How Can The NBA Curb Tanking? Let's Talk About Limiting Top-4 Picks

Over the past two months, suggestions for “anti-tanking rule changes” have been discussed by the NBA’s league office and team representatives. Let’s look at these suggestions and consider their pros and cons.

Nowadays, it seems like NBA teams are gunning for one of two things at the end of the season: the Larry O’Brien trophy or a spot at the top of the NBA Draft.

While ball clubs can’t be faulted for wanting to start anew via a high-quality draft selection, the intentionality behind tanking has drawn the ire of paying customers, who have a clear vision of the NBA product that they spend their hard-earned money on. Throw in the commentary of pundits who are similarly displeased with this phenomenon, and now, the pressure is on for the league office to make a move.

When it comes to curbing schemes of tanking, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has a number of strategies to choose from. One approach he can take is to target the best positions in the order of draft selection.

As per ESPN’s Shams Charania, the following “concepts” related to top-4 selections have been brought up in meetings involving Silver, other league officials, general managers, and top team executives:

No longer allowing a team to pick top 4 in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-3 finishes.

Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals.

On paper, the decision to disallow teams from making consecutive top-4 picks looks like a good strategy to disincentivize tanking. For instance, if teams can’t draft from that advantageous position for two straight years, they might consider actually putting up a fight for at least one season.

However, that strategy will have to be further mapped out to ensure fairness to all teams in the lottery. Let’s say a terrible team does land good fortune in the draft lottery and win a top-4 pick. If that would be their second consecutive season in the top 4, or if they’re coming off three straight finishes in the bottom 3, where would they be placed in the Draft? How would that placement be determined?

The same structural issue could also lead to the collapse of the suggestion involving conference finalists. Also, something doesn’t add up when it comes to that proposal: How could a conference finalist end up with a top-4 selection in the following season’s Draft? 

The only way that could happen is if the conference finalist was able to acquire draft rights from another team. Does that mean that the conference finalist loses those draft rights if the selection ends up in the top 4?

It’s highly likely that Charania didn’t report the full extent of the suggestions thrown out when it comes to limiting top-4 picks. There may be a sound explanation behind these proposals, but it’s not quite the time to disclose this rationale yet to the public. Still, the league office will have to make sure that these rule changes are airtight, so that anti-tanking moves are not made at the expense of fairness to all NBA teams.