During this week’s Board of Governors meetings, the NBA presented team owners with three proposals aimed at discouraging tanking, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania.
According to Charania, the expectation is that those concepts may undergo some tweaks and then will be the subject of a vote in May in order to determine what changes the league makes ahead of the 2026/27 season.
The three proposed ideas are as follows:
Proposal No. 1:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
- The draft odds would be flattened for the bottom 10 teams, giving them each an 8% chance at the No. 1 overall pick.
- The remaining 20% odds for the top pick would be spread out in descending order among the remaining eight teams; within that group, the worst team (ie. the 11th-worst overall) would have the most favorable odds.
- All 18 picks would be drawn via lottery.
Proposal No. 2:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 22, incorporating non-playoff teams and the teams eliminated from the playoffs in the first round.
- Teams’ lottery odds would be determined based on their records over the previous two seasons. For instance, a team that won 45 games one year and 25 the next would be slotted in the lottery as a 35-win team.
- A minimum win floor would be implemented. If the floor were to be set at 20 wins, for example, a team that went 15-67 in a season would be considered to have gone 20-62 for lottery purposes.
- The top four spots would be drawn via lottery, like the current system.
Proposal No. 3:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
- The bottom five teams would each have the same odds for the No. 1 pick, with each team’s odds descending from there (starting with the sixth-worst team).
- The top five spots would be drawn via lottery.
- After the top five picks are determined, there would be a separate lottery for the remaining 13 teams.
- A bottom-five team would be prohibited from falling past 10th in the draft order.
Some aspects of the proposals, as outlined by Charania, may require some clarification. For instance, he describes the 22 teams involved in proposal No. 2 as “the bottom 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament, the eight that qualify for it and the four playoff teams that lose in the first round.” But that doesn’t account for the fact that one or more play-in teams could advance beyond the first round, eliminating a top-two seed.
According to Charania, team owners and front offices are expected to discuss the ideas in greater depth over the next few weeks in order to better understand what exactly these changes might look like and what unintended consequences might arise. The NBA is prepared to maintain an open dialogue with executives around the league in order to potentially modify each proposal before a vote in May.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly vowed to address the issue of tanking, which has been especially noticeable this season ahead of a loaded 2026 draft. Silver said three weeks ago that “substantial changes” would be coming in an effort to deter tanking. At a press conference this Wednesday, he stated, “We are going to fix it … full stop.”
Tanking will always be part of any sport. Teams and upper mgmt. will become more creative in their ways.
Lazy cop-out. Yes, it’s likely impossible to eliminate it fully but that doesn’t mean the league can’t address it to some extent.
I understand the nba hating the teams that haven’t made the playoffs in years but if you don’t get a superstar then it’s extremely hard to compete
It’s like the nba expects worse teams to be like the Steelers and never rebuild just to get bad picks while accomplishing nothing
It’s not that hard to generally compete. Win a championship? Obviously. Become a strong contender? Sure. Become a fake contender or lower-seeded playoff team? Pretty reasonable imo (though obviously not ideal).
In any event, I don’t really blame the teams themselves as much as I find the above types of tanking to be distasteful. Teams will always try to maximize their chances working within the confines of the rules and it’s clear both the league and the NBPA failed to reasonably anticipate where the tanking issue would end up with the system they created. That’s more on them than anyone else.
#1 reason for tanking is all the injuries this season. The blame is on the schedule of having so many back to back games. Move the in season tournament to start of the season. That makes it 100% easier to make a schecdule and not so many back to back games.
All very stupid ideas, just get rid of lottery and make it like NFL draft and get rid of pick protections completely. If the worst team keeps getting the 5 or 6th pick they will never stop being a lousy team.
NFL has the only fair draft and it helps (most) teams get out of the bottom of the league quicker with it. Browns will always be the browns.
@luapnor
Isn’t that effective what the nba is now? Teams are trying to imprinted their draft positions by losing. the lower the wins the better the chances. Changing to the nfl model would just make the chase for the worst record even more focused.
