NBA’s Anti-Tanking Push Hasn’t Stopped a Historically Bad Start

The NBA has made several changes in recent years to curb tanking. But several NBA teams have continued to build rosters designed to lose, leading to historic levels of futility in the early stages of the 2025–26 season.

There are four teams with two wins or fewer through the first 13 games of the season:

• Pacers (1–13)
• Wizards (1–12)
• Pelicans (2–12)
• Nets (2–11)

This is just the third time that’s happened in NBA history, per data from Sportradar. The two other instances occurred in the 1997–98 and 2004–05 seasons. In the 22 seasons from 2004–05 to this year, only one other time did multiple teams hold a record of 2–11 or worse through 13 games (2007–08). 

Before Brooklyn defeated Washington on Sunday, they shared an identical 1–11 record with Indiana. It was just the second time in NBA history that at least three teams started a season 1–11 or worse. 

Washington and Brooklyn were tanking candidates from the beginning of the season. The two teams are deploying the youngest teams in the NBA, normally a sign that a team is looking to develop young talent rather than shoot for a postseason spot. (Note: The Thunder won the 2024–25 NBA title with the league’s second-youngest roster.)

Neither team’s roster has a “star,” which, according to the league’s definition, is a player who has made the All-Star Game or All-NBA team in at least one of the last three seasons. Khris Middleton is the only player on either team who has ever made the All-Star Game, and the 34-year-old last made it in 2022.

The Wizards’ offseason moves suggested they were ready for another season in the NBA’s doldrums. Their notable move was to add CJ McCollum, a respected NBA veteran, though he’s expected to be traded to a competitive team before the February trade deadline, given he’s 34 and on an expiring contract.

Washington is on pace to finish with its third consecutive season with fewer than 20 wins, which would be the first time that’s happened since “The Process” Sixers from the 2013–14 to 2015–16 seasons. 

Brooklyn hasn’t experienced the same level of incompetence in recent years—and it blew out the Wizards by 23 points when the two met Sunday—but it isn’t necessarily in a better position due to a lack of building blocks.

The Nets surprised the league by selecting five first-round picks in the 2025 draft, but only one, Egor Dёmin, who many deemed was a reach at No. 8, has been in the team’s regular rotation all season. 

Indiana, which made the Finals last year, lost star guard Tyrese Haliburton for this season with an Achilles tendon tear. It wasn’t a tanking candidate to begin the season, but it has been hammered with multiple injuries to other key role players, which could easily turn the season into a gap year.

This would be a similar model to the 2019–20 Warriors, who won just 15 games while dealing with injuries to Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, then won the No. 2 pick in the 2020 NBA draft, which they used to select James Wiseman.

New Orleans is the outlier among the four teams, given that it doesn’t own its 2026 first-round pick after an infamous 2025 draft-night trade with the Hawks. The team fired head coach Willie Green on Saturday after just 12 games. 

Discouraging Strategic Losing

The NBA’s attempts to curb tanking include changing the draft lottery odds. In 2019, the league flattened the odds among all qualified teams and gave the three teams with the lowest odds an equal 14% chance of securing the No. 1 pick. The previous system awarded a 25% chance to the team with the worst record, and the three teams with the worst record had better than a 14% chance at the top selection.

The previous format used the lottery only to select the top three picks, while the remaining teams fell based on record. The new system selects four picks through the lottery, adding more opportunities for teams to jump the line, ostensibly disincentivizing tanking.

The NBA also added a play-in tournament, which meant teams that finished Nos. 9 and 10 in their conference could still qualify for the playoffs. The idea was to motivate teams on the cusp of the play-in tournament to continue competing late in the season rather than tanking for better odds.

The changes have somewhat worked. The Mavericks won the 2025 NBA lottery with a 1.8% chance. Late-season NBA games have had more stakes as teams battled to qualify for the top six—an automatic playoff berth—to avoid the play-in.

But certain organizations continue to believe tanking is the quickest way to the top, especially when they see the performance of teams like the Spurs, who have been selected in the top four in the last three drafts. The 2026 draft is also projected to be one of the best, led by three top prospects: Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, and Cameron Boozer.