The NBA doesn’t like tanking, and the league already has plenty in place to try and prevent teams from doing it. It’s not enough, apparently.
According to a new report, the league is tossing around some other rules that would totally change the draft lottery and more. As is usually the case with these anti-tanking protocols, it would mostly hurt the teams that are actually bad and in need of talent.
The proposed new NBA anti-tanking measures
According to a report from Shams Charania, the NBA is mulling three major changes to the way the draft works. First, they would change protections on traded lottery picks. The league would limit pick protections to either the top four or 14 and higher. This would, in Charania’s words, “eliminate the problematic mid-lottery protection.”
The second, and perhaps the most damaging rule change proposed, would be that a team could not pick in the top four twice in a row. So the Dallas Mavericks and Charlotte Hornets, two struggling teams from last year’s top four, would be totally out of luck. They’d have to pick fifth or worse, which is not exactly fair since both teams are more bad than tanking.
The third and final change would be to lock lottery positions on March 1, which is not as consequential a change as the other two.
“As multiple sources described, the attempts to find solutions to tanking are not intended to deter rebuilding teams who use their players as normal but rather teams that deliberately manipulate their rosters down the stretch of a season to land a higher pick or a protection range,” Charania said.
There have been some blatant tanking examples in the NBA. Is it worth it to prevent a team from losing a couple of games on purpose if it means the truly bad teams can never climb out of the gutter? Let’s say the Hornets fall flat again this year, or the Mavericks don’t ever get going, and they finish with the two worst records in basketball.
The lottery as it is wouldn’t guarantee them a top-four pick, but they’d have a chance. Under these new rules, they’d be left out of the top four, meaning they’d have zero chance to draft Caleb Wilson, Cam Boozer, AJ Dybantsa, or Darryn Peterson.
That would be a huge missed opportunity for those teams to actually improve. And in the case of the Hornets, that’s something they’ve been trying to do for years.
The NBA lottery is already unfair
The NBA has the draft lottery in place to prevent tanking, and it does to some degree. It’s not really believable to say the Hornets, Utah Jazz, and Washington Wizards were all tanking last year. They were mostly just bad, injured, or both.
This system is already unfair. The lottery, since 2019, has not given the worst team the best chance at the top pick. The three worst teams all have a 14% chance. There can be a difference of several games in the record between the worst and the third-worst. That’s not fair to the worst team.
Not guaranteeing them the first pick is one thing. Not giving them the best shot in the NBA is another.
Additionally, the 2025 draft lottery is a pretty perfect example of how unfair it is. The Dallas Mavericks shot themselves in the foot with the Luka Doncic trade and got hurt. They narrowly missed the playoffs. They even made the play-in tournament. The San Antonio Spurs narrowly missed as well.
Those two teams should never have picked first and second when bad teams were below them.
It’s already unfair. This would make it a whole lot worse.
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