Cheer the Losses? The Pacers, “Tanking,” and Why It's Okay to Miss Practice MBE Questions

If you’re not a basketball person, this is going to sound backwards: Sometimes fans root for their own team to lose.

That’s where some Indiana Pacers fans found themselves this season. Last year, Indiana made a surprise run all the way to the NBA Finals and pushed the Oklahoma City Thunder to Game 7, but ultimately lost the series. And in the gut-punch moment that made it feel even crueler, Tyrese Haliburton went down with a torn Achilles early in that Game 7. It was an injury the team later confirmed would sideline him for the entire 2025-26 season.

Fast-forward to last night: the Pacers dropped a close one to the Mavericks, 134 to 130, which pushed Indiana into the second-worst winning percentage in the NBA.

And, yes, some fans reacted like this: Yes 'Cers!

So why would anyone cheer?

What “Tanking” Means

“Tanking” is the label people use when a team benefits more from losing now than from scraping together a few extra wins.

Here’s why: The NBA uses a draft lottery, and teams with worse records generally have better odds of landing a high pick (though the odds are flattened compared to the old days).

So the logic becomes: Losing today leads to improving lottery position, which leads to drafting a difference-maker, which results in wins next season.

Now let’s translate that same weird, backwards logic into bar prep.

The Bar Prep Version: Missing Questions in Practice Is Not Failure

In the NBA, “tanking” can involve strategic long-term choices that accept short-term losses because draft position improves with a worse record.

Here is the key distinction.

In bar prep, you're not trying to miss questions on purpose. You should always try to get every question right.

However, when you miss a question during practice—despite your best effort—that miss isn't wasted. If you review it the right way, it becomes one of the fastest ways to learn the rule, spot the trap next time, and convert that mistake into a future point.

A lot of law students treat multiple-choice-question practice like it’s a scoreboard:

“If I’m missing questions, I’m not ready.”

But learning science (and a lot of painfully honest experience) points the other way:

Trying to retrieve an answer, getting it wrong, then getting corrective feedback is a powerful learning event.

In other words: The miss can be the mechanism. Not the enemy.

But there’s a catch, and it’s the part most students skip. A missed question only turns into future points if you use it correctly.

Ways to Make Your Misses “Productive”

Miss, then immediately fix

When you miss a question, you should read the explanatory answer while the question is still fresh in your head because your brain is most aware of what it did wrong in that moment. If you wait until later, you will remember that you missed it, but you will forget the exact assumption or shortcut that caused the miss. Immediate review also prevents you from practicing the same mistake on the next set. In other words, the learning comes from correction with context, not from stacking wrong answers like sad trophies.

Write the real issue you missed, and write it narrowly

You should avoid labeling the issue with a big-topic word because big-topic words do not tell you what to do next. “Negligence” is not an issue; it is a subject heading. A better issue looks like this: “Whether the defendant breached the applicable standard of care when ___.” This matters because narrow issue statements force you to identify the single decision point that the question is testing. That is the same micro-skill you need for essays: strong issue selection beats impressive-but-scattered analysis.

Extract the rule in your own words, and connect it to the exact trap that got you

You should not copy a paragraph of an explanation and call it learning. Instead, you should write one or two complete sentences that state the rule you actually needed and then add a second sentence explaining what trick made you miss it. For example: “A statement is not hearsay when it is offered to show effect on the listener, not for its truth. I missed this because I focused on what the statement said instead of why the lawyer offered it.” This step matters because you are building a mental "warning label" that will show up the next time you see the same pattern.

Re-test the concept later, instead of just rereading the explanation

You should schedule a quick re-test because recognition is not the same as recall. Rereading makes the explanation feel familiar, but the MBE does not grade familiarity. Instead, it grades retrieval under time pressure. Re-testing also tells you whether you fixed the underlying misunderstanding or whether you only understood the explanation when it was sitting in front of you. If you can answer a similar question correctly two or three days later, you have converted a miss into a point.

Track patterns, not pain

You should treat wrong answers as data, not as a character assessment. One miss might be a fluke, but repeated misses are a signal. When you notice a cluster (like hearsay purpose, specific jurisdiction fairness, mens rea drift, timing in civil procedure), you have identified the topics and question types that will actually move your score. This matters because bar prep time is limited, and patterns tell you where your next hour produces the biggest return.

The Pacers Lesson (for Law Students)

Pacers fans cheering losses aren’t celebrating incompetence. They’re betting on a process: Short-term discomfort for long-term payoff.

Bar prep is the same psychological challenge.

You have to stop treating practice misses like proof you’re doomed and start treating them like what they are: Information that can upgrade your future performance.

So yes, it can feel weird to say this out loud, but it’s true:

If you’re doing practice correctly, you should miss some questions.

Not because you want to fail, but because you want to learn fast, retain longer, and walk into the exam with fewer surprises.

So, like the Pacers, go get your “lottery pick”: Miss questions today, and turn them into points you’ll earn in July.