{"id":606370,"date":"2026-02-16T14:44:43","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T14:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/606370\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T14:44:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T14:44:43","slug":"nba-commissioner-adam-silver-made-his-first-comments-since-fining-pacers-what-he-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/606370\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner Adam Silver made his first comments since fining Pacers; what he said"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA commissioner Adam Silver made his first public comments since fining the Indiana Pacers<\/a> $100,000 and the Utah Jazz<\/a> $500,000 for tanking at the All-Star game Saturday, saying the league’s competition committee is looking at making changes to how the top draft picks are assigned, including options other than the lottery. He also said teams could lose draft picks as a penalty.<\/p>\n

However, Silver noted that not only are the incentives for losing currently out-weighing the benefits of winning a few extra games but that fans want their teams to lose to improve their draft pick.<\/p>\n

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“With the modern analytics it’s so clear the incentives are misaligned,” Silver said of rewarding teams that lose the most. “Are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than in recent memory? Yes. That’s what led to those fines and my statement that we’ll be looking more closely at the totality of all the circumstances in terms of team behavior and very intentionally wanted teams to be on notice.<\/p>\n

“(Tanking) is not what the fans want (in general). My caveat is, teams are in a difficult place. The worst place to be is in the middle. Be great or be bad. Fans of those (tanking) teams, it’s not what they want to pay for but in some cases they’re rooting for teams to be bad to improve draft choices.”<\/p>\n

The NBA fined the Indiana Pacers<\/a> $100,000 for violating the Player Participation Policy during the game against the Utah Jazz<\/a> on Feb. 3, the league announced Thursday night. The fine was for not playing Pascal Siakam, as well as two other starters, in the second game of a back-to-back.<\/p>\n

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The NBA went to a lottery system in the 1980s. Currently, the worst three teams get a 52.1% chance at a top-four pick and 14% at the No. 1 selection, with the fourth worst team at 48.1% and 12.5%. It is one of the changes Silver said was an effort to “try to stay ahead of the behavior of some of our teams.”<\/p>\n

But the Pacers lost Tyrese Haliburton to an Achilles tendon tear in Game 7 of the NBA Finals last season then suffered several more injuries to open the season. They went 9-9 in the final 18 games before the All-Star break but are 15-40 overall, the fourth-worst record in the NBA.<\/p>\n

“The Competition Committee started earlier this year reexamine the whole approach to the draft lottery,” Silver said. “It would have to go to a vote of the board of governors but there have been a lot of different ideas over the year, not just changing odds but looking at if there is a better system.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers tanking: What NBA commissioner Adam Silver said about fining Indiana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner Adam Silver made his first public comments since fining the Indiana Pacers $100,000 and the Utah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[2214,7,113,126,3866,6,114,279,203,278,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-606370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-adam-silver","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-indiana","11":"tag-indiana-pacers","12":"tag-indianapacers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-pacers","15":"tag-pascal-siakam","16":"tag-the-nba","17":"tag-tyrese-haliburton","18":"tag-utah-jazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116080847456764035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}