DNP-Rest, quiet quitting and death threats: The current state of tanking for Cooper Flagg

Cooper Flagg hasn’t worn an NBA uniform yet, but make no mistake about it, his presence is being felt all across the league.

The 18-year-old made his NCAA tournament debut Friday against Mount St. Mary’s, fighting through an ankle injury that knocked him out for most of the ACC tournament. You can be sure that the stands will be peppered with NBA scouts and executives getting a closer look at the loaded Duke Blue Devils, but they know what they’re getting with Flagg. The 6-foot-9 forward has long been considered the consensus No. 1 overall pick while leading the ACC and the entire NCAA field in just about every advanced metric.

We can take a guess at how NBA teams feel about Flagg because the league has launched multiple investigations into teams for purposely sitting good players on bad teams: i.e. tanking. This problem isn’t new as the NBA has wrestled with the black eye of tanking for decades.

It’s clear that tanking practices are alive and well. Last week, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $100,000 for violating the league’s Player Participation Policy involving 2023 All-Star Lauri Markkanen, who sat against the Washington Wizards earlier in the month (league investigators determined that Markkanen was fit to play). The league has also reportedly launched an investigation into the Philadelphia 76ers, who have a top-6 protected first-round pick in the 2025 Draft, for sitting their stars Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George.

However, there are more subtle tanking practices that have taken hold across the NBA that seem to be, at the very least, tolerated by the league office. And it has created a problematic climate that staffers around the league worry could get dangerous quickly.

The state of tanking rules

More recently, the NBA has installed three major guardrails in place to try to curb the integrity-threatening practice of tanking.

In 2019, the league office agreed to flatten the lottery odds for the worst teams, capping the chances of winning the No. 1 overall pick at 14 percent each for the bottom three teams. Until then, the league incentivized a race to the bottom by rewarding the biggest loser with a 25 percent chance at securing the top selection, much higher than the second-worst team at 19.9 percent and the third team at 15.6 percent.

Secondly, the NBA implemented a play-in tournament designed to encourage more teams to compete for a playoff spot and dissuade them from gunning for lottery balls. Instead of 30 teams fighting for 16 spots, there are now 20 spots to entice more losing teams to try to win.

Lastly, in 2023, the NBA established the Player Participation Policy which was aimed at every team, not just the basement-dwellers, to play its best players as much as possible. The league has used the PPP to open investigations into the Oklahoma City Thunder for sitting their starting five against the Portland Trail Blazers earlier this month. The PPP came on the heels of the Dallas Mavericks violating the league’s previous player resting policy and being fined $750,000 for tanking in 2023.

“The Mavericks’ actions,” NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars stated at the time, “failed our fans and our league.”

But even after six-figure fines, teams continue to exploit loopholes in ways that expose unintended consequences of the PPP.

Resting a key player … after a rest day

Fans hoping to watch Cam Johnson on Thursday were undoubtedly left disappointed. And utterly confused. The Nets starter, who is averaging a career-high 18.9 points and establishing himself as a serious front-facing talent on “The Young Man And The Three” podcast, isn’t injured or dealing with an illness. Nonetheless, the Nets announced he wouldn’t be suiting up in Thursday’s game against the Indiana Pacers. Instead, he’d be in street clothes due to what the team is designating as “rest.”

The curious thing is that the Nets were resting Johnson even though they did not play Wednesday. A look at the schedule reveals the Nets are not playing Friday either. This, it turns out, isn’t a back-to-back situation. There is no cross-country flight for their next game. Actually, the Nets aren’t even traveling between Thursday and Saturday’s game, playing a two-game set against the Pacers both in Indianapolis.

Alas, the Nets deemed that Johnson, who played in 19 straight games sandwiched around the All-Star break, needed to sit out the game for recovery purposes.

In related news, the Nets entered Thursday tied with the Philadelphia 76ers for fifth-best odds in the lottery sweepstakes, a team that’s already under investigation for removing multiple star players from the floor. Without their best shooter, the Nets shot 28 percent from downtown and lost in overtime against Indiana, giving them a better chance at more pingpong ball combos for lottery night.

