The Deep 3 Podcast - This One Problem Is RUINING The NBA | TD3 Clips

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

The NBA's biggest problem keeps getting worse! #nba Check out the TD3 merch: https://the-deep-3-shop.fourthwall.com/ Listen on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/show/3elbbqVumwqz8wlIdknsLW Listen on Apple Podcasts!: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-3-podcast/id1657940794 Follow us on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedeepthree Follow us on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/thedeep3podcast/ Isaac's twitter: https://twitter.com/byisaacg Mo's twitter: https://twitter.com/Mojo99_ Donnavan's twitter: https://twitter.com/Dsmoot3D Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have to talk about the biggest problem plaguing the NBA right now. And that's tanking. The Utah Jazz is taking, tanking to the next level. They traded for Jared Jackson Jr. at the deadline. They played their first game with him in the lineup against Orlando Magic. And they were up 94-87 going into the fourth quarter. They were whooping their ass, lock and pallow up, everything to look at the jazz. We're going to surely get this win.

Then they sat all their good players for the entire fourth quarter and lost the game 120 to 117. A egregious act of tanking that is once again reignited the talking point of this being something that is ruining the league for a lot of viewers, a lot of people going to games, watching players in real life, watching on TV, on League Pass. It's bad for people that even want to have a casual interest in the NBA over the course of the second half of the season because they know half the games will not matter because the players will not play. Do you guys view this as the biggest problem in the NBA right now?

I don't think this is the biggest problem in the league. Honestly, this is just like, what is the biggest problem in the league? Power rank the biggest problems in the league. I feel like it would be more of an eye cancer to watch a team like the Knicks go ahead and tank egregiously or the Lakers. It seems that's clearly like one of the more popularly teams versus the Utah Jazz. Ain't nobody checking for Utah Jazz games like that at all. I don't give a damn if they take. They kind of have to.

This seems specific in the year, the kind of year and the kind of protection specifically that they have on top of them. They have to take it. They have to go ahead and guarantee that they land a pick or else I think it's top eight protected. if they don't like get it, get it within the top eight. OKC gets that pick. Yep. That's perfectly fine. Their fans, I feel like their fans overall aren't mad about it because they understand

how important and how pivotal this is to overall team building. If you're the Utah Jazz who you're not going to go ahead and sign any free agents, I can't name too many guys off the top of my head who were like, yeah, Utah Jazz, sign me up. I want to be with them Mormons. No one ever thinks like that ever, ever, ever. Yeah. Well, I think you're right. That is obviously in the best interest of the Utah Jazz for that pick.

protection for the place they're out in their timeline for how good this draft is, which is probably like the tweet we have on screen right now. It seems like 20% of the league is already tanking. That is how it feels. I feel like we're in one of the biggest tanking years in a long time. That's going to happen when you have one of the best draft classes of all time seemingly in front of us with three seemingly surefire superstars, a fourth guy in Caleb, Wilson, who was also thought to be as good as a normal top three pick, three or four guys that

could be solid top four picks in most drafts. You're going to see more teams that want to get in on that. I want to get involved with that. that makes sense? The issue is it doesn't make sense though. Is it good for the league? And I think that's the part people are taking exception with. That if it makes sense, that's a problem with the system.

And the system is set up that it makes a lot of uninterertaining hoops. And you don't really, you've never, there's no other sport that have anything like this where a third of the league is actively putting a bad product out there on purpose for four months of the season. I think for the Utah jazz specifically. There's some baseball teams. Sure. No, that's terrible. But that's different, though, because it's not losing for a draft because the draft isn't like that.

So, like, there are some baseball off of baseball teams, but they're not incentivized for that. They just aren't competent to want to spend money. Yeah, I think I only don't mind a tank when it can at least be viewed as productive in some light. That's the hard part. It's always productive. They're productive because, well, on the court, productive because you can sit down and say, hey, at least you got Isaiah Collier to take some shots for the last game or two games. It was going to say Atlanta Oaks. He was giving us fucking issues, bro.

This game specifically, I can look at Ace Bay. be like, yeah, like at least our top five pick or whatever he was last year can go ahead and develop and get real-life reps that Lairn-Marketing and Jaron Jackson Jr. would eat up. I think that's productive for this team right here. But if we're talking about the team, like, I don't know, what's a team with like nothing going on? The Sacramento Kings.

Even then. That's not even a good example, though. It's always productive, and that's the problem, is that I started the conversation by saying, is it the biggest problem in the league? And that's a tough conversation because it's essential to a league like the NBA. that has an 82 game season, you have to have a lottery, right? Like you can't have flat, worst team gets number one pick. Otherwise, we're going to have crazy tanking.

