Spurs were just dragged into a raging debate engulfing the NBA

The San Antonio Spurs are in the final stretch of the regular season. But instead of the focus being on their strong play, tanking has taken center stage in talk around the NBA.

Worse yet, Spurs keep getting bought up as a reason why tanking should be addressed. Ironically, others have mentioned the Silver and Black as a model for how to successfully and efficiently rebuild a franchise. Go figure.

Fans of the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers have both been vocal in their criticism of proposed draft rule changes that would potentially negatively impact small- or mid-market teams. They have a point.

The NBA's plan to curb tanking is baffling since it punishes teams that rely on the draft rather than teams that actively tank. In the Jazz's case, they fall under both categories. Utah isn't a free agent destination, so they have relied on the draft for decades.

However, this year they have blatantly tried to tank to end up with a top-3 pick. Some of that is due to them owing the Oklahoma City Thunder a top-eight protected first-round pick.

That gives them plenty of incentive to aggressively tank, and Spurs fans should hope the Thunder don't end up with their pick. Even so, what the Jazz are doing right now is something San Antonio didn't do during their rebuild.

The Spurs can't be blamed for the NBA's rampant tanking problem

The Jazz were recently fined 500,000 by the NBA for essentially throwing a game. The Jazz were up by double-digits at halftime of a game against the Orlando Magic, only to sit stars Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarter.

Obviously, they lost the game, and the league was presumably furious and rightfully so. There's tanking, and then there's what Utah did. They didn't even bother to hide the fact they were tanking like the Spurs did.

San Antonio at least had the decency to subtly tank in the lead-up to the 2023 NBA Draft. They'd sit two rotation players most games for questionable reasons, but no one was going to bat an eye at them not playing Doug McDermott and Cedi Osman.

However, that's the brilliance of what they did. San Antonio was short on talent to begin with, but strategically sitting players decreased their chances of winning even further.

The Spurs' tanking was nowhere near what the Utah Jazz are doing

The following season, after landing Victor Wembanyama, they unleashed Point Sochan on the NBA.
Never mind that former Spur Jeremy Sochan never played point guard a day in his life or that the team had a perfectly solid point guard coming off the bench in Tre Jones.

That experiment resulted in the Spurs losing 16 straight games and put this team in a position to select Stephon Castle fourth overall.

Lastly, the Spurs were in play-in contention last season before Wembanyama was ruled out for the rest of the season. The team then pivoted hard to tanking and got lucky in the draft lottery. They ended up with the second overall pick, which became Dylan Harper.

None of what the Silver and Black did was nearly as egregious as what the Jazz are doing now. Therefore, the Spurs shouldn't be mentioned as a reason for the NBA to try and fix tanking, considering they didn't go to extremes to affect their lottery odds.