Tanking is the talk of the town in the NBA, and the Sacramento Kings are in the thick of it. Commissioner Adam Silver wants to crack down, but his avenues of doing so are limited. On the upside, if the Kings are tanking on purpose, they're making it look really natural.
When the worst teams reach the latter part of the season and any chance of reaching the postseason is gone, some basement-dwelling franchises start tanking. That's the polite way of saying losing on purpose in order to hopefully get a better lottery draft pick.
During the All-Star Weekend, Adam Silver had a lot to say about tanking and that the NBA is working on ways to shut it down. While the practice makes sense from a roster management perspective, it harms the NBA's brand, as well as potentially upsetting sports gambling companies.
Nothing is going to change right away, but Silver is handing out heavy fines to teams who sit players as part of a tanking strategy. While the Kings have a lot of players on the bench, it's more because of actual injuries. Sacramento doesn't have to tank. They know how to lose normally.
The Kings have been tanking since the first game of the season
All of this will impact the Kings and their plans for a rebuild. They need a high lottery pick this year and likely the following year at least. The reality is that the Kings don't need to tank to get there because they have been horrible all season long. And there have been a ton of injuries to boot.
Going into the home stretch as the end of the regular season closes in, no one is shocked to see the Kings losing like crazy. Pretty much everyone called this during the offseason. At the same time, losing this badly is still pretty impressive when you actually step back and really think about it.
If the Kings are actually trying to lose games, they're making it come across as organic. No one is going to question them losing 14 games in a row because they've been losing all season. No one is going to question having several players injured at once because it's been happening all season.
Literally no one in a position of authority in the NBA has directly accused the Kings of tanking, mainly because that would be rubbing salt in the wounds of a brutal season. Knowing how rough 2025-2026 has been for Sacramento, if they tried intentionally losing, they'd probably win every game.