jokic Exposes the Truth: How Bad the NBA Really Is

We witnessed a direct clash of MVP candidates, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic, culminating in Jokic's impossible step-back fadeaway; he launched the ball miles into the stratosphere, just over Wembanyama's fingertips, before it magically swished through the net. This game showcased what the NBA should be, yet simultaneously exposed a massive problem plaguing the entire league and its declining popularity.

Unfortunately, last Friday, the NBA delivered arguably one of the worst individual nights of basketball in its history. Despite nine games on the schedule, virtually none were worth watching: a record five out of nine matchups were decided by more than 30 points, and only one – a "Duel of Desperation" between the Sacramento Kings and the New Orleans Pelicans – remained close in the final moments.

A related story: seven of the nine games involved a team intentionally losing (tanking) against one of the 20 teams that had long secured a spot in the play-in or playoff tournament. These very matchups were responsible for all five of the 30-plus point blowouts. This is the crucial point about tanking: the cost isn't just borne by the fans of the team doing it, many of whom even support it. It imposes dreadful basketball on everyone else, writes John Hollinger for "The Athletic."

As bad as these teams were before deciding to tank, they became exponentially worse afterward. As we'll demonstrate below, as a group, they managed to reduce their already low chances of winning by more than half. That classic between the Spurs and Nuggets felt so shocking partly because we've witnessed such a quantity of poor basketball over the past two months. To reiterate: we've known the identity of all 20 postseason teams practically since the trade deadline on February 5th. As a result, we've had an unprecedented season of tanking in terms of duration (over two months) and breadth (eight teams openly trying to accumulate losses and a ninth, the Milwaukee Bucks, not exactly chasing wins at all costs).

Now that the "Great Tank of 2026" is almost over, it's time to quantify the costs. And they appear significant. First, obviously, there's the issue of quality. As Tim Reynolds of Associated Press noted, Friday was only the second time in NBA history that at least nine games were played with an average winning margin of at least 24 points. The previous time this happened... was five days prior. On March 29th, all nine games were decided by double digits, although tanking was a key factor in only three, and only one (the Washington Wizards' 35-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers) was truly embarrassing.

Therefore, we'll offer a small caveat: those March 29th results speak to the fact that convincing victories are simply more common in this era due to three-point shooting variation and a faster pace; add to that the inexplicable collapse of the Orlando Magic (a 52-point loss in Toronto against the Raptors) and you have history. Still: once is a coincidence, but twice in a week is a trend. Tanking was still a certain factor on March 29th, and on Friday, it was the decisive factor.

We want to break this down on a deeper level, as we fear that the sheer number of teams tanking obscures just how desperate they truly were when not playing each other. The Wizards and Brooklyn Nets, for example, played a game on Sunday that was an absolute farce, where only two of the 18 players who participated were even in an NBA rotation when the season began. But it was a close game that the Nets eventually won by six, so on paper, it looks like a somewhat respectable, close contest, and by rule, one of those two teams had to win.

However, when you remove such games, the performance of tanking teams is truly chilling. For instance, do you know the combined record of the Nets and Wizards against the 20 postseason teams since the All-Star break? The result is 1-39.

ONE AND THIRTY-NINE!

The Nets coincidentally beat the Detroit Pistons 107-105 on March 7th, and that's the only time they or the Wizards have beaten one of the 20 teams heading to the postseason. In that regard, of Brooklyn's 107 points in that game, 99 were scored by players who have since been "shut down" and were unavailable for that farce against Washington. Even those who are tanking and appear quasi-respectable at first glance have deteriorated significantly when you remove games against their fellow tankers. Sacramento, for example, is unremarkable with a 9-12 record in their last 21 games, but only two of those wins came against "top 20" teams.

However, in their last 25 games against teams that actually care, the Kings are a dreadful 2-23, which makes their shocking win in the "DeRozan Classic" in Toronto last Wednesday even more striking. (Unfortunately, that didn't stop the Kings from leapfrogging four other teams in the reverse standings and reducing their chances of getting a top-four pick in a crowded draft.)

