The current NBA season has, by and large, been a thrilling spectacle, boasting a championship race that feels genuinely wide open and a trade deadline that saw five semi-recent All-Stars change teams. Yet, as a comprehensive report from sportsamo.com details, the pervasive discussion surrounding tanking continues to overshadow these positive narratives, prompting the league to confront one of its most persistent and problematic issues.
This isn’t a new phenomenon; NBA teams have strategically positioned themselves for draft picks for over four decades. From the Houston Rockets playing a 38-year-old Elvin Hayes all 53 minutes in a late-season game to secure Hakeem Olajuwon in 1984, to Mark Madsen attempting seven of his career 16 three-pointers in a single game for the tanking 2005-06 Minnesota Timberwolves, the practice was once a mostly accepted, if unspoken, part of the league’s ecosystem. However, the paradigm shifted dramatically with Sam Hinkie and the Philadelphia 76ers’ "Process," an overtly transparent, multi-year rebuild that deliberately prioritized future draft capital over immediate competitiveness. This strategy, while ultimately yielding Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, ignited public uproar and forced the league’s hand, leading to significant changes in the lottery formula in 2019, primarily designed to flatten the odds and disincentivize extreme losing.
Mathematically, being the worst team in the NBA today offers less tangible value in the draft lottery than it almost ever has. The team with the league’s poorest record now holds only a 14% chance at the No. 1 overall pick. This is marginally worse than the 14.29% chance the worst team had when the lottery began in 1985 with just seven participating teams. Only the 1989 lottery, which saw nine teams with flat 11.11% odds, offered a lower probability for the worst squad. Historically, when the Orlando Magic famously won back-to-back lotteries in 1992 and 1993, the league responded by making the odds more favorable to the worst teams, not less. The current environment, therefore, represents a significant philosophical reversal.
The 2019 lottery changes introduced two critical, albeit unintended, consequences. First, the drawing now determines the top four picks instead of three. This means a team could drop four spots from its record-based projection, rather than three, creating a defensive incentive to be the absolute worst to minimize the potential fall. A third-worst team, for instance, still has the same 14% chance at No. 1 but could plummet to No. 7 in the actual draft order – a "nightmare scenario" that effectively wastes a season’s efforts. This increased downside risk pushed teams to seek the lowest possible record. Second, by flattening the odds across a broader range of non-playoff teams, the league inadvertently incentivized teams in the middle of the lottery to get worse. The reward for being the fourth, fifth, or sixth-worst team became significantly greater, enticing competitive-but-struggling teams to intentionally slide down the standings. Illustrating this perfectly, the last two lottery winners were Play-In Tournament teams, demonstrating how the new system created a "sweet spot" for strategic losing outside the bottom three.
The league is now actively seeking remedies. ESPN reported in December that the NBA was exploring various ways to curb tanking. More recently, the Indiana Pacers were fined $100,000 for violating player participation policies, and the Utah Jazz received a hefty $500,000 fine for "conduct detrimental to the league," a clear signal of the NBA’s escalating intolerance. Commissioner Adam Silver himself confirmed at All-Star media availability that "there is talk about every possible remedy now to stop this behavior."
While traditional suggestions like altering pick protection rules, preventing consecutive top picks, or introducing a cutoff line have been extensively discussed and largely deemed insufficient, the situation calls for more innovative, even "weirder," solutions. Drawing from various sources across the basketball internet—from established media figures to Reddit threads and Twitter discussions—a range of unconventional ideas has emerged. The goal isn’t to pinpoint a single perfect solution, but to thoroughly examine the potential ramifications and viability of these concepts before the league considers any drastic changes.
Let the Players Choose Where They Play
One recurring theme suggests empowering players to choose their destinations, whether through a raffle system, a hospital-residency-style matching system, or simply abolishing the draft entirely to make all rookies free agents. The theoretical benefit is clear: worse teams could offer more money under a capped system, as successful teams would eventually run out of salary cap space.