I personally think the whole argument vs tanking is stupid. The nba has a salary cap that world against teams looking to rebuild following an exhausted attempt to compete. Look at Milwaukee. They kept trying to keep the Giannis window to win a title open but they found themselves in a situation where they had a cap bloated with aging veterans and very few alternatives to assignment the team other than trades ang scouring the veteran buyout market. Once Giannis is traded they will need and should, purge their roster of veterans that aren’t good enough to impact the win totals now, get their cap back in order and commit to playing the youth. Most vets would prefer to be elsewhere on contenders anyway. The guys Kevin Love that ate willing to accept their “OG: rules should be kept for culture purposes. But how do ppl really think SAS, OKC, DET, CLE, CHA, ATL etc have gotten this good? Almost all have benefited from hitting on their lottery picks. Wemby, Castle, Harper/Cunningham, Ausar, Duren (traded for using their own 1st round picks)/Shai (draft day trade using picks), Chet/Jalen/Giddy/etc. The teams mostly associated with tanking like the Nets, Wizards, Kings have historically done a HORRIBLE job of draft selections AND/OR tried to stay afloat by acquiring vets that are good players but not players that really move the needle towards winning (Levine, Derozen, Westbrook, CJ, Porter Jr, etc) or trying the overnight fixes like Brooklyn and the big 3 (Harden, Durant and Irving). The only team that worked with LBJ is because of who he is. Embrace the suck. There are too many limitations for teams to rebuild that simply agent applicable compared to mlb (60 round draft, international FA, minor league system, unrestricted trades, no hard salary cap), NFL (no trade restrictions, 7 rounds and 52 man roster). And in the nba, there are very few ways teams like Sac, Clev, PORT can attract elite talent if not for top 5 draft position + player development. Look at Miami. Excellent organizational ability to spot talented late round players but that only guys them to a 40 to 45 round team without elite talent. Imagine if they choose to tank for a 5 year period? They would be a OKC or SAS story.
Losing, or trying to lose deliberately is simply wrong. A decent solution will occur. It won’t eliminate tanking completely. If a team is clearly not going to be competitive next season I assume you’d be fine with them tanking from the start of the season. Let’s imagine you’re a season ticket holder for that team and the wink-wink, nod-nod is in and they simply do not compete for the entire season. Healthy for the league? Hmm.
@Meadow
How do you determine who’s taking and who simply isn’t good? When LBJ left Cleveland they had a bloated payroll of left over vets that did nothing to help winning and just got a check? It lashes prefect sense to tare it down to the bones and just your young players play. They’d going to lead to a lousy win loss record. if you’re going to lose then you’re likely going to end up being in the lottery. The only blatant example of not trying to win within the context of roster manipulation is not playing your star players who might be able to play thru injuries by you sit them anyway. Even in that case it DOES make sense to keep him off the floor. Let’s say Giannis comes back and in playing under normal minutes (25-30) what’s that going to do? It’s not going to lead to? They were 17-19 WITH him this year and 12-24 without him. With 10 games left, best case scenario they finish 10-0 if he returned today. Their record would be 39-43. That MIGHT be good enough to be a play-in team. Are they good enough to get past the 1st round? Doubtful. But if the draft went structure according to loss record it could move them from a chance at a top 4 pick to picking around 12 to 15. So why? And what if Giannis exacerbates his pre-existing injury? Is it going to effect his availability for next season? His trade value? So yeah it might suck for the gangs but what can is going to a Bucks game this do in the season expecting to see a good product? Teams and coaches have to stays next for the gangs future but just to satisfy their fans over a short period of time. But they CAN mitigate that by trying to compensate with a much better can experience.
Making the draft lottery have even odds doesn’t make the fixed drafts go away. Cleveland still got 3 out of 4 #1 picks to bring Lebron back, the Spurs still got their 3rd generational talented big man #1 in Wemby without the best odds, and the worst one was Dallas being gifted Flagg after the worst trade of this century giving Luka away for nothing. The difference is now the drafts will punish teams that are awful and need immediate talent and let more “lucky” teams pick higher every single draft. If your in a small market and can’t draft there’s no chance at ever competing. Making the lottery harder to win hurts only small market teams.