The healthy scratch, also known as the DNP-Rest, used to be a button that teams pressed during back-to-back sets. In these scenarios, a team and its medical staff determined that a player wouldn’t be subjected to injury risk associated with playing two games in as many days.

But now it’s bled into games outside of back-to-back sets. It appears that there’s a contagious quality to this practice because more and more teams are adopting the strategy. This is the NBA. Once one team figures out a loophole, others will soon follow.

On the tanking scoreboard, the Nets seem to be merely keeping up with the Joneses. The Nets have assuredly seen the Toronto Raptors shamelessly pulling the same lever and skirting any league investigations. The Raptors, who were tied on Thursday in the loss column with Brooklyn, have led the NBA with nine DNP-Rests this month, topping the loss-leading Jazz, who have five listed DNP-Rests.

The Toronto cases seem to fit a rotational pattern. On March 20 against Golden State, RJ Barrett was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 14 against Utah, Jakob Poeltl was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 12 against Philadelphia, Immanuel Quickley was a DNP-Rest with an off day on both sides. On March 10 against Washington, Poeltl was a DNP-Rest … you get the idea. The Raptors have rested a key player — whether it’s Barrett, Quickley or Poeltl — for each of the last eight games. All scot-free from any league punishment.

So why are Jazz getting hammered for sitting Markkanen — a guy who’s averaging 19.0 points and 5.9 rebounds — while the Raptors can legally sit Barrett, who’s averaging 21.5 points per game and 6.5 rebounds?

It comes down to the letter of the law. The league deems Markkanen a “star player” because he has been named to an All-Star or All-NBA team during the previous three seasons, which is the designated criteria for “star player” status in the Player Participation Policy. The same goes for the Sixers’ star trio of Embiid, Maxey and George who are the subjects of the league’s investigation. It’s likely why the Raptors have not included Scottie Barnes, a 2024 All-Star, in those DNP-Rest games.

But a closer look at Barnes’ substitution patterns reveals a subtle tanking strategy that has caught the eye around the league. The Jazz have evidently taken notice because they’ve followed the same blueprint. If the Jazz and Raptors can’t sit their stars for the entire game, they’ve resorted to a half-measure: quiet-quitting in the middle of the game.

Quiet quitting during the game

It was 2019 when the New Orleans Pelicans had a 7-foot problem on their hands. The face of their franchise, Anthony Davis, wanted out, but still wanted to play basketball. In order to protect Davis from injuring himself and ruining trade value, in addition to maximizing their upcoming first-round draft pick, the Pelicans sat Davis in games down the stretch.

The league stepped in and reminded the Pelicans of the league’s competitive integrity rules that required a healthy Davis to play. The ensuing compromise created a mockery of the competition. Davis played, but the team would bench its best player in fourth quarters even when wins were within grasp.

Scottie Barnes is no Anthony Davis, but like Davis, he is today deemed a star by the NBA’s Player Participation Policy and the Raptors are quietly following the Davis blueprint by sitting Barnes and other key players in clutch situations. Against the Blazers on Sunday, Barnes checked out at the 8:40 mark in the fourth quarter with 16 points, six steals, six rebounds and six steals and never returned. Barnes and Poeltl watched crunchtime from the bench as the Raptors blew a six-point lead with 5:22 left remaining. The Raptors lost by three.

That was a mild tank-job attempt compared to the shenanigans that transpired two days earlier against the Jazz. In that game, the Raptors held an 11-point lead with 9:51 left in the fourth quarter. Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic signaled for Jamison Battle, Colin Castleton and Jamal Shead to check in for the team’s three best players Barrett, Quickley and Barnes. As the game began to tighten to a two-possession game, the Raptors’ trio never checked back in. The Raptors held on to win by eight.

Part of the reason why the Raptors didn’t feel compelled to play their best players down the stretch? The Jazz engaged in some shenanigans of their own, playing their star, Markkanen, for only 19 minutes in the game. Markkanen started the game but didn’t play in the entire second half. He joined his fellow backcourt mate Walker Kessler, who suited up, but coach Will Hardy never called him into the game. This was Utah’s response after the league fined them $100,000 for sitting Markkanen.

