They just only had to do it for two years because of all the smart moves they made. I look at tanking as constructing a roster with the primary intention of landing high draft picks rather than trying to win.
After the 2019-2020 season, they traded Chris Paul, Danilo Gallinari, Dennis Schroeder, and Steven Adams for basically draft picks.
They caught flack at the time for holding SGA out of games and they filled out their roster with a bunch of young, end of the bench guys.
Sam Presti himself wrote an op-ed himself in the Oklahoman outlining his tanking strategy. He didn’t call it tanking, but that’s what it was.