{"id":140971,"date":"2026-02-21T13:44:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/140971\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T13:44:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:44:24","slug":"the-bounce-the-pistons-send-another-message-to-the-knicks-plus-tanking-fixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/140971\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bounce: The Pistons send another message to the Knicks. Plus, tanking fixes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bounce Newsletter\u00a0\":basketball:\"\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s daily NBA newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Just a reminder that if someone is talking about the MVP award, but will only go so far as to say a player belongs in the \u201cMVP conversation,\u201d then they don\u2019t actually believe that player should win the award. They just think that player should probably end up in the top five on the ballot somewhere. Otherwise, they\u2019d call them the MVP.<\/p>\n

About last night<\/p>\n

Pistons continue to own the Knicks<\/p>\n

For the third time this season, the Detroit Pistons demolished the New York Knicks. The Pistons beat them by 31 points on Jan. 5 and 38 on Feb. 6. Last night, the Pistons did it again, winning 126-111 in Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

It may sound like New York made progress by \u201conly\u201d losing by 15 points, but I\u2019ll remind you that Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart are both still suspended for their part in Wrecked\u2019em at the Spectrum. The Pistons did this with Paul Reed and Tolu Smith as their two big men.<\/p>\n

Cade Cunningham was brilliant<\/a> in his destruction of the Knicks\u2019 defense. He had 42 points (17-of-34 from the field, 5-of-11 from deep), 13 assists and eight rebounds. The Knicks had the best defense in the NBA for the previous 12 games, but Cunningham reminded them of all the defensive issues they\u2019ve had with Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson on the floor together. Towns had 19 of his 21 points in the second half, and Brunson had 33 on the night. But it never felt like the Knicks had a chance.<\/p>\n

The Pistons (42-14) were plus-84 in their three games against New York. The Knicks (35-21) have been one of the Eastern Conference favorites mentioned ahead of the Pistons all season long. If you believe the season series is indicative of a future playoff result, then New York had better hope someone takes care of Detroit early.<\/p>\n

The Knicks need to get \u201990s tough<\/a>, Ian O\u2019Connor writes. Elsewhere:<\/p>\n

Clippers 115, Nuggets 114: Jamal Murray missed a game-tying free throw with 0.9 seconds left after being fouled on a game-tying 3-point attempt. Nikola Joki\u0107 had 22 points, 17 rebounds and six assists, but he was just 9-of-22 from the field and had six turnovers. Bennedict Mathurin put up 38 off the bench on 12-of-22 from the field and 11-of-13 from the free-throw line for the Clippers (27-28). Derrick Jones Jr. added 22 points.<\/p>\n

Rockets 105, Hornets 101: Kevin Durant may not have a burner account, but his jumper was burning against Charlotte. He put up 35 points on 14-of-20 from the field and scored Houston\u2019s final 10 points.<\/p>\n

Celtics 121, Warriors 110: Jaylen Brown had 23 points, 15 rebounds and 13 assists as the Celtics (36-19) cruised. The Warriors\u00a0 (29-27) didn\u2019t have Steph Curry, but they won the fourth quarter 37-19 to make this final score look better. Kristaps Porzi\u0146\u0123is had 12 points in 17 minutes off the bench in his Warriors debut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hawks 117, 76ers 107: The Sixers were missing Joel Embiid and Paul George, but Jalen Johnson didn\u2019t care. He scored on everybody available, as he dropped 32 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and three steals. Atlanta (27-30) moved ahead of Charlotte for ninth.<\/p>\n

Spurs 121, Suns 94: No Dillon Brooks (suspension). Devin Booker only played nine minutes (hip injury). And the Spurs (39-16) rolled to an easy victory behind 17 points, 11 rebounds and five blocks from Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n

Magic 131, Kings 94: Seven different Magic players hit at least three 3-pointers as Orlando made 27 3s. That helped usher in Sacramento\u2019s franchise record 15th straight loss.<\/p>\n

The last 24<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 Big issue? Darryn Peterson is one of the top prospects in the draft. But he won\u2019t finish games, and it\u2019s an issue \u2014 at least for Kansas<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udff4\udb40\udc67\udb40\udc62\udb40\udc73\udb40\udc63\udb40\udc74\udb40\udc7f Euro steps? John Hollinger has some radical fixes for tanking. Including one adopted from \u2026 Scottish soccer<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude31 This is shocking! You\u2019re never going to believe this about Anthony Davis and Trae Young. They\u2019re not close to playing for the Wizards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfe0 Home again. Mike Conley had a wild ride at the trade deadline. But he never actually went anywhere and i<\/a>s back as a mentor for the Timberwolves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!<\/a>)\u00a0and catch out-of-market games on\u00a0League Pass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tanking fixes<\/p>\n

