Warriors' Draymond Green Rips Nba For Not Punishing Tanking Teams Enough

Warriors' Draymond Green rips NBA for not punishing tanking teams enough originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

After seemingly witnessing a team tanking right before his eyes, Draymond Green sounded off on the NBA for its mishandling of the growing issue.

Green spoke to reporters after the Warriors’ 110-105 win over the Sacramento Kings for several minutes about the league’s tanking problem. To him, the solution is simple: fines, fines, fines.

“I get fined when I do wrong. Just fine the hell out of people. We love taking money from players. Keep fining teams,” Green said after Tuesday’s game at Chase Center. “I’ve seen two fines, and we all know everybody’s tanking. But you’ve seen two fines. If it was players, they’d snatch that money in a heartbeat. Why isn’t it the same? Everybody loves money. The punishment for players is always, ‘Let’s take the money.’ When it comes to punishing the teams, all of a sudden, nobody knows what to do.

“We see 12 teams tanking and we’ve seen two fines. If my math serves me correctly, that’s 10 that haven’t been fined. We don’t keep that same energy when it comes to teams, when it comes to officials, when it comes to everybody but players, we don’t keep that same energy. But this is a player’s league.”

Green chuckled, then walked away from the postgame podium.

The NBA recently fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for tanking and “conduct detrimental to the league” after sitting healthy players to improve their respective draft positioning.

The Kings, 21-59 and tied for the worst record in the Western Conference, have been at the bottom of the barrel of the standings nearly all season.

A bizarre encounter in Tuesday’s game strengthened Green’s case. Kings guard Doug McDermott was told by Sacramento coach Doug Christie to intentionally foul Warriors guard Seth Curry with just over three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The Kings were up by one point at the time, and the Warriors were in the bonus, sending Curry — a career 86.4 percent free-throw shooter — to the line.

With all of this in mind, Green is adamant that the NBA Play-In Tournament has lost its purpose, given that teams toward the bottom of the standings are more focused on tanking and improving their draft position.

“I think the play-in was made for teams to not tank,” Green said. “The play-in came about to make teams maybe through 12 or 13 [seed] keep going. They ain’t keep going. They slowed down. Then they hit the brakes. I saw a team tonight foul Seth Curry with three minutes to go in the game for no reason — in the penalty. It ain’t working.”

It appears evident that the NBA at least will look into solutions this offseason to prevent the same from occurring throughout the 2026-27 season and beyond.

Green has the solution to start, but it will be up to league officials to make a decision.

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