Your bag is empty.
The NBA under Adam Silver has truly honed in on tanking as the biggest problem facing the sport. One could argue that even the 65-game minimum is so that teams are constantly putting their best foot forward to try to win every single time. The draft lottery, which is what tanking takes aim at, has already been tweaked once before under Silver.
Now, after months and months of talk and discussion about what to do, the league has come up with a plan that they are likely to implement after letting all 30 general managers know. And it’s an utterly horrible plan that won’t solve anything and will actively make things worse.
Adam Silver’s anti-tanking plan is set to ruin the NBA
The NBA has a new anti-tanking plan for the lottery. They’re adopting a 3-2-1 system, where teams get split into tiers with three, two, or one ping pong ball in the lottery wheel. Additionally, the lottery will now include all Play-In teams, so despite the Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers, and Philadelphia 76ers making the playoffs, they would have lottery picks.
The big change is the relegation zone, which means that teams in the bottom three no longer have the best odds. They would fall into the sector with two ping pong balls, meaning they have a third less likelihood than teams that were better than them to win the lottery.
The lottery was already moderately unfair to the worst teams. In a fair draft, the worst team would get the best pick (look at the NFL). But with a lottery system, that team should at least have the best odds of securing it. Instead, the bottom three teams have had the same odds, which wasn’t great, but it’s so much better than this.
In this year’s lottery, Washington, Indiana, and Brooklyn all have a 14% chance at the top pick. In 2026-27, they’d be relegated out, allowing Utah, Sacramento, and Memphis to the top odds, which isn’t fair to the three teams that were the worst in the sport.
It gets worse
There are some convoluted changes that are being made, and most of them are pretty disappointing. First, no team would be able to win the top pick two years in a row, and they would be prohibited from getting a top-five pick three years in a row. In the history of the lottery, only one team has actually ever won the lottery twice in a row. This is a complete non-issue.
Second, teams wouldn’t be able to protect picks in the 12-15 range. This is pretty much a meaningless change that doesn’t add anything. It doesn’t necessarily hurt the sport. It doesn’t do a single thing to help it improve or prevent the tanking the NBA is so upset about, though.
The proposal essentially puts a 2029 cap on this, and it would allow governors to then vote on continuing it. This is a good thing, but 2029 is too far away. Some teams will get hurt badly during that time, and then what will the NBA do after? Replace this system with something worse?
The final change is the worst one. The league would reserve the right to regulate tanking by reducing a team’s lottery odds if it’s deemed in violation. They could also modify draft positions. This gives way too much power to a commissioner who already does not care about small-market teams.
If Adam Silver believes the Indiana Pacers tanked and didn’t deserve the second overall pick, he could just change it. That’s unfathomable power, and it’s dangerous.
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