Sixers’ Tampering Penalty Puts NBA’s Inconsistency On Full Display

The NBA announced Monday that it was stripping the Philadelphia 76ers of their second-round picks in 2023 and 2024 due to violations of “league rules governing the timing of this season’s free-agency discussions.” The league found that the Sixers “engaged in free-agency discussions” with P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr. before “such discussions were permitted.”

Shortly after that news broke, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association are “expected to revisit the rules that punish teams discovered to have had discussions with player agents on pending free agents ahead of free agency’s official start.” Wojnarowski added that “the practice is rampant, but hard to police and largely impossible to eliminate.”

The Sixers’ penalty is emblematic of how inconsistent the NBA has been with its tampering enforcement in recent years.

In 2019, the league’s Board of Governors approved “a series of measures to more strictly enforce compliance with tampering an salary-cap circumvention,” according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. Those penalties included fines up to $10 million, the loss of draft picks, suspensions for executives found guilty of tampering and even the threat of voiding contracts.

“The provisions passed unanimously,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters afterward. “And there was a strong view, I think, of every single person in the room that we need to ensure that we’re creating a culture of compliance in this league and that our teams want to know that they’re competing on a level playing field and frankly don’t want to feel disadvantaged if they are adhering to our existing rules.”

There’s just one problem: Teams still aren’t competing on a level playing field in free agency. John Hollinger, who spent seven seasons as the Memphis Grizzlies’ vice president of basketball operations, said as much in early August when news of the NBA’s tampering investigations into the Sixers and New York Knicks initially broke.

“News flash: Free agency is 90 percent done by the time it allegedly starts,” Hollinger wrote for The Athletic. “Virtually every player of significance had a deal announced in the first 36 hours this year. Many of those announcements, no doubt, were still foot-dragged to provide the cover of plausible deniability.”

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to uncover the evidence of that, either. The major NBA newsbreakers are living proof.

Within the first minute of free agency this offseason, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported the Denver Nuggets had agreed to a contract with veteran center DeAndre Jordan. Seconds thereafter, he reported that the Knicks had agreed to a two-year, “$16 million-plus deal” with free-agent center Isaiah Hartenstein.

Charania reported the Sixers’ signings of Tucker and House at 6:01 p.m. and 6:07 p.m., respectively. It’s hard to argue that the Sixers have plausible deniability for either signing. Then again, even before Charania broke news of Jordan’s agreement with Denver, he and colleague Sam Amick reported Malik Monk was finalizing a deal with the Sacramento Kings. At 6:02 p.m., he reported the financial details (two years, $19 million) of Monk’s new contract.

Charania isn’t the only major newsbreaker who’s gotten some impossibly early free-agent scoops over the years, either. Last offseason, Jake Fischer effectively broke the New York Knicks’ entire offseason on Bleacher Report hours before free agency began.

Fischer reported the Knicks were “widely rumored to have centered their sights on Evan Fournier,” whom they would likely sign to a “three-year contract worth $18 million annually.” He wound up signing a four-year, $73 million deal, although the final year is a $19 million club option. Fischer also reported Alec Burks was expected to re-sign with the Knicks “on a three-year deal worth roughly $30 million”—he did exactly that—and that Nerlens Noel seemed “likely to return” on a deal “worth slightly more than $10 million annually.” (He wound up signing a three-year, $27.7 million contract.)

Even though Fischer spelled out what the Knicks would do, almost down to the exact dollar amount, the NBA did not dock them a draft pick. Nor has the league opened a tampering investigation into the Nuggets for Jordan, the Kings for Monk or the Knicks for Hartenstein this offseason. (The Knicks are being investigated for their signing of Jalen Brunson, though.)

The league has taken second-round picks from the Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls in recent years for tampering violations, but all three cases were sign-and-trades—which require cooperation from two teams—rather than outright free-agent signings. The former case was especially egregious, as Wojnarowski reported the Bucks were acquiring Bogdan Bogdanovic in a sign-and-trade three days before teams were permitted to have contact with free agents.

If the NBA is beginning to crack down on run-of-the-mill tampering, where will it draw the line? Will it require another team to file a complain to the league office before opening an investigation? Will it proactively investigate any team whose signings break as soon as free agency opens? (Are we really supposed to believe that the Nuggets and Knicks agreed to their respective deals with Jordan and Hartenstein in the first minute of free agency without having any prior contact?)

If tampering is “rampant, but hard to police and largely impossible to eliminate,” as Wojnarowski said Monday, selective enforcement with relatively toothless punishments won’t discourage it. The league either needs to begin penalizing every obvious case of tampering—Jordan, Monk and Hartenstein all fit the bill this offseason—or rethink its rules from the ground up.

On the bright side for Sixers fans, though: The NBA found “no wrongdoing” in James Harden’s decision to decline his player option and re-sign for $14.4 million less, according to Charania. Had the league found evidence of salary-cap circumvention, it likely would have dropped a far more severe hammer on them than stripping two second-round picks.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.