During his recent guest appearance on “The Emily Austin Show”, Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. was asked what would be the one rule he would change if he became commissioner of the NBA.
And in an interesting answer, Porter did not mention a rule; rather, he said he would like to do something to stop teams from tanking to get the best chance at picking first in the NBA Draft.
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“I don’t like how teams are deliberately trying to tank to get a good draft pick,” said Porter. “I just think that throwing full NBA seasons down the drain is not the way to go; it’s not ethical to the game. People pay a lot of money to watch the best players in the world compete, and you want to see teams competing to the fullest of their abilities every single night, and when teams do the stuff that they are doing nowadays, it can be tough.”
But Porter’s Nets are one of the tanking teams this season
What made Porter’s reply intriguing is that he plays for the Brooklyn Nets, one of the teams obviously tanking for a lottery pick. Entering Saturday night, Brooklyn had lost 10 straight games and was 3-20 in their last 23 games played. At 15-47 before they faced the Detroit Pistons on Saturday night, the Nets had the third-worst record in the entire league.
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Porter, though, is one player on the Nets who is not trying to lose games, at least he was early on. In December 2025, MPJ averaged 28.3 points, 7.7 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game, leading Brooklyn to a 7-3 record that month. However, he’s somewhat taken his foot off the gas pedal since then, and the Nets went 3-18 from January to February 2026. Still, MPJ’s 24.3 points per game average is a career-high for the 2023 NBA champion.
“The thing is, you may tank for a whole season, and you might not even get the draft pick that you want. Even if you get the draft pick that you want, that player might not pan out to what you thought he would pan out to. And now, you just set your program back, years and years and years,” he added.
The Nets upset the Cade-less Pistons on Saturday night
The story got even more interesting when the Nets stunned the Eastern Conference leaders, the Pistons in Detroit, last Saturday night. Down by 23 points in the third quarter and 10 points with 5:29 left, the Nets went on an 18-6 closing run to record one of the biggest comeback wins in franchise history at 107-105.
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Not surprisingly, Porter Jr. led the Nets with 30 points and 13 rebounds in 39 minutes of action. It was MPJ’s first 30-point game since he closed out the month of January 2026 with three 30-point games in their last four outings. It also somewhat erased doubts that, after playing to win early on, he’s accepted what his team is trying to do this season.
Meanwhile, NBA commissioner Adam Silver hasn’t fined any team since the league levied $100,000 penalties on the Utah Jazz and $50,000 on the Indiana Pacers for intentionally resting players last month. That, despite several teams clearly playing to lose games right now, is the race to win the draft lottery.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Mar 8, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.