However, this idea quickly unravels under scrutiny. While NBA teams face salary cap restrictions, external sponsors, particularly sneaker companies like Nike, operate without such constraints. These entities would undoubtedly influence top prospects to play in larger, more desirable markets (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, Chicago) where their spokesmen receive maximum visibility, regardless of a team’s cap space. This would exacerbate the existing disparities between big and small markets. Would Memphis or Utah realistically be able to outbid the Lakers or Knicks for a generational talent if all else were equal? Small-market team building is heavily reliant on the draft to acquire superstars. Any system that effectively removes this pipeline would be detrimental, creating a perpetual competitive imbalance.
A scaled-down version, allowing the top prospect to choose between the three worst teams, might offer a measure of accountability. A persistently terrible franchise like the Sacramento Kings, which has struggled for two decades, would face penalties if prospects consistently bypassed them. But ultimately, players already have a mechanism to choose their teams: free agency. They earn this right over time, allowing incumbent teams to build equity and convince players to stay. It’s easier to retain a star in Utah than to entice one to sign there in the first place, making a full player-choice draft system largely unviable.
Better Teams Get Higher Picks
The inverse of the current system, where winning is rewarded with better draft picks, seems logical on the surface. However, the NBA already incentivizes winning through financial rewards, trophies, and global recognition. Implementing a reverse lottery, where the best team to miss the playoffs gets the No. 1 pick and the worst team gets the last non-playoff pick, merely shifts the tanking incentive. Instead of losing for the worst record, teams would strategically aim to lose Play-In Tournament games or finish just outside the playoff picture to secure a top pick.
As Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri famously stated in 2021 regarding a Play-In spot, "Play-In for what? We want to win a championship here." A year later, he explicitly celebrated the "Tampa tank year" that yielded Scottie Barnes, underscoring that the motivation to acquire elite talent often outweighs the desire for a marginal playoff berth. Furthermore, taking top picks away from the worst teams would cripple their ability to rebuild. Building through free agency is no longer a viable primary strategy, given increasingly restrictive extension rules that ensure few top players ever hit the open market. The best player to change teams via free agency last year was Nickeil Alexander-Walker, highlighting the scarcity of difference-making free agents. To truly level the playing field, bad teams must retain access to top draft picks.
The Lottery Tournament
A tournament for lottery teams would undoubtedly generate high drama and keep fanbases engaged, offering a concrete, high-stakes event at the end of the season. The idea posits that better non-playoff teams would likely win, securing higher picks. However, single-game elimination settings are inherently random; March Madness has shown No. 16 seeds upsetting No. 1 seeds, and the talent gap among NBA non-playoff teams is often much smaller.
Key issues include player motivation: why would players risk injury to help their team draft their replacement? Financial incentives, perhaps like an NBA Cup-style cash prize or even a player option added to the end of their contract for the winning team’s players, could be explored. The latter, though intriguing, would create a significant drawback for teams winning the No. 1 pick, as it would extend potentially bad contracts.
Format-wise, a system mirroring the West Coast Conference Tournament, where lower seeds need more wins, could give worse teams a higher seed while offering better teams a path to defy the odds. Another challenge is "gap year" teams (e.g., a team resting stars all season only to bring them back for the tournament). Applying the NBA’s 65-game awards eligibility rule to the tournament, or allowing G-League players, could address this, forcing teams to invest in their developmental structures. While entertaining and a potential boon for fan engagement, the tournament’s fairness in distributing top talent remains questionable from a purely competitive standpoint.
The Lottery Committee and Teams Voting on Picks
The concept of a committee, similar to the NCAA’s College Football Playoff or March Madness selection committees, inevitably raises concerns about true independence and bias. Media voters, for example, have financial incentives to send top prospects to more popular teams that generate higher viewership and story engagement. An internal league committee would face intense scrutiny and conspiracy theories, especially if a star prospect consistently landed in a desirable market.
A more radical suggestion involves all 30 teams voting on who "deserves" the No. 1 pick, based on naked self-interest. Teams would logically vote to send the top pick to a rival they least fear, inadvertently rewarding genuinely struggling teams over those perceived to be "pretending" to be bad. However, conference loyalties would create stalemates (e.g., Eastern Conference teams voting for Western Conference teams). The biggest flaw, though, lies with traded picks. If the Kings traded their No. 1 pick to the Thunder, no team would vote to give the Thunder that pick, effectively capping the value of traded assets. Given that picks are traded years in advance, implementing such a system would require freezing all future trades until existing obligations are met, making it unviable.
