How the Thunder’s Rise Has Triggered a New Twist in the NBA’s Tanking Game
The Oklahoma City Thunder are sitting pretty near the top of the NBA mountain. With a young core that’s already captured one title and looks poised to chase another, they’ve become the blueprint for how to build a contender through smart drafting, asset accumulation, and player development. But here’s the twist: the Thunder’s success is also indirectly fueling one of the league’s most frustrating and controversial trends - tanking.
And right now, it’s the Utah Jazz who are taking that playbook and giving it a bold, unconventional remix.
Utah’s New Spin on an Old Problem
Let’s start with the facts. The Jazz are 17-37 and clearly not playing for the present.
But what’s raising eyebrows across the league - and lighting up social media - is how they’re going about it. Head coach Will Hardy has been rolling out his top guys like Lauri Markkanen and the newly acquired Jaren Jackson Jr. for the first three quarters of games, only to pull them in the fourth when things start to get tight.
It’s not the traditional “shut down your stars for weeks” approach we’ve seen in the past. Instead, it’s more surgical - play your best players just enough to keep things respectable, then quietly fade when it matters most. It’s a strategy that’s subtle enough to skirt league intervention, but obvious enough that fans and insiders alike are calling it out.
An anonymous Western Conference executive recently told insider Marc Stein that Utah isn’t technically breaking any rules. “It’s not like they just sit everybody,” the exec said. “The league can’t tell a team how to use their guys during a game.”
That’s the loophole. And Utah is walking right through it.
Why the Thunder Are at the Center of This
Now, here’s where things get especially interesting - and where OKC’s fingerprints are all over this situation.
Back in 2021, the Jazz sent Derrick Favors to the Thunder in a salary dump. To make the deal work, Utah included a future first-round pick. That pick is finally coming due in the 2026 NBA Draft… unless it lands in the top eight.
And that’s the key. The pick is top-eight protected.
If it falls anywhere from No. 1 to No. 8, the Jazz keep it. If it slips to No. 9 or lower, the Thunder cash in.
So what’s Utah doing? They’re doing everything they can to make sure that pick stays in the top eight - even if it means getting creative with their rotation and sacrificing wins down the stretch.
From a purely strategic standpoint, it’s hard not to admire the gamesmanship. The Jazz are playing within the rules, but they’re bending them in a way that’s hard to ignore. And while this might frustrate the league office and fans who want to see every team compete every night, it’s a direct response to the long-term leverage OKC gained through a smart trade years ago.
The Bigger Picture: Tanking in the Modern NBA
This situation underscores a broader issue the NBA has been wrestling with for years: how to discourage teams from intentionally losing without over-policing coaching decisions. The league has tried to address tanking with draft lottery odds reform, fines, and public pressure. But as we’re seeing with Utah, teams are still finding new ways to game the system.
And in this case, the Thunder - a team that once mastered the art of the rebuild themselves - are now on the receiving end of that same strategic mindset.
It’s a full-circle moment. Oklahoma City spent years stockpiling picks and playing the long game. Now they’re a title contender, and other teams are fighting tooth and nail to avoid giving them even more ammunition.
So while the Thunder chase a second straight championship, they’re also watching closely as the Jazz do everything they can to keep a valuable pick out of their hands. It’s a chess match playing out behind the scenes, and it’s one more reminder that in today’s NBA, the action isn’t just on the court - it’s in the front office, the draft room, and, increasingly, in the fourth quarter rotations of teams with nothing to lose.
The Thunder may be the league’s gold standard right now, but their rise has inadvertently added fuel to one of the NBA’s most persistent fires. And as long as draft protections exist and teams like Utah are willing to get creative, don’t expect that fire to die out anytime soon.