But because of lottery, a lot of times good teams get the top pick. The really bad teams get fucked over, get the fifth pick, so they stay bad. It's a legit problem. I don't know if it has an answer. I don't know if there's a solution to it. I don't know if it's something that actually should be changed or something we kind of just got to accept. But the fact that it's incentivized and everything you're saying is true. And it's undoubtedly good to tank.

that's an unsolvable problem I think Yeah I think the The only way that you can fix this Is you're gonna have to burn it to the ground Like you're gonna you're gonna have to get rid of of a draft In order to actually fix tanking and trying to position yourself for Draft position but like obviously that's not gonna happen Yeah it's not a realistic answer

Yeah like we're not gonna gonna do that I do think that like it is it is a problem when it's This egregious I think sometimes you can stomach it if you know, even if it's like an hour before the game, if you get the alert and it's like, hey, so it's not playing. Like, okay, I'm kind of walking into, I know what I'm walking into. When we're up through three quarters and I'm seeing Jerry Jackson Jr.

And I'm seeing, I'm seeing this entire team play well. And then all of a sudden we're just going to give up. That's the issue because we joked around at the trade deadline because it's like, I've never heard anybody talk this much about like jersey sales or anything like this. I legitimately care in the in this sense of how much people have to like pay and do all this other stuff to walk in here for this specific team. And I were just going to lose on purpose. It goes against everything that we're doing here. And so it is a it is a problem.

But outside of again, taking away the draft, I don't know how to fix it. I think it's only a problem if you tank and you still are ass. That's where it's like, okay, well, you did all that tanking for no fucking reason. You've been shaking your ass twerking in February, all right. ready for these top picks and you don't do anything. You make the wrong moves. That's where it's like, okay. Well, that's a problem with the lottery then at that point because, again, the wizards,

the Pistons had it for a few years, worse odds every single year, keep getting the fifth pick. And a lot of the talking points around this and this issue of tanking, a lot of people kind of take this weird, like, cop-like approach with it where they want to, like, punish these bad teams and be like, you deserve to be punished and we're not going to reward being bad. And I understand the sentiment because of everything you guys are talking about. It's embarrassing product upon the court. Feels like it's disrespectful to the fans to be so egregiously poor and all this stuff

that they're just like, you're incompetent and I hate you. But the reality is unless you give them really good players, they're going to stay that way. Not everybody's a Celtics. Not everybody's going to go find a Jordan Walsh every year and be able to be amazing at finding guys in the second round of the Grizzlies. Put that guy their arm down. It's like for Jordan Walsh. What's wrong with you, man? It's my guy right there, man.

Not every franchise is realistic going to be set up like that. So you do like in reality have to give these. terrible teams, good players, so they can have some parity and move it around. Like, it's the same reason. That's why the NFL, every team is one good draft away from being great. And that's a little different because they have seven rounds, a different format there. But, you know. And players die every single week.

True. Yeah, yeah. Injuries have a bigger part of parity there. So it's not exactly one to one. But getting a really great player because you're really bad promotes parity. So I think any type of solution people put out there that, oh, maybe the team that is the best non-laughty team, she gets number one pick. stuff like that's not a realistic solution that fixed a problem it would make you feel some type of like

it'd make you feel like you won the animosity battle you have a bad teams but it wouldn't actually fix the issue yes but i to that i would say like the when you are when you're tanking and like you're tanking for draft position it puts basically 90% of the onus on your job is be a good drafter. Yep. Where other GMs, like, even if you miss a draft pick, and obviously it depends on where the market is, if you are in, like, a free agent destination or anything like that, you can sign people in free agency.

You can go make trade and people will want to stay. And so you have these other avenues. And like maybe Utah and like Utah or Sacramento, those are just places where you just have to be a good drafter and that's just part of it. And so your job is innately harder because you don't have these other. pass. But when you do that, like, that's, that's one of the bigger differences between them and a Boston is that maybe if we're looking at the jazz and you start forcing these teams to also be good traders and forcing them to be good free agent signings. And you just, like, that's

also a different area where by having this, this draft lottery or by saying like, it's okay, like you can get your draft big. You are allowing people to then put all, all of the pressure, knowing that a majority of these draft picks are not going to be All-Star. So majority of these picks aren't going to be all NBA players. And so we're allowing people to set them all, to set themselves up for failure. Well, that's a personal problem.