We have to assume the process is legit but I do agree the mavs getting Flagg in return for Luka is suspicious and makes more sense than Nico going insane
Or just make it that everyone gets to have one number #1 pick, one number #2 pick, and so on, every 30 years. So management can focus on team building, instead of hoping for stars to fall to them
Drafts have varying talent every year tho. The #1 pick from a bad draft class (Risacher) wouldn’t even go top 5 in this draft so a team getting only 1 #1 pick in just 30 years if it was a bad draft class would be awful forever.
@kc
So… that’s just the kick off the draw. NBA can’t control the talent in a draft. But a couple of things Risacher and Sarr are still very going. But in that draft their were very good to star level guys taken at #5 (Castle), #7 (Clingan), #9 (Edey), #11 (Buzelis), #15 (Ware), #20 (Tyson), #24 (George), and other guys i like like Filipowski, Collier, etc. It’s all about a teams ability to scout and develop and the Wizard and Atlanta have historically been bad at that. I do think Atlanta had hit of late with Onyeka and Jalen tho… oh and some guy named Luka who they decided to trade.
The only 1 #1 pick in 30 years rule would kill the chances of any team that gets it in a weak draft class competing quickly. NBA is the sport where 1 player can make your franchise turn around in just a few years and it’s a total crapshoot on if a bad team gets the chance at the best with a lottery draft. Teams historically picking bad won’t change, but making their chances at picking high makes competing even more difficult.
There are teams that never ever had #1 pick. Since I am from Serbia, obviously Denver is one of those, and this is their 50th season in NBA. They’re also the most successful team in 2020’s by total regular season wins, and the last time they picked even in top 20 was 8 years ago. But now they got to face all this teams that had luxury of selecting multiple high picks over and over again, like SAS, HOU, DET, teams that fleeced two most incompetent franchises in history of NBA (BOS and OKC), and even Minnesota and Cleveland, teams that had luxury of 3 #1 picks in Jokic’s era. That’s totally unfair. This way they would have a chance to add some real talent to their organically built team once in every 3 years (top 10 selection)
They hit the motherload of gold by getting Jokic in the 2nd round tho. They have built a good team with late picks only, but it took time and both the coach and gm got fired before some of those late picks started to pay off.
I don’t mind these suggestions implemented
All three of these ideas are significant improvements over the current method as they minimize tanking. #’s 1 and 2 seem best to me. The very fact that the league is making a serious effort here is a good thing unless you subscribe to the it’s-all-a-conspiracy mentality where everything is some sort of plot. It’s hard to make paranoids happy.
Compared to travelling and foul-baiting I don’t care about tanking at all. I think Silver doesn’t really understands what’s making the game worse for fans.
He doesn’t because a) he doesn’t care, b), he works for the owners, c) they only care about things that significantly impact the bottom line, d) NBPA is actually on board with addressing the tanking issue but I doubt that would be the case for punishments doled out to specific players for the above actions.
The only reason this is getting addressed so urgently is because we have a perfect storm of factors that are basically forcing the league to decisively act.
Just make the draft unrelated to record. Every draft spot is determined by a lottery and every team has equal chance. If you suck and continue to suck, too bad, do a better job. Or get rid of draft entirely, give each team the same draft money limit and let players choose where they want to play instead of a slavery property system. Why are athletes stuck going where they are told whereas an engineer graduating from college can decide what companies they would like to work for?
The slavery comparison is insane to hear when they don’t have to play if they don’t like the city they were drafted to and can get a normal job, or play out a 4 year deal and then get to leave after making millions. No one is a slave to the NBA. If players could just pick their team coming out of college they should get rid of half of the league because they would all pick big market teams and chase championships only.
How about setting up a NBA 2 league? Seattle, Vegas, Baltimor, St. Louis etc. should be very eager about it.