Are the NBA\u2019s ideas actually any good?<\/p>\n

Sick of tanking talk? So is the NBA! Adam Silver spoke to general managers on Thursday about making changes ahead of the 2026-27 season to curb tanking. This doesn\u2019t appear to be just some different ways of changing the odds in the hopes that more teams won\u2019t just start tanking. Some of these ideas being reported might actually work? Or at least you can\u2019t laugh them out of the room immediately?<\/p>\n

According to Sam Amick, here are some of the possible ideas<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Lottery odds being allocated based on two-year records.
\nFlattened and\/or frozen by the trade deadline or another in-season date.
\nExtending the lottery to include the eight Play-In Tournament teams.
\nLimitations on first-round pick protections.
\nTeams not being allowed to pick in the top four a year after making the conference finals.
\nTeams being prohibited from selecting in the top four in consecutive years.
\nTeams being prohibited from selecting in the top four after consecutive bottom-three finishes.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s eliminate the bad ideas first, or the ones that may not get much runway when everybody is trying to figure out what might actually work. Having lottery odds flattened or frozen by the trade deadline or another in-season date doesn\u2019t actually help this issue. It just means teams will tank at a different part of the season. Every time something like this is suggested, I wince and shake my head.<\/p>\n

Teams not being allowed to pick in the top four a year after making the conference finals? What is this even about? Is this just in case a future pick the Thunder own hits in the top four? Or is this about the Pacers this season? This doesn\u2019t seem to be an actual issue. I also have questions about lottery odds being allocated on two-year records. So teams will tank for two years instead of one? Or am I reading that incorrectly?<\/p>\n

I do like extending the odds to include all eight Play-In teams. I still love Eric Koreen\u2019s idea of including first-round playoff losers. I\u2019m not sure how much pick protections being limited solves anything, but maybe it\u2019ll help some with teams trying to lose to get into the top eight currently. Prohibiting consecutive years of being in the top four could actually help, but I wonder if teams will then just try to win enough to be right outside that threshold. At least they\u2019re trying.<\/p>\n

Ishbia\u2019s rant<\/p>\n

Does mercurial Suns owner have a point?<\/p>\n

A day after Mark Cuban made some asinine post<\/a> about tanking being good because the real issue is making sure families have a good time at the games (???), Suns owner Mat Ishbia had his own post railing against tanking. He was responding to an article by Tom Haberstroh that was ranking some of the different styles in which teams are currently tanking.<\/p>\n

Ishbia called tanking \u201cridiculous\u201d and said it\u2019s \u201closing behavior done by losers.\u201d He questioned the integrity of it all, called for leadership to make sure this practice is ended and even went as far as to say it\u2019s worse than any prop bet scandal (even though that\u2019s a federal crime?).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Two different group chats threw out replies to this tweet that I found hilarious.<\/p>\n

Friend 1: \u201cLeave it to an insurance billionaire to tell me how it\u2019s wrong to profit off of failures.\u2019<\/p>\n

Friend 2: \u201cHe\u2019s been on the right side of too many things lately. I\u2019m shorting him for sure. Can\u2019t wait for the next disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ishbia has been \u2026 let\u2019s say \u2026 a bit chaotic since he took over the Suns in 2023. And he\u2019s provided us with some incredible content. At the same time, this is the exact mindset you want a team owner to express if you\u2019re the league office right now. The Association is catching a lot of scrutiny about the tanking situation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that this could also largely be performative by Ishbia. Yes, the Suns have built a surprisingly competitive and winning team this season after getting rid of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal last summer. They also don\u2019t have control of their draft picks for the next six years, so it wouldn\u2019t do them any good to tank in the first place. Let\u2019s not forget to mention that Cuban was advocating for tanking at the same time the Mavericks have lost nine straight and are hoping to add top talent next to Cooper Flagg.<\/p>\n

My biggest issue with tanking is not the practice itself. Under the current rules, it\u2019s incentivized for you to lose games to try to get the best lottery odds possible. My issue is charging fans full-price tickets and pretending this is acceptable. I\u2019d care a lot less about tanking if the teams would charge full price in these tanking games but then give fans 50 percent of the money spent as a credit for next year\u2019s games, when hopefully the team has improved.<\/p>\n

Regardless, we\u2019re going to see quite a few owners and executives speak on one side of this or the other. The tanking teams will feel picked on. The non-tanking teams will take the high road. And apparently, my friends will wait for Ishbia to be chaotic again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bounce Newsletter\u00a0\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s daily NBA newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive The Bounce directly in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1267,21,9,1104,56,63,65,64,4575],"class_list":{"0":"post-140971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-detroit-pistons","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-knicks","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-phoenix-suns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}