- The NBA is discussing three new concepts to reform the draft lottery and discourage teams from “tanking.”
- Commissioner Adam Silver has vowed to fix the tanking issue, stating changes will be made before next season.
- The proposed concepts involve expanding lottery eligibility to include play-in teams and potentially even first-round playoff losers.
At the NBA Board of Governors session earlier this week, the league presented three NBA Draft lottery reform concepts to ownership in an ongoing attempt to combat tanking.
A person with direct knowledge of the matter told USA TODAY Sports that the session was akin to a brainstorm and that the concepts discussed were not considered formal proposals that would be presented to the Board of Governors for voting — at least not yet. Before it gets to that stage, the NBA’s executives want to hear more feedback from team front office personnel prior to elevating any concept as a formal proposal.
The person also said that the concepts could be tweaked further, or that new concepts could be raised in the future. To that effect, the March 25 discussion with NBA ownership was not the first meeting the group has had on these issues. In essence: the league’s efforts against tanking are fluid and evolving.
The person spoke under the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
During a March 25 press conference at the end of the Board of Governors meeting, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver characterized discussions with NBA owners about tanking as “lengthy” and vowed that the league is taking the matter seriously.
“We are going to fix it, full stop,” Silver told reporters in the press conference. “I want to say that directly to our fans.”
Given that the 2025-26 NBA season is nearly complete, the NBA does not necessarily need to rush this process, because any potential changes would not impact the bottom of the standings this year. Still, the league is prioritizing the anti-tanking effort and wants to enact changes sooner rather than later.
The NBA will convene a special session of the Board of Governors to vote on any formalized proposals for the 2026-27 season.
“This meeting was not about pointing fingers at any team in particular,” Silver said. “Again, I understand where the incentives are. We understand why it results in certain behavior. I will say it seemed unanimous in the room that we needed to make a change and we needed to make a change for next season. Exactly what that change is, we’re continuing to work on. No votes were taken today.
“I think there’s also unanimous agreement that we need to make this change in advance of the draft and free agency this year so all the teams understand the rules of the road going into next year.”
Here’s a look at the concepts presented:
Concept No. 1: Expand NBA draft lottery eligibility to play-in teams
In this scenario, 18 teams would qualify for the lottery. The 10 teams with the worst records would have the same chance, 8%, to win the lottery. The eight teams that qualify for the Play-In Tournament would then divvy up the remaining 20% of odds, in descending order, from Nos. 11-18.
Concept No. 2: WNBA-style weighted lottery
This concept blends some facets of the way the WNBA operates its lottery. In this scenario, 22 teams would be lottery-eligible. This would include the same 18 teams as the scenario above, while adding the four teams that lose their first-round playoff series.
Then, similar to the way the WNBA ranks teams for its lottery, the NBA would weight teams by their combined records over the most recent two seasons.
Concept No. 3: 18-team lottery most similar to current system
This concept is closest to the way the lottery is set up right now, with some tweaks.
In this version, 18 teams would qualify for the lottery: the teams with the 10 worst records, plus the eight play-in teams. This concept would give the teams with the five worst records — as opposed to the teams with the three worst records in the current setup — the same odds to win the lottery.
Then, odds would go in descending order for the teams ranked sixth through 18th.
Similar to the current lottery system, this concept would have some protections in place to prevent for statistical aberrations: the lowest fall one of the five worst teams could have would be the No. 10 pick.
How does the NBA come up with anti-tanking concepts?
It starts with ongoing discussions and ideas. These can come from team operations or from people within the league office, but the NBA is trying to curate options that appear to have the most traction in a comprehensive list.
The effort to curate and distill these ideas into concepts is being led by NBA executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch, NBA president of league operations Byron Spruell and executive vice president, head of basketball operations James Jones. Those three are in constant contact with the NBA’s competition committee so that when the concepts are presented to NBA owners, they’re listed clearly and concisely.
Would any change be permanent?
Almost certainly not. During his press conference, Silver said he believed the league’s previous efforts to combat tanking with lottery reform had worked, but he acknowledged that changes in collective bargaining and changes in analytics and behavior rendered the previous reforms obsolete.
“The world changes, behavior changes,” Silver said. “I don’t necessarily think the changes we made over the last 40 years or so were necessarily wrong. I think in some cases they worked for a period of time. Math is math. When we make those changes and change odds, you know exactly statistically where you’re going to come out.
“What’s changed is behavior around those odds. It may be as the value of franchises has gone up, as the analytics have gotten more sophisticated, as pressure has come from fan bases to engage in behavior that even team ownership or GMs are not proud of, that’s where we find ourselves.”
He also cautioned against the framing of any upcoming lottery reform as a “forever fix” and vowed that the league would continually look at potential changes to the lottery as league economics and league dynamics changed.
“If I’m the one standing at the podium (in five years), I want to make it clear that I recognize things may change also because there also may be changes that we see through collective bargaining or other changes to the system that may impact what we’re doing now,” Silver said. “Certainly going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now.”
