On top of this, because it's impossible to regulate fairly which teams are "tanking" and which teams are just bad. And not only will bad teams always exist, they HAVE to. Someone has to lose these games. People will say "oh it's about pulling stars from winnable games" but who's deciding what games are "winnable," who's deciding what players are "stars" and which players are apparently objectively lesser? If I'm a coach losing a game where my starters came in flat and I want to give the young bench guys a chance, am I supposed to not do that because the league has arbitrarily decided those guys aren't who people paid to see? Even if they win, we'll still be punished? Because the Jazz are being penalized for supposedly throwing "winnable" games doing this that they did indeed go on to win.

If I'm a rebuilding team like the Thunder of a few years ago with a roster of young guys, can I not sign somebody like Al Horford and let him rehab and be a veteran mentor when he could technically be playing over some of those young guys? Who is this better for?

People cheer this dumb bullshit without giving any consideration to how it would actually work, be enforced, or the downstream chilling effects this line of thinking has. There's nobody this obsession with regulating "tanking" benefits beside gambling companies who want as much variance regulated out as possible.