NBA Commissioner Adam Silver informed the general managers of all 30 teams that the league plans to introduce anti-tanking rules for the 2026-27 season, according to sources who spoke with ESPN.
Sources with knowledge of Thursday's meeting and a competition committee meeting last month said that the following concepts have been discussed to curb tanking:
First-round draft picks can only be protected as top-four or top-14+ selections
Lottery odds will freeze at the trade deadline or on a later date
Teams will not be allowed to earn a top-four draft pick in consecutive years and/or after three straight bottom-three finishes
Teams cannot pick in the top four after reaching the Conference Finals the previous year
Lottery odds will be determined based on two-year records
The NBA Draft Lottery can be extended to include play-in teams
Odds will be flattened for all lottery teams
Adam Silver, the league office, and the NBA's 30 lead executives reportedly said during yesterday’s meeting that they want to continue discussing ways to combat tanking while preserving the league's image. Silver was reportedly "forceful" in his message about solving the problem.
During his NBA All-Star Weekend press conference, Silver said that tanking is "worse this year than we've seen in recent memory," while adding that he is considering "every possible remedy" to resolve the issue.
A necessary change to preserve league integrity
Though the weighted NBA Draft Lottery system has been around since 1990, the issue of tanking has become much more prevalent since the start of the 2010s. The Philadelphia 76ers were the first example of a team purposefully tanking their regular-season record to obtain a better pick through the NBA Draft Lottery. From the 2013-14 season to the 2016-17 season, Philly had a 75-253 record for a .229 winning percentage. During that stretch, they were awarded four consecutive top-three picks, including the number-one overall picks in the 2016 and 2017 NBA Drafts. Former 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie coined the phrase, "Trust the process," which really just meant "let us tank until we get the players we need to be competitive." Since the 2017 NBA Draft, the 76ers are 401-290, which equates to a .580 winning percentage.
After seeing the 76ers' "process," the league restructured the NBA Draft Lottery in 2019 to prevent tanking. Previously, the team with the worst record in the NBA had a 25% chance at earning the number-one overall pick in the draft. Starting in 2019, though, the odds were changed so that the three teams with the worst record in the league each had a 14% chance to win the NBA Draft Lottery. These changes have been moderately successful, considering the team with the worst record in the league has failed to win the NBA Draft Lottery since the system was reformed.
Unfortunately, tanking has taken a turn for the worse this season. With what is expected to be one of the most talented draft classes in recent memory, some NBA teams are not even trying to hide their tanking efforts. This was proven by the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers, who were both fined last week for supposedly sitting healthy players. It is also worth noting that these are two of the six worst teams in the NBA this season.
Hopefully, these proposed rule changes bring an end to tanking, but that probably won't be the case. In all likelihood, the NBA will have to go through a few rounds of reforms before eventually creating a system that discourages tanking almost entirely.
My two proposals
I believe there are two incredibly effective ways to solve tanking in the NBA. One solution involves abolishing the NBA Draft Lottery, while the other would lead to the creation of an in-season competition.
1. Adopt the NFL's drafting system
Maybe it's because there are fewer games, but the NFL never seems to have an issue with tanking. Since the 1970s, the NFL Draft has essentially remained unchanged as the simplest and most effective drafting system in North American sports: the worse your record, the better your draft pick.
In the NBA, you don't need to have the league's worst record to earn the number-one overall pick. As long as you are one of the five worst teams in the NBA, you have at least a 10.5% chance to win the Draft Lottery. So if a team has the sixth-worst record in the NBA with ten games left on its schedule, it should just throw all of those matchups to give itself a better chance at earning the number-one overall pick.
Just look at the current NBA season. The 25th-ranked Utah Jazz have six more victories and a winning percentage over ten points higher than the last-place Sacramento Kings (.321 vs. .211). However, the Jazz have basically been caught tanking after they were fined for sitting healthy players.
In Utah's defense, though, why wouldn't they want to tank? With the way the system is currently set up, there's a chance they could finish the season with the same odds as the Kings to win the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery. All the Jazz have to do is keep losing games and finish with a bottom-three record in the league. But if the NBA adopted the NFL's draft system, there would be a minuscule chance the Jazz would match the Kings' inept record. The same would go for other mediocre but not bottom-feeder teams like the Dallas Mavericks and Memphis Grizzlies.
In the NBA system, the Jazz, Mavericks, and Grizzlies are always going to be in play for the number-one overall draft pick because of the lottery. But if the league adopted the NFL’s rules, those teams would have no realistic shot at the number-one overall pick and would likely try harder down the stretch since there isn’t a huge difference between the sixth, seventh, and eighth spots in the NBA Draft.
2. Create an in-season NBA Draft Lottery competition
This would be more technically difficult to execute, but this is the most effective solution I could devise. The mechanics will vary because each team has different winning percentages and will be eliminated from playoff contention at different times, but this could encourage meaningful competition amongst the league's worst teams towards the end of the season.
Here's how it would work:
On a defined date during the NBA regular-season (most likely in March when teams start being eliminated from playoff contention), a new, in-season competition will begin amongst the bottom ten teams in the league based on winning percentage.
From that date onwards, the records for these ten teams will basically reset, and a “new season” will start for those select organizations.
From that defined date to the end of the regular season, the league will track the wins and losses of those ten confirmed teams.
When the regular-season ends, the team with the highest winning percentage amongst those participating in the competition will be awarded the number-one overall pick in the NBA Draft. The team with the second-highest winning percentage will be awarded the second-overall pick, and so on.
If two teams have the same winning percentage at the end of the regular season competition, they will face off in a winner-takes-all game to determine who gets the better draft pick.
If multiple teams have the same winning percentage at the end of the regular season competition, they will participate in a round-robin tournament to determine draft order.
This would effectively bring an end to tanking and encourage the worst teams in the NBA to try their best down the stretch. This would also create an immense amount of public interest in non-championship contenders. Teams will try harder, the end of the regular season will become more important, and more people will tune in to watch games between non-playoff teams. It's a win for the teams, the league, and the fans.
These are imperfect ideas. They're not fully fleshed out yet, and I am not an NBA executive with 20+ years of experience. I’m just a basketball fan who, like so many other people, wants to see an end to tanking. These solutions and the ones proposed by the NBA might not solve the issue immediately, but they’ll put the league on the right path and make competing on a nightly basis more important.
