For years now, the NBA has run into the ultimate challenge: find a way to increase both fan interest and revenue at a time when several teams have clearly found it more beneficial to rest their star players rather than floor the gas pedal over the course of the long campaign.
A couple of the league’s efforts to promote winning have been well chronicled. Back in 2019, the NBA flattened the draft lottery odds—giving each of the three worst teams a 14% chance at winning—to disincentivize heavy tanking for the No. 1 pick. Along the same wavelength, league officials made things more interesting by placing a premium on clubs finishing within the top six spots in each conference by giving those squads a guaranteed playoff spot while teams that finish in seventh and eighth place have to play their way in.
Still, even that rationale isn’t totally foolproof, as some teams will look at their future reality and decide to retreat rather than compete for one of the last playoff spots. The Mavericks took this route by benching Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving at the end of last season, preferring to hold onto their lottery pick rather than scrape into the postseason. The NBA fined the franchise $750,000 for “conduct detrimental to the league,” a move that served as a relatively toothless public reprimand.