And one of the NBA’s closest partners is voicing their concern: the betting community.

The new dangers of tanking

NBA players leaving games early for mysterious reasons might seem like harmless gamesmanship. Hey, we’re talking about a bunch of extra pingpong balls bouncing around a plastic container, what’s the big deal? But this is not all fun and games. A former NBA player, Jontay Porter — a Toronto Raptor no less — could face up to 20 years in federal prison for doing that very thing — leaving games early under dubious circumstances. Porter was charged with conspiring with a group of bettors to fix his over/under player props for financial gain. It’s the first NBA fixing scandal since 1954.

Here we are, less than a year later, watching key Raptors players mysteriously sit in the game’s biggest moments, raising all sorts of eyebrows in the betting community and beyond. The unfortunate residue of the Porter scandal casts a dark shadow on every late-game benching in the NBA. Was he really hurt? Did he just pull a Porter? What were his pregame props?

But the true danger goes beyond cynical hunches. Throughout the season, multiple staffers from NBA teams at various levels have reported to Yahoo Sports that sports bettors have increasingly made death threats in person and on social media channels, going as far as invoking family members and personal information, a leaguewide trend that The Athletic covered last month. And it’s only gotten worse with the tanking teams.

More recently, teams at the bottom of the standings have been trapped in the convoluted web of the NBA’s contradictory incentive structure. By giving the worst teams the best odds at landing a franchise-changing talent like Cooper Flagg in the draft, it incentivizes teams to lose games at the end of the season. On one hand, these teams acting in their own self-interest could choose to be transparent, sit their best players and play the long game of increasing their odds at winning the Flagg sweepstakes. But that, as we’ve seen with the Jazz and others, would incur fines from the league office.

The alternative strategy — quiet-quitting in the middle of games — hasn’t been the subject of any ongoing investigations, sources tell Yahoo Sports. But it already comes at a potentially grave cost: getting flooded with death threats.

Around the league, sources have said they’ve dealt with toxic messages in recent weeks that have become so commonplace that they’ve tried to become numb to it, shrugging it off as the unfortunate cost of doing business with sportsbooks.

Because of how much money players, coaches and executives are making these days, few are willing to speak openly about the growing undercurrent of gambling-related allegations that are difficult to discern what’s serious and what’s not. Some aren’t willing to be quiet about it. A year ago, Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said, “To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever … I’m the prop.”

Last season, J.B. Bickerstaff, then coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers, revealed that he received gambling-related death threats from bettors in 2022-23 and reported it to the league office.

“They got my telephone number and were sending me crazy messages about where I live and my kids and all that stuff,” Bickerstaff said. “So it is a dangerous game and a fine line that we’re walking for sure.”

If it wasn’t for Bickerstaff speaking up, we might not have ever known about it. The story wasn’t reported until Bickerstaff shared it in a postgame press conference a year later. He said the gambler who made the threats was found. “I understand the business side of it and the nature of the business of it,” Bickerstaff said. “But I mean, it is something that I believe has gone too far.”

Making everything trickier and potentially more dangerous is that coaches, who are often the subject of these death threats, have inside information about player availability strategies on a specific game. If the Raptors know before a particular game that they’re going to sit Barnes, Quickley and Poeltl down the stretch, that strategic information would be particularly valuable to bettors and sportsbooks. By rule, teams have to disclose who’s on the injury report in the lead-up to tipoff, but not whether they’re going to play a full game — and thus have a better chance at hitting their player prop overs.

We’ll see if the quiet-quitting continues during March Madness, and which team wins the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes in May. In 2018-19, after weeks of shenanigans with Davis, the Pelicans ended up shutting down their star for the final two weeks of the season and, for their efforts, landed with the seventh-best odds at No. 1.

One month later, the Pelicans won the draft lottery, earning the right to draft Zion Williamson, a Duke big man who was considered the best prospect in years.