The NBA's board of governors will reportedly vote on three anti-tanking concepts at some point in May, with the league expected to implement any approved changes as soon as next season.
Here are the pros, cons, and real-world examples for each idea, which could still be modified before the vote.
18 teams, flattened odds, no floor
The first concept we'll evaluate would see 18 teams - seeds seven through 15 in each conference - enter the lottery. The league's 10 worst teams would have equal odds (8% each) of winning the draft's No. 1 overall selection, with the remaining 20% split among the other eight teams, distributed in decreasing order based on the reverse standings.
Additionally, all 18 picks would be determined by the lottery, marking a massive change from the current system, where only the top four picks get drawn.
What it would look like in 2026
Here's what this concept would look like if it were used this season, with mock odds for teams 11th through 18th created by me.
(Note: For clarity's sake, I didn't include where traded picks could be headed, like the Hawks owning swap rights with New Orleans and Milwaukee, Oklahoma City owning the Clippers' pick, etc.)
What it gets right: Allowing play-in teams into the lottery (even if they play their way into the playoffs) would limit some of the incentive lower-seeded postseason teams currently have to prioritize the lottery over the playoffs. Meanwhile, flattening the odds for the 10 worst teams would eliminate the most egregious forms of months-long tanking among the league's most hopeless clubs, since they wouldn't benefit from moving further down the standings.
Most importantly, this concept includes a key tenet I've been harping on for years: Drawing every lottery pick rather than just the top four selections eliminates each team's lottery floor. Under the current format, teams can't fall more than four spots from their lottery seed, which gives tankers too much certainty. As it stands, teams enter the season knowing the worst record guarantees a top-five pick, while franchises trying to retain a protected pick know exactly how bad they have to be to guarantee the traded pick doesn't convey.
Eliminating the floor would mean even the league's worst teams could wind up with any pick in the top-18, adding much more risk for those considering punting entire seasons.
What it gets wrong: While I wholly endorse eliminating the lottery floor, this concept as a whole is fundamentally flawed. Rather than eliminating tanking, it would shift the practice from the league's worst teams to those in the NBA's middle tier.
This set of rules incentivizes a fifth- or sixth-seeded playoff team to tank into play-in range, as those clubs would still have an opportunity to profit from home playoff games while selling the hope of lottery luck. Play-in teams would be able to have their cake and eat it, too, which would be very attractive to mediocre playoff clubs that have little hope of competing for a championship.
In addition, the worst play-in teams would still have an incentive to tank out of the postseason picture entirely and into the bottom 10, where their odds of landing a franchise-changing talent would suddenly be equivalent to owning the league's worst record. Commissioner Adam Silver and the board of governors should've learned after the 2019 lottery changes that flattening the odds has negative downstream effects.
The league already has too many decent teams masquerading as bad ones for lottery purposes. This format would only encourage such behavior.
18 teams, 5x5 system
In this scenario, the five worst teams would share equal odds of landing the No. 1 pick in an 18-team lottery featuring clubs that finish outside their respective conference's top six. The sixth- through 18th-worst teams would then have decreasing odds assigned to them.
An initial lottery would determine the top five picks, and a second lottery would determine picks six through 18. The league's five worst teams would be guaranteed top-10 picks, while the remaining 13 lottery teams could finish anywhere in the top 18.
What it would look like in 2026
Here's what a 2026 version of this concept would look like, using the same 18 teams as the first concept, disregarding traded picks.
What it gets right: I can support the idea of lowering the floor for the league's five worst teams without eliminating it entirely, as you could argue clubs in desperate need of a talent infusion deserve a soft landing. And, much like the first scenario, this concept would minimize the incentive for play-in-caliber teams to tank out of the postseason picture.
What it gets wrong: Many of the same things the first option got wrong. This format would incentivize mediocre teams to tank from mid-tier playoff seeds into play-in range, while bad teams would be motivated to look terrible in a quest to slide into the bottom-five, where a top-10 pick would be guaranteed.
22 teams, 2-year record
The third option would feature a 22-team lottery, with the 10 non-play-in teams joining eight play-in squads and four first-round playoff losers. The NBA will have to iron out what happens if a play-in team makes the second round - would they still be lottery-bound, or would the top-two seed that the play-in squad defeated replace them? Should the lottery just be comprised of the 22 teams that failed to make the second round?
The most creative component of this concept is that lottery odds would be determined by two-year records rather than single-season performance. Additionally, a minimum win floor would be established. For example, if the floor was set at 20 wins and a team went 15-67, they would still be credited with 20 victories for lottery odds calculations.
Finally, the lottery would only draw the top four selections, which remains unchanged from the current system.
What it would look like in 2026
Assuming each conference's top four seeds advanced to the second round, and once again ignoring all traded-pick specifics, here's what this format would look like using the last two years of data:
What it gets right: Using a two-year sample should make tanking less attractive (for most teams) while decreasing the chances of a stacked team winning the lottery thanks to one injury-riddled campaign. In addition, instituting a win floor would eliminate the benefit of fully bottoming out. Finally, inviting first-round losers to the lottery would give rising young teams, randomly overachieving clubs, and otherwise mediocre ones hope beyond just an unlikely playoff run, thereby providing a path out of the muddy middle.
What it gets wrong: This might embolden teams to extend their rebuilding windows, as some organizations (looking at you, Utah) have already proved willing to stomach multi-year tanks.
Meanwhile, though the two-year format would prevent a stacked but injured club from receiving top-tier lottery odds, inviting 22 teams would still be flirting with danger. How quickly would rival owners cry foul if a top-10 overall squad won the lottery to land a generational prospect?
Furthermore, although the two-year model would complicate the calculus, teams would still know exactly where they stood in the latter stages of each season and would act accordingly. For example, if a non-playoff team realized it had to avoid winning any games over the final couple of weeks of a season to maintain its two-year slot, you can bet the front office would engage in the same kind of shenanigans modern tankers do (especially with the four-pick floor still in place).
Best of all worlds
Ideally, the league's 30 owners would take the best elements from each of these concepts, along with previously reported ideas that weren't included in the three scenarios evaluated above.
theScore's solution:
- 20-team lottery featuring 14 non-playoff teams and the six worst first-round losers
- Two-year records used, with a 20-win minimum per season as described above
- Top-13 picks drawn by lottery, giving the league's worst team a floor of 14th (equivalent to the last pick in the current lottery system)
- Teams can't draft in the top three in consecutive years
Such a system would look something like this:
Joseph Casciaro is theScore's lead NBA reporter.
