Colin Cowherd Defends Tanking By Citing...The San Antonio Spurs?

More than any other point in NBA history, tanking has dominated the discourse among fans and analysts alike. Some have cried foul against this act of intentional losing, while others have voiced their support for the unique strategy of patience, perseverance, and precious picks.

Veteran pundit Colin Cowherd doesn't run an NBA team, but he can certainly understand where ball clubs are coming from when they resort to the "T" word. On a recent episode of his self-titled podcast, Cowherd went so far as to cite a playoff powerhouse this season as proof of the tanking concept.

"Since the NBA makes it so impossible to trade anybody, tanking's one of the only ways that the Spurs got Wemby and Stephon Castle," Cowherd claimed. "The Spurs will be great for 10 years."

While there's no doubt that the Spurs have planted the seeds for sustained excellence over the next decade, the way they acquired those seeds in the first place is indeed worthy of scrutiny.

To cut to the chase: Did the Spurs tank for the chance to draft Wembanyama in 2023? This has never been confirmed, but for what it's worth, their roster in the 2022-23 season hardly inspired fear in the hearts of their opponents. Their leading scorers, Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell, did not quite fit the bill of "franchise player"; and the front office hunted draft picks and not active players prior to the trade deadline.

Whether the Spurs purposefully threw games or not, the odds were in their favor as they landed the top pick in the 2023 NBA draft. Wembanyama's rookie season wasn't filled with a lot of wins, though, and San Antonio went on to draft Stephon Castle with the fourth overall pick the following year.

Getting Wembanyama and Castle as the building blocks of their future worked out well for the Spurs, but there is indeed something to be said about the phenomenon of tanking and how it affects an NBA team's fanbase. Watching one's ball club absorb plenty of losses is not fun in and of itself, but as Cowherd pointed out, the potential of successive winning seasons could be worth every stinker on the hardcourt.