When the seasons are over, the last two from NBA 1 are delegated to NBA 2 and top two from NBA 2 to NBA 1. Teams from NBA 1 ending the season in spots 25-28 play play-off games against teams from NBA 2 ending the season in spots 3-6.
Playing formula is 25th v. 6th, 26th v. 5th, 27th v. 4th and 28th v. 3rd, with teams from NBA 2 having the home court advantage. Winners play NBA 1 next season, losers play NBA 2. These play-off games could be played in late April.
In June, NBA 1 teams for the coming season have the first 60 picks, NBA 2 teams have the second 60 picks.
With this, no tanking.
Thank you for your attention on this matter.
In order to avoid tanking you need to reward success
For instance
ROY East and West winners – teams receive extra pick between 1st and 2nd round
League MVp – same thing extra pick between 1st and 2nd
Team that had the largest win differential from previous season – same thing extra pick between 1st and 2nd
Play in tournament for 1st overall pick instead of lottery – worst teams compete for number 1 pick in 16 team tournament that happens simultaneously during playoffs 1st round – 1 and done format. Get rid of in season tournament, replace it with this format for pick slots. Winning in tournament increases odds for 1st overall pick. Each win is worth 5%
So winner can increase odds 20% for winning it all
Runner up 15%
3rd place 15%
4th place 10%
and so on
#3 is the best option. Dont need a separate lottery after the top 5. Just go in order of record after that. This is starting to look like the Sunny In Philadelphia whiteboard meme.
I like #3 too, but I mostly agree about the it’s always sunny board lol; I think my brains melted trying to decipher all these different options, maybe they put it to a vote eventually?
I don’t like any of these options? I mean any of them would be better than the current format. But I feel like these are good starting points, just not finished products
Getting the highest possible pick has proven itself and look at the top teams now and tell me I’m wrong. What the NBA SHOULD do is embrace the suck. Allow teams to enter the “rebuild mode” for a 4 year period. During this period the nba sets all direct purchase ticket prices. Reduce the $150 seat to $75. Limit the money they get from TV deals. Give them 4 years to rebuild and by that 5th year they must be a .500 team or better or they enforce other penalties like access to a lottery pick. Their pick would be the first pick AFTER the lottery selections. Their ticket prices remain reduced until they become a .500 team. Give them the time to rebuild and hit them in their pockets to compel them to get things together. Try to improve the fan experience. Fans will come out to support the team, see the kids play and still support if the ticket prices are greatly reduced and they’re expectations realigned. I promise you the GMs and players don’t EVER want to tank. The owners are cool with it as long as the fans come out and they get that TV money. Reduce their income and suddenly you’ll see owners look like Mark Cuban, Jeannie Buss and Steve Ballmer. Owners passionately sitting courtside cheering their teams on.
How in the world have they botched this so hard? How has nobody in the league office just said “Hey, we’re done with protecting FRPs. If you want to trade a 1st for somebody you better really want to do that.”
The most obvious and blatant tank jobs over the last 5 seasons have been directly tied to where traded picks will land more than they have team owned picks. Truly don’t understand the point of having a lottery for 4 or 5 teams. At that point just get rid of the lottery?
There are two very distinct tanking behaviors that require their own responses. The fake-injury thing can be dealt with by increasing penalties when it happens, up to and including losing draft picks, with an allowable defense if teams are willing to give league doctors their medical reports.
The hard one is when teams deliberately make very weak rosters. I’ll tell you what would fix that quickly: Ban the trading of draft picks. That would have all sorts of impacts, not all great, but one of them would be to make it very hard to trade good veterans who make a lot of money for worse salary fillers whom you don’t even keep or don’t want to play for you.
Teams should be free to construct their rosters as they see fit, and such heavy-handed controls would be a bridge too far. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to do a proper rebuild for a short period of time; the problem is doing it for a period of several years, actively trying to tank in-game, and (as you noted) making up fake injuries.
Vintage Silver. Complex proposals that won’t do a thing to eliminate tanking, only change which teams might do it. Using the 2 year record will bring tanking to the upper part of the standings. Great work.