The NBA, in the hopes of further discouraging teams from tanking, has begun soliciting input from team owners and general managers on possible rule changes, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania. According to Charania, the league sought feedback on a number of ideas at a Board of Governors meeting last Friday, including:
- Eliminating mid-lottery protections on traded picks, so that traded picks could only include either top-four protection or top-14 (or higher) protection.
- Prohibiting teams from drafting in the top four in back-to-back years.
- Locking lottery positions as of March 1.
As Charania explains, the NBA is looking for ways to discourage teams from “deliberately manipulating” their rosters in an effort to land a higher draft pick or hang onto a protected pick. The league’s goal, Charania says, isn’t to stop young, rebuilding teams from using their normal rotations, but to reduce instances of clubs sitting regular starters and encourage them to remain competitive down the stretch.
Some of the most egregious instances of tanking in recent years have involved teams looking to retain control of traded picks with protections on them. Charania points to the 2023 Mavericks, who owed the Knicks their top-10 protected first-rounder and held out key players in the final games of the season in order to hang onto that pick despite still being in contention for a play-in spot. The first proposed rule described above would be designed to target those cases.
The second proposal would have had an impact on multiple recent drafts if it had been in effect. For instance, the Rockets and Spurs, two of the Western Conference’s most promising up-and-coming teams, drafted in the top four in several consecutive seasons — Houston selected Jalen Green (2021), Jabari Smith Jr. (2022), Amen Thompson (2023), and Reed Sheppard (2024) with top-four picks, while San Antonio did the same with Victor Wembanyama (2023), Stephon Castle (2024), and Dylan Harper (2025).
The third proposal would disincentivize post-March 1 tanking, but wouldn’t necessarily eliminate instances of teams tanking prior to that date.
The NBA is focused on tanking in part because gamblers have allegedly been able to access inside information about lottery-bound teams sitting certain players in recent seasons, Charania notes. Federal investigators say that an unnamed co-conspirator, who matches the description of Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, told a bettor that several Portland players would miss a game in March 2023 as the team began to tank.
In the wake of that federal probe into illegal gambling that resulted in the arrests of Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former player and coach Damon Jones, the NBA is attempting to close off avenues for bettors to gain access to and use inside information. The league sent out a memo to teams last week detailing adjustments to the injury reporting process and proposed changes affecting prop bets.
No rule changes aimed at tanking have been approved at this point, but the subject figures to be an ongoing topic of discussion at upcoming Board of Governors meetings.
They are doing such a good job of making a longtime hardcore fan care less and less about its product, thankfully college hoops has had an all time great schedule.
The problem with college sports continues to be the fact the players are simply minor league pros waiting to get to the big leagues. Last night renowned powerhouse North Texas slipped past Science and Arts of Oklahoma 121-56. Scheduling? College could vastly improve its scheduling by placing the top 15 teams in a super-conference and do a home/away 28 game schedule. Promote and relegate with the next conference down like British Soccer. I have a cadre of family and friends who went to the University of Oregon. The Ducks now are in the 18 team Big 10 Conference and travel to New Jersey for conference games. Imbecilic.
The mid lottery protections should’ve never existed in the first place
“Prohibiting teams from drafting in the top four in back-to-back years.”
Definitely a good place to start as far as the league is concerned, but my gut says they will make rather toothless changes that wouldn’t adequately address the issue and we’ll replay this same scenario in a few years time. Hope I’m wrong.
I remember having what I thought was a pretty reasonable solution for tanking last year, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was lol. Ugh.
EDIT- Found it. So it was: Expand the lottery to 8 teams, have flat lottery odds for the lottery, and have normal lottery odds for the remaining non-playoff teams. In other words, you’re either in the (flat) lottery or you’re in the play-in, and if you’re good enough for the play-in you’re more likely than not to want to move up in the standings rather than down.
Silver, I await your call—and a cushy six figure job. You’re welcome.
(But no top-4 picks in b2b years would be nice in and of itself. Just not sure enough owners would get behind that idea)
The lottery already has more than 8 teams…did you mean expand the play-in to 8 teams?
No, they didn’t mean the lottery in that sense, but rather the number of picks that actually draw number combinations for, which is currently the first four picks, and they’re advocating for 8 picks instead.
I think he’s saying if you’re in the play-in, you’re not going to be in the lottery if you don’t make it to one of the top seeds. He also may mean if you’re one of the top two teams that miss the play-in, you’re out of the lottery as well. If protections follow suit and go to Top 8, the Mavs gimmick wouldn’t have worked.
“Expand the lottery to 8 teams, have flat lottery odds for the lottery, and have normal lottery odds for the remaining non-playoff teams.”
Note the word “expand” which means to make bigger, currently only the top 4 (4 is less than 8) picks are the only ones they actually draw combinations for, and the rest lined up from worst record to best.
GREAT that you were able to find the EDIT, Shea. This or some variation on it seems like a good solution.
A typical case of someone doing something just so it looks like they’re doing everything, or when imbeciles pretend they’re much smarter than they actually are—when in reality it’s quite the opposite…
1. Who exactly is going to be prevented from tanking by the fact that, in a future fictional trade, they can’t put top-8 protection on their pick, only top-4 or top-14? Who is going to shy away from planning the next five years of a franchise because of this?
2. This is a classic “something for nothing” measure: even though there are consistently terrible teams, it’s not typical for anyone to be drafting in the top 4 all the time anyway.
3. This might be the biggest nonsense of all… Do they really think teams only start tanking on March 1? Or that when March 1 becomes the deadline, everyone for whose season is already lost won’t start tanking in the second half of February?
In regards to no 2, I think it’s about preventing things like the Spurs having a top 4 pick in 3 consecutive years, which may not happen very often, but still it’s not a good thing for the league when if it does (although I’m sure Spurs fans loved it.) So the thing about arguing against a rule against something that doesn’t happen often is that you kind of also accidentally make the argument for why it’s not a big deal to do it.