Mess with the Money
Proposals to financially punish losing teams, such as cutting them out of luxury tax distributions or offering fan refunds, face an insurmountable hurdle: owners. With individuals like Steve Ballmer (Clippers) worth over $100 billion, no feasible financial deterrent exists for an owner who believes tanking benefits his franchise. The vast disparity in owner net worth would create an unfair competitive advantage for the wealthiest franchises. Moreover, owners would never collectively vote for a system that could directly cost them money, making such proposals dead on arrival.
A more plausible financial penalty, as suggested by Miami Heat beat writer Ira Winderman, involves fining teams with a "different currency": lottery odds. Instead of cash, teams found engaging in "tanking behavior" could lose a predetermined number of lottery combinations. This would require objectively definable criteria for tanking (e.g., players missing specific games, minute restrictions) vetted thoroughly in advance. The challenge lies in differentiating legitimate injury management or unconventional coaching decisions from deliberate losing. Without clear, objective standards, such a system would be ripe for selective enforcement and perpetual conspiracy theorizing.
The Wheel and Multi-Season Standings
Mike Zarren’s "wheel" concept, where draft order is determined decades in advance on a fixed, rotating schedule, offers predictability but at a high cost. It removes tanking incentives but guarantees that dominant teams would occasionally land top prospects, leading to significant fan uproar and potential competitive imbalance. Prospects could also game the system, delaying their entry to join a superior team picking No. 1 a year later. The inflexibility of a 30-year cycle makes it risky, especially with potential league expansion or unforeseen issues.
Multi-season standings, where draft order is based on cumulative records over, say, three preceding seasons, aims to identify genuinely struggling teams. While this might prevent single-season tank jobs, it actively encourages multi-year tanking and strategic manipulation of records over a longer period. Defining minimum win thresholds to retain eligibility for top picks would be complex and hard for fans to follow, potentially creating incentives to be "just bad enough" to benefit.
The Musical Chairs Solution: A Promising Path
Among the more creative solutions, the "musical chairs" concept holds significant merit. One version proposes that teams draft other teams’ first-round picks, with the worst team picking first. This removes the direct incentive to lose for one’s own pick, but introduces a new one: losing for a higher pick in the "team draft" next year. The public declaration of a lack of faith in another team, however, might be deemed "uncouth" by the league.
A slightly amended version, offered by Twitter user @GriffinHilly, appears more viable: teams are not allowed to win the lottery with their own first-round pick. If a team controls its own pick, it cannot land in the top four; its ping-pong balls are surrendered, and it falls to where its record dictates after the lottery plays out. This simple rule would dramatically supercharge the trade market. The worst teams, knowing they can’t win the lottery with their own pick, would be highly motivated to trade it for another team’s pick, ideally one from another struggling franchise. This would create a flurry of strategic, win-now trades using unprotected picks, knowing they can’t fall lower than fifth. It encourages novel roster-building strategies and generates significant league interest, moving away from the visually offensive forms of aggressive tanking for every last slot. While some incentive to lose for a better trade asset might remain, it significantly mitigates the most egregious aspects of tanking. If the league were to endorse any of these "weirder" solutions, this one stands out as the most pragmatic and impactful.
The Play-In Tournament: A Stepping Stone, Not a Trap
Finally, the discussion must address the perception that the middle of the standings is a "trap." While the Play-In Tournament has been a success in terms of entertainment and competitive games, teams should view it as a stepping stone, not a dead end. Instead of giving Play-In teams top draft picks, which would be a bridge too far, the league could offer tangible team-building advantages. This might include an additional mid-level exception that is immune to luxury tax and hard cap calculations, or an extra draft pick between the first and second rounds. Such incentives would reward competitive teams for striving for the Play-In, offering tools to elevate themselves from decent to good, and ultimately, to great, shifting the calculus away from deliberate losing.
The NBA’s tanking problem is complex, born from a system designed to promote parity that has instead been gamed for strategic advantage. Simple solutions have proven insufficient, and the path forward requires a creative, multi-faceted approach that balances competitive integrity with the fundamental need for struggling franchises to rebuild. The conversation is no longer about if changes are coming, but what form they will take.