You're right. And that's why tanking is, that's why tanking in this whole conversation makes it feel worse. But for the teams who, like, precisely know what they're doing, this shit is a real tool and weapon to use to catapole your organization, look at and propel you to one of the best in league.

Going back to, I think the year was 1996, 1997. I think that's one of the last years where the spur or the spurs had a like a random blip where they won like 20 games. Tanks. Next thing you know, they go ahead draft Tim Duncan and the history of the organization changes for fucking ever. That's like the best case scenario of tanking. And a lot of teams don't have the necessary molecules, atoms in their brain IQ to go ahead and do such things through their scouting programs.

And that's what makes this whole conversation. 100%. And people will say, okay, then get good, right? Like that would be something that like I can imagine Donovan saying like draft better. to be better. I can't. And like, yeah, that'd be great. It would be ideal to say,

look at a sports league and say the worst team should do what the best teams do. It's just not reality. There's always going to be shitters. In a sport that is privately owned every team, you can't remove owners, you can't relegate teams to different leagues. You're always going to have shitters at the bottom.

That just is what it is. You have bad owners that own the teams and they don't want to put money to the front office. They don't have to. So you're not going to escape incompetence. And that's the part you've got to build around as a reality.

I mean, I'm just confused it got so bad because I personally thought with the new, lottery odds, for those who don't know, they actually change the odds in 2019. You don't need to have like a top three worst record in the league anymore to have a chance at the number one. Yeah. Because now it's set up, as long as you have one of the three worst records, you have an

equal shot at that number one pick. And then it trickles down to the point where like, you know, the ninth worst record has a three and a half, two point eight, excuse me. Yeah. They have triple what they had before. Three percent before it was one point one. that's a meaningful difference. Yeah, that's how the Atlanta Hawks

at the number one pick a couple years ago and the average. Yeah, the Dallas Mavericks as well, you're right. And it definitely, so this definitely meaningfully impacts how things have gone in the past few years. I think it's worth talking about has it positively impacted it?

It's made some of the shitter stay shittier for longer. Like the Wizards probably would have got the number one pick if things didn't change or at least would have got number two pick at some point outside of Sard. They got a lot of five. Save the Pissons outside of Cade, right? Yeah.

That impacts things, like we mentioned, the Atlanta Hawks and the Mavericks changed their, I was going to say changed their teams forever. the Atlanta Hawks did not, but they did have the opportunity to because of these flattened odds. So it gives more teams that fall into the lottery a chance to transform their team, but hurts the worst teams, which now we're looking back at this, this probably helps the tanking from like entertainment standpoint, like evens things out and like makes the race to one not as egregious. But I think if you have the bad team staying bad for longer, it probably nests out as a negative for the league. Probably.

And also this is like two different. It's two different things because if you, again, if you're going into the year saying, hey, we understand that we are in a rebuilding phase. I think people can understand that of we're in this, in this season of or in this phase of our team, that's fine. What the jazz did is actually egregious. Yeah. Like, in-game tanking, that that's something that I do think is something where you are going

to have to take that different approach and actually start handing out punishments because I know Jerry Jackson is not her. I know these other guys are fine. Once again, you were you were busting the, you were dominating for three quarters. And now you take the guys out. What's actually good here? What's actually going on?

That's a much bigger problem than this season long, odd stuff. Yeah, I think that's a good point to bring them back to the jazz. There's obviously, this is all a fine line because you can't dissuade tanking in an era where a draft exists. and you also can't really tell coaches who to play. You know, they could just be like, oh, I don't want to play Jaron. He's what it is.

Like, they're in charge of who they play. But even then, like the coaches, I've never, I've never, and maybe I'm just super naive. I've never thought that like the actual, like, on the ground people that, like, the actual players or the actual coaches are the ones that are like, yeah, we're going to lose this game. Of course not.

Many of them are going to try not to. And it's probably different in each organization. Maybe we'll hardly just understand. We have a top eight pick. And it'll be pretty nice for me. me if I had a top five player next year. So I want to make sure we keep that pick, right? But that's where the fine line is, I think, is I think the hard part is them and the wizards trading for stars and are either sitting them all year, which the wizards, they could say we trade

for injured stars. So we're just going to let them rehab. That's somewhat understandable. The jazz trade for a star and Jaron Jackson and then don't let him play the fourth quarter is like to buy in to get better, but then still stay worse. That might be where the like subjective ruling of the commissioner has to come in to say, if you're going to make a move, to be good, then be good. We're not going to allow you to do both. That's like an issue. But then that raises the question of pick protections are the issue.

