The NBA’s 3 anti-tanking proposals would only make things worse

Adam Silver loves to to quickly react to public outcry. Sometimes, it works: the 2026 NBA All-Star Game was fun and competitive with shorter games and a USA vs. The World format after years of drab and uncompetitive play. The 65-game rule for award eligibility feels like more of a mixed bag: it does feel like some stars are resting less often to meet the threshold, but it also works against players like Cade Cunningham, who deserved a First-Team All-NBA spot this season but won’t get it because of an unfortunate collapsed lung late in the season.

The NBA’s newest crisis is tanking, and Silver is ready to address it. The commissioner gave some tough talk earlier this week regarding tanking, telling the assembled press: “We are going to fix this — full stop. Going into next season, the incentives (regarding the lottery and tanking) will be completely different than they are now.”

On Friday morning, the NBA dropped three anti-tanking proposals via ESPN insider Shams Charania. A vote is coming in May, and it’s likely to go into effect for the 2027 NBA Draft. Here are the three plans the league is considering:

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.

2) 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.

3) 18 teams in a “5 by 5” lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.

As I wrote the last time the NBA leaked some anti-tanking measures: “in rushing to find a medicine to cure tanking, the NBA risks giving itself bigger problems from the side effects.” It seems even more true now. Tanking is a problem to some degree, but it’s not among the league’s biggest problems, which should start with the length of the season, the pace of play, and the rules favoring the offense too much. These proposals will all have unintended consequences and threaten to make the NBA’s “tanking” issues much worse going forward.

There are a myriad of issues here. For one, it feels like it’s punishing the wrong teams. The NBA’s “tanking crisis” was caused by teams like the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards actively resting healthy players to avoid winning games so they can maximize their ping pong balls. Well, the Jazz traded for Jaren Jackson Jr. and the Wizards traded for Trae Young and Anthony Davis so both can be competitive next year. These changes penalize teams like the Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls who eschewed tanking for years to try to win before coming to the realization that they couldn’t get out of the middle. The Grizzlies and Bulls both seem primed to “tank” next year — aka, undergo a full rebuild — but now they would be working with a completely different set of rules than the ones they made their recent trade deadline decisions under.

There’s also a lot of picks already traded under the current system. Those picks would become more valuable or less valuable depending on which rule change is adopted.

Imagine being the Portland Trail Blazers thinking you’re getting some primo Milwaukee Bucks picks after trading a franchise icon in Damian Lillard to them. Suddenly, the lottery could be open to playoff teams, and the chances of those picks paying off are greatly diminished.

Back to trades: one advantage the NBA has over other pro leagues in maintaining interest is all the trade chatter and offseason movement. It feels like speculating about trades is such a key factor in getting fans invested about the NBA, and these deals happen way more often in the NBA than they do in the NFL, MLB, or NHL. Adopting one of these anti-tanking measures could kill the trade speculation that makes the league so fun to follow. Star trades are good for the NBA, and under these rules teams would have more incentives to just hang onto their guys rather than chasing a big package of picks to kick start a rebuild. Does Silver really want a trade deadline every year where only sixth men are involved in deals?

Let’s tackle each of the NBA tanking proposals one-by-one:

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.

Last year, the Dallas Mavericks jumped from No. 11 to No. 1 in the draft lottery. The San Antonio Spurs also jumped way up after Victor Wembanyama’s season-ending injury late in the year. Did good teams winning the lottery fix tanking? No! Tanking is worse than ever this year. This plan would have decent-to-good teams jump up more often, and bad teams staying bad. Given that it’s so hard to sign good free agents under the current rules, and that trades could become less frequent if this is adopted, the league risks its bad teams never getting any hope.

2. 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.

OK, so now teams are just going to start resting their good players once they get to 25 wins. Genius.

3. 18 teams in a “5 by 5” lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.

This only creates a bigger race to tank into the bottom five. When there’s eight teams that want those five lottery spots, you are going to have some ugly, ugly basketball.

Here’s another big picture thought:

Tanking is part of the NBA life cycle, and the league only needs a minor fix

The Detroit Pistons won 17 games three years ago and 14 games two years ago. Now they’re the best team in the Eastern Conference because they built through the draft. The Phoenix Suns went from the No. 1 overall pick in 2018 to the 2021 NBA Finals despite choosing the wrong player in Deandre Ayton. The Houston Rockets were in the dumps after the James Harden trade, but now have one of the NBA’s better young cores and should be set up for annual contention. The Spurs went from worst-to-first by landing Victor Wembanyama … and then also moving up in the lottery the next two years.

Tanking for a couple seasons is fine. The biggest issues happen when teams do it year after year. That’s why the most sensible tanking solution is this: teams can only pick in the top-5 two out of every three years, and after that your pick is frozen at the end of the lottery.

There are unintended consequences with my plan too, of course. Take the Wizards. They landed at No. 2 in the 2024 draft lottery, but fell to No. 6 with the NBA’s second-worst record last year. If they fall to No. 6 in this year’s lottery again, it would reset their tanking clock.

Ultimately, every tanking fix is going to have unintended consequences. We’ve seen that with the current reform that flattened the odds back in 2019, and subsequently caused wider tank races. The NBA needs to remember what’s really important beyond short-lived bad publicity: fans of bad teams need to find a way to have hope. The draft is the best way to do it, and the proof is in the standings that it has allowed the NBA’s worst teams to rebuild pretty quickly many times before.

My wildest tanking fix? Just have the league pick who they think deserves each draft choice. The NBA is in the business of selling stories. Let’s say the Grizzlies won the 2003 lottery instead of the Cavs. LeBron James going to the Grizzlies just isn’t as good of a story as it was with him going to his hometown team, and it probably would have cost the league a lot of money. Funny how things worked out so well. I think the same thing about Wembanyama: by going to the Spurs in 2023, he’s continuing that franchise’s long tradition of Hall of Fame big men and international stars. It just doesn’t hit the same if the Hornets won the lottery instead of coming in second. I realize this is extreme and I’m not even sure if I’m joking here, but league could just decide, hey, the Bulls deserve the No. 1 pick this year, and the Jazz and Wizards deserve to fall, because Chicago was more ethical in its team-building choices. I swear there are worse ideas.

The tanking discourse is out of control right now because the 2025 and 2026 drafts were so strong. Rushing into quick fixes without understanding the full scope of how it will change the league just feels so shortsighted.

I believe that adopting any of these three tanking measures would make things worse. It really feels like Silver is rushing this just because fans who will never watch the Utah Jazz or Washington Wizards are complaining about the integrity of the product. Silver would be wise to take a beat and assess the problem next year when there’s bound to be less tanking due to a weaker 2027 draft class. It isn’t good practice to rush into big decisions in any pat of life, and it feels like the NBA could be on the verge of making a big mistakes if they’re committed to finding a tanking solution immediately.