When you think of March basketball, your first thought is probably the NCAA tournament. By the way, sorry about your bracket. Warren Buffet’s billion dollar challenge didn’t last one round.

Your second thought is probably of the competitive, fluid playoff race in the NBA- at least in the Western Conference. But there’s another race that goes on in the NBA in March, which is exactly opposite of a playoff push: the lottery push. Which means tanking.

New commissioner Adam Silver recently denied the existence of tanking. Silver said tanking is “players and coaches trying to lose on purpose,” which he doesn’t believe is happening. He did acknowledge that teams rebuild through the draft, of which he approves. Right.

You have to wonder if Silver’s conveniently blocked out March and April of 2012. The Golden State Warriors were a respectable 18-21, but unlikely to make the playoffs. They then finished 5-22, which the team insisted had nothing to do with wanting to keep there top seven protected pick.

Are we really supposed to suspect a team went from winning nearly half of their games to just under 20 percent due to sheer bad luck? No, they employed all the classic tank tools: trade their best player for someone who can’t contribute, bench a few starters with minor or ambiguous injuries and give heavy minutes to bench warmers.

It’s true coaches, and especially players, rarely help tank. But they don’t have too. When the front office trades your best players and benches the other good ones with injuries they’d normally “tough out,” no cooperation is needed.

But in a star driven, five-on-five game like basketball, rebuilding – which occasionally requires tanking- is necessary.

If you don’t have the right player, you need to get one. Your options are trade for one, sign one in free agency or draft one. Actually, in reality you need two stars minimum. Acquiring two star players through trade or free agency is unlikely.

Since Jordan retired in 1998, 14 of 15 teams that have won had at least one lottery pick that they drafted starting for them. However, only 7 different teams won in that span, and not coincidentally, those six of those seven teams featured players seven of the top ten players over that span.

Tanking and rebuilding only works if you get to choose a guaranteed Hall of Famer, which aren’t in every draft.

So if you’re going to tank, it’d better be the right draft.