I don't know if Vaughn was tanking or not, but every coach in tank mode will have a seemingly rational explanation for why he did what he did.Essentially Vaughn said after the game that they were using Nicholson against Scola because they felt he could could score at will on Scola. I can't really see any fault in the reasoning and they certainly busted tail against the T'wolves last night. The press is just too caught up in the tanking thing though to write better stories.
If there is blatant tanking (we probably won't know until the second half of the season) it will be interesting to see what the league does about it, if anything.