Something similar can be said for every member of this "Infamous Nine." If you focus only on team records since the All-Star break and games against the 20 teams that will at least play in the Play-in, the table looks like this:

In total, the eight tanking teams have a combined record of 17-144 against the 20 legitimate teams since the trade deadline, which is a winning percentage of 10.6%. To put this achievement into perspective – only the Chicago Bulls alone achieved 18 wins against those "top 20" teams before the trade deadline. Wait, it gets even worse: these teams weren't exactly losing "one-possession games." Our "Infamous Nine" lost by an average margin of 13.9 points since the All-Star break. The Utah Jazz alone lost games by 35 and 34 points this weekend.

Allow me to underscore this for emphasis: the average team in this group, when facing any semblance of a real basketball game, performs as poorly as the worst team in history (the Charlotte Bobcats with a 7-59 record during the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season), recording a miserable winning percentage of 10.6%, which is equivalent to an 8.7-win season over 82 games, with almost the worst point differential in NBA history.

And it's not just one team. It's nine of them.

If you don't believe how awful they are, consider this: the New Orleans Pelicans, themselves mired in a brutal 25-54 campaign but with no incentive to tank because they traded their unprotected first-round pick, played eight games against these other nine teams... and won six of them by double digits. As bad as they are, they are still a class above what the tankers are putting on the court.

There's a small counter-argument: these teams were already bad and would have lost most of those games anyway. And yes, most bad teams get their wins against other bad teams, so their record against the top 20 will always be ugly.

Still, it shouldn't be this dreadful. Overall, those same teams had a much more respectable 85-248 (25.5% winning percentage) against the 20 playoff teams before the break, with an average deficit of 8.8 points. Even the worst among them (Washington at 5-31, 13.9%) was winning at a significantly higher rate than this group after the break.

If you apply that 25.5% winning percentage to the 152 games since the All-Star break and subtract it from the 10.6% we actually got, we can estimate that these teams' probability of winning dropped by more than half – an incredible achievement when you're already a huge underdog! Also, we can estimate that the top 20 teams in the league received approximately 25 additional wins as a gift thanks to the combined strategies of "tanking," "rebuilding," or whatever you want to call it.

That amounts to 1.25 extra wins per team, allowing our "Infamous Nine" to register almost three additional losses per squad, which helps explain how a 30-team league can have as many as 19 teams with winning records.

You might assume that some of these gifted wins would have happened anyway due to rebuilding strategies; for example, the Memphis Grizzlies were doomed to a worse outcome no matter what after trading Jaren Jackson Jr. for picks and spare parts. On the other hand, teams like the Indiana Pacers, Wizards, and Jazz made trades to bring in significant players, then almost immediately sidelined them due to questionable injuries.

All of this doesn't just spoil the quality of Friday night's games; it spoils the league itself – making it harder to evaluate players and teams and adding free wins to those teams lucky enough to have tankers on their schedule late in the season.

For example, what should we in Atlanta think about the Hawks, who have won 18 of their last 20 games, but 11 of those 18 wins came against the "Infamous Nine"? What should we think when Bam Adebayo scores 83 points, but against a ridiculous Wizards lineup?

It's not just Atlanta. Practically every hot winning streak in the last two months comes with a huge asterisk due to the presence of tankers on the schedule. The Charlotte Hornets are 17-5 in their last 22 games, but nine wins came against those intentionally losing. The Los Angeles Lakers won 16 of 18 before injuries struck, but six were "tank" wins. The Spurs won 21 of 23 coming out of the break... but seven of them were against the "Infamous Nine."

Even evaluating your own team becomes harder. What should the Cleveland Cavaliers think about their team if they enter the playoffs with 11, 12, or 13 wins in their last 16 games... but seven wins were automatically served on a platter, and the eighth game was somehow a loss to the Dallas Mavericks?

And that, my friends, is why the league must implement the relatively draconian measures it is now considering to discourage tanking. In the current environment, multi-team races to see who can sink lower to get a better draft position are a logical response to the incentives of the draft itself, but this dangerously distorts the league and kills the fan experience in the last two months. I worry about the unintended consequences of some of the league's proposals, but the status quo is no longer an option.

Obviously, not every game can be Jokic versus Wembanyama. But Saturday's classic should serve as a stark reminder that this is the level of basketball we should be watching, and you can't get that if a third of the teams are intentionally losing. Now that the data has been collected, the conclusion is clear: tanking has led already bad teams to achieve historical awfulness, and this was only masked by the fact that they sometimes got to play against each other.