When teams find themselves stuck between triumphing and tanking

With guard Tyrese Haliburton, a two-time All-Star and an Olympian, as its centerpiece, the Indiana Pacers have roared back to relevancy, making the Eastern Conference finals last season and looking like a legitimate contender again as the NBA postseason begins. (Wikipedia/All-Pro Reels)

By David Aldridge / The Athletic

There are no guarantees to a successful rebuild in the NBA.

Among the myriad dangers of tanking to accelerate a rebuild is this: It may not work.

It usually doesn’t work — at least in producing championship-level teams. For every Oklahoma City or Cleveland, which have turned around their fortunes, there are a half-dozen cautionary tales.

Supposed franchise players taken at the top of drafts cannot stay healthy, trades don’t pan out and free agents don’t live up to their contracts. Owners grow impatient. Teams are stuck in the first-round level of the playoffs, which sounds great from the outside but is inordinately frustrating when conference semifinals cannot be reached year after year.

And this is where most NBA teams are: on that seesaw.

Even though it feels as if everyone is tanking, most teams are neither blowing games on purpose nor cutting down nets in June. Most are somewhere in the middle on the ever-moving rebuilding/retooling line. The plot points change from season to season.

“Oh, I’ve seen a tank or two in my day,” Indiana Pacers star guard Tyrese Haliburton said with a chuckle, now that he is safely on a franchise that briefly dipped into extended losing before retooling on the fly. Indiana bet everything on the talents of its 25-year-old star, who was acquired from the Sacramento Kings in 2022.

With Haliburton, a two-time All-Star and an Olympian, as its centerpiece, Indiana has roared back to relevancy, making the Eastern Conference finals last season and looking like a legitimate contender again as this season’s postseason begins.

“We have a passion and a pride in this organization, and what we’re building here, ’cause we felt like we built it,” Haliburton said. “We feel like this is something that has been very player-led. We feel like the front office and our coaching staff have done a great job of giving us the tools, but they allow us to experiment and be ourselves. So we take pride in this.

“We’re just trying to hold on to this as long as we can. Because I think you see a lot of teams in the NBA, especially with the cap room and all that stuff, and the new CBA, the odds of this keeping our group together forever aren’t very high. We know guys have got to get paid and all of those things. So we’re just cherishing it in the moment while we can.”

Haliburton is correct in noting how difficult sustaining success can be.

Eighteen months ago, the Kings looked aligned from top to bottom with a solid front office, a coach in Mike Brown whose no-nonsense habit-building was rewarded with an NBA coach of the year award in 2023, and a team that was built around a talented guard in De’Aaron Fox. Sacramento was coming off a 48-win regular season and had just gone 15 rounds with the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the 2023 playoffs. Lighting the Beam was the hottest thing going. The future, finally, was encouraging, with an extended run forthcoming.

Now, you would have to go to San Antonio to ask Fox what he thinks went wrong in Sacramento. After having grown tired of the Kings’ ever-changing front-office dynamics, Fox is with the Spurs. Brown is collecting the $30 million owed him through 2027, having been subject to those same dynamics when he was fired in December, after a five-game losing streak.

The Kings did make it to the play-in tournament in the unforgiving Western Conference.

“This is probably our fifth iteration of this team,” interim coach Doug Christie said recently. “We’ve had multiple guys who have been injured. Some are out, still. They come back, they’re rusty. You have to play through it because of who they are and what they bring to your team.”

He added: “I’m more like trying to make sure that their spirit is right. Because if you come in here with the right spirit, and we play the right way, we can compete against any team.”

He is not exaggerating. The Kings have beaten the Cavaliers twice in the past month and won at Detroit on April 7. But during that same stretch, they also lost by 30 at Orlando and inexplicably lost to the tanking Washington Wizards.

Of all the major team sports, the NBA is the most susceptible to the whims and lure of a superstar. One player has more impact on winning in this league than in every other sport. A great pitcher usually throws only once a week. A great quarterback still needs an offensive line to give him time to throw. A great goal scorer in hockey or soccer can be stymied by defenses designed to stop them. The NBA superstar, one of just five players from his team on the court at any given time, can tilt the floor.

So, for teams such as the Wizards and the Utah Jazz, which do not have anyone like that on their rosters, multiple-season tanking is a no-brainer.

For those in the muddled middle, the path forward is not as clear.

For example, under then-general manager Travis Schlenk, Atlanta built a young, exciting group around Trae Young, reaching the Eastern Conference finals in 2021. But ownership’s patience wavered after the Hawks stumbled the next couple of seasons, culminating in the firing of coach Nate McMillan in February 2023 and a front office housecleaning. Yet, Atlanta did not take it back down to the studs, even as rumors abounded last year that the Hawks would be willing to move Young.

Instead, Atlanta held on to Young and traded his backcourt mate, Dejounte Murray, instead. The Hawks have surrounded Young with a new group of role players: Dyson Daniels, Jalen Johnson and rookie Zaccharie Risacher, the first pick in last year’s draft.

Before Johnson went down with a season-ending torn labrum in late January, the Hawks were messing around with a top-four spot in the East. They had to settle for a play-in berth this season, but their future is again bright.

Similarly, Toronto has already hit on Scottie Barnes, taken fourth in the 2021 draft, and paid him accordingly. Yet, the Raptors have not made the playoffs in the desultory East since 2022, when Philadelphia dispatched them in the first round. Since winning the 2019 NBA title, they have won one playoff series. But they are doubling down on their existing core.

They traded for forward Brandon Ingram from New Orleans at this year’s trade deadline and immediately signed him to a three-year, $120 million extension, continuing a recent trend by acquiring players facing rising free agency and extending them before they hit it.

Despite finishing well out of the running this season, Toronto will run it back for 2025-26 with Ingram, Barnes, RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and Jakob Poeltl. The Raptors will chalk this season up to growing pains with encouraging signs, such as the development of forward Ochai Agbaji in the second half of the season and Toronto’s yearlong improvement defensively.

The Pacers, meanwhile, stumbled out of the gate this season, but they are 33-13 since New Year’s Day. If anyone can credibly challenge Boston or Cleveland in the East playoffs, it’s Indiana.

But the clock looms. Center Myles Turner, who is shooting a career-best 40% on 3-pointers this season, hits unrestricted free agency this summer. Indiana wants to re-sign him, but the team also wanted to make Paul George a Pacers player for life.

Things happen. Plans are scuttled. It’s the way of things for most NBA teams.

Cherish the moments while you can.