If you are even a casual fan of the NBA, the chances are you have heard at least a little bit in the last couple of months about the NBA’s perceived tanking problem. Nearly one-third of the league is spending the last eight weeks of the regular season trying to lose as many games as possible. Several teams have been trying to lose even longer than that. At best, it is a poor look for a sports league that is ostensibly based on competition.

While tanking is an issue in every league that gives higher draft picks to the teams with the worst records (more on that later), it has not been as big of an issue in the WNBA. I want to look at why that is and also why it might be changing. Finally, we will look at what, if anything, the WNBA should do about it.

The peak of tanking in the WNBA was probably the Washington Mystics last season. The Mystics were in the thick of the playoff race when they traded their offensive engine, Brittney Sykes, to the Seattle Storm for a 2026 first-round pick. Rather than let their young core experience a playoff race and potentially a first-round series, the Mystics chose to add another first-round pick while also making their own pick better. The Mystics finished the season with 10 consecutive losses and will pick fourth in the upcoming draft.

While I personally would have liked to have seen Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen in the playoffs, especially if it would have come at the expense of the Seattle Storm, it is hard to argue with Washington’s actions. They almost certainly would have lost in the first round of the playoffs, and now they have the fourth and ninth picks (plus the 11th pick from New York) to add to Citron and Irianfen and Shakira Austin. If they are able to land some key free agents, that team could be a contender as soon as next season. That is likely the reason no one appeared to bat an eye when Washington made the trade.

Even if you hated the trade for the Mystics, what they did is nothing compared to the tanking we have seen in the NBA the last two seasons. Citron, Iriafen and Shakira Austin all played their normal minutes down the stretch. Washington didn’t sit them out or put them on a minutes limit, or have them sit out for the entire fourth quarter of close games. I have a few ideas as to why.

I think the biggest reason tanking hasn’t been a problem in the past is that most of the bad teams weren’t trying to be bad. Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and, to a lesser extent, Connecticut, were all trying to be good last season. Chicago and Los Angeles traded their 2026 first-round picks for veteran guards in an effort to compete last season. Connecticut also didn’t control its own pick, though it chose to rebuild anyway. Dallas fired its coach after one season because they were noncompetitive despite getting outstanding play from Rookie of the Year Paige Bueckers. That really only left room for one of Washington, Seattle and Golden State to try to tank. With only five lottery spots in the WNBA compared to 14 in the NBA, there are just fewer opportunities to tank.

That could be changing as the WNBA continues to add expansion franchises. I haven’t seen anything about the lottery expanding in the next CBA, but it stands to reason. Every team that played in 2025 either made the playoffs or was in the lottery. That is also the case in the NBA. If that continues, that will create more opportunities for tanking. Even with the odds drastically favoring the teams with the worst (cumulative) record, once teams are eliminated from playoff contention, they would all be incentivized to lose. With more teams in the league, talent will get spread out even more. 

Speaking of which, I am surprised that among all of the possible tanking solutions I have heard proposed for the NBA, the WNBA’s model of using win percentage from the last two seasons to determine lottery odds has not come up once. I feel like this rule makes it less likely that a good team that suffers a few injuries will just shut their good players down and lose as many games as possible. Connecticut proved last season that one year of being bad isn’t enough to get better than the fifth-best lottery odds. The Sun had the third-worst record last season, one game better than Dallas and Chicago, but because they were 28-12 in 2024, they still finished with nine more wins over the last 2 seasons than any of the other lottery teams. So long as the WNBA keeps this rule, I think they will curb tanking to some degree.

Another potential change in the new CBA that could affect tanking would be the elimination of the Core designation. Essentially, the WNBA’s version of a franchise tag, the core designation ensures that teams that draft a superstar can maintain team control even after that player’s rookie deal expires. High draft picks will always be valuable, but the less control teams have over their draft picks, the less those picks are worth tanking for. I haven’t heard much about this since the offseason began, and my expectation is that the league will probably retain the core designation in some form, but if they can use it fewer times, or if the Players Association manages to get rid of it altogether, it might lead to less tanking.

The WNBA hasn’t seen the scourge of protected draft picks getting traded like the NBA has, but I would like to see them proactively limit pick protections in trades. As we have seen in the NBA, many of the most blatant forms of tanking have been from teams trying to keep a draft pick that will convey to another team if they win too many games. If they said you couldn’t protect a pick outside of the top four, I feel like that would be a useful measure to get ahead of potential tanking in the future.

The only real antidote to tanking is eliminating the draft, and so long as the NBA controls the league office, I cannot imagine that happening in the WNBA. The NBA, along with the other major sports leagues, has decided that bad teams need a chance to add talent through a high draft pick. So long as this is the case, there will always be a reason for smart teams to lose games on purpose if it looks like they can’t contend for a title or at least make the playoffs. I fear it is just a matter of time before it becomes a major problem in the WNBA the way it has in the NBA.