Having a top of a protected pick allows you to do that. Oh, yeah, let's cut those. Yeah, that might be the answer. I know there was a report a few months ago that they were looking into ways to curb this. I think that came out in December. And there was some terrible ideas on there. And there was one good one, I think. That one good idea was eliminating the specificness to pick protections, not eliminating

entirely. I think you could just eliminate entirely, possibly. But basically, it could be lottery protected or no protections. or maybe whatever that number is, whether it's lottery or top five, make it so there's only one or two types of protections. Not, if it's one to four I keep it or 10 to 30, I keep it, but five to nine, you get it.

One to eight I keep it. If not, it becomes this and this and that. Like, the complexity of protections leads to more tanking opportunities. Because if this Jaspic was unprotected, they would just be trying to win. Yeah, Indiana. Exactly.

And I think the, what you say about, like, the subjective, the perspective from the commissioner, Adam, start the taking task force today. Yeah, right? We're going to have to go around to every single team and we're going to have to pop in, make sure that you guys are doing things the right way,

make sure that things are not getting egregious and it's going to have to go like that. Yeah, I think honestly what he probably has to do, everything we're saying is that there's no answer from a totally unemotional standpoint of logic. There's no answer here. He has to make this entertainment product. And he has to say,

you trade for Darren Jackson, I'm calling him Danny Aange and said, okay, you're buying, you better motherfucking buy. Otherwise, we're going to do fines. You better, like, I'm going to put my foot on the scale a little bit and say, we're going to prioritize entertainment. If you're going to be a good team, do it. Don't continue to lose. Like, that's just something you got to understand.

I'm going to do whatever I can with my powers as a commissioner to make sure you you have to do that. We'll find you in a very subjective sense. That's not fair. A jazz fan will say, I'm allowed to play whoever I want in the fourth quarter. Too damn bad. This is an entertainment product. We're going to find you.

And he has to just take away this whole. Adam Silver does things completely fair and doesn't try to put his own opinion at things into things I think that's a change I think he should I think that has to change if you do want to solve this problem

that has to change There's fantasy football leagues with harder tanking rules than what the NBA does That's hilarious And maybe they don't want it to change And this is also we gotta deal with But we've seen signals

that Adam Silver isn't okay With the tanking in some regard But it seems like he wants to solve it in some like fair scientific way I think yes to add his own judgment into it Yeah I think Adam Silver needs to make some sort of big change

I think we need to remember what the NBA looked like with David Stern. He wasn't afraid to make big changes that we're going to anger people. And I think there's so many different problems with the league right now. The Adam Silver needs to make an opinionated change. Not only on this, but with injuries, All-Star weekend. Like something got to give. We need a co-commissioner. Adam Silver is obviously so good for the business of the game, expanding the pockets of everybody.

But obviously we need a little David Stern sprinkled in there for the health of the product. Man, if I die, I hope I have David Stern PR. I don't think everybody, anybody says he was a great commissioner. We say he was an opinionated commissioner that he would, he would do some stuff. But like every time something happens, everyone's just like, man, Stern's NBA would never. And it's like, I mean, nobody loved 100% like what was going down in the NBA like every single time with Stern. But it's just like he's just, he's just viewed as this like perfect commissioner. And it's like, I don't think people view everything like a dictator.

This very idealized version of David Stern is definitely here. I see both sides. I know what you're saying. But that's just because I think people view him as the opposite of Adam Silver, which leads to these convos. I don't think people actually view him as a great commissioner. I think that part definitely isn't the sentiment is like he was perfect commissioner, but he was everything Adam Silver isn't. So he would stand on some sit at the end of the day.

Yeah. Like I think this narrative started off as a joke of like people talking about the fact you couldn't wear bag clothes and the racer shit that was happening and then be like, he wouldn't allow that. He would have took him out there and said, go be proper. Like it started off that way. It's not, you're right. People view him as a dictator more than anything.

Yeah. I love him now. It's because Adam. We ignore the fact that racist shit happened under his wife's. Alan Irons would put a suit on. That's funny. You sound bad. No one said he was moral.

Don't say he was a guy. He said he was a guy with an iron fist. Do these taking teams want to a team? People are loving that right now. Yeah, listen, the age we're in. People are loving that. People want some David Stern right now. The voting public would love some David Stern.

They would love never. Tell me what to do. No more gushy swires. Pull your pants on. Yo, man. Quinstat, I don't want to take that. Farragamo belt off, man. That shit is not allowed in this league.