How Can The NBA Curb Tanking? Let's Talk About Tweaking Lottery Odds

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.

The NBA is bringing the fight to the phenomenon of tanking. From the looks of it, the league will be targeting a key mechanism that determines teams’ positions in the NBA Draft.

This mechanism, of course, is the draft lottery. When this process was first instituted in 1985, the hope was that it would dissuade teams from intentionally throwing away games, as the worst regular-season finish would no longer guarantee the top pick in the subsequent Draft. 41 years later, NBA teams are still tanking despite the existence of the lottery.

So now, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is considering changes to this system. There are a number of ways he can achieve this.

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

Flatten lottery odds.

Lottery odds allocated based on two year-records.

Lottery extended to include all play-in teams.

In essence, the suggestion of “flattening” lottery odds is meant to even the playing field. If all non-playoff teams have the same odds of getting the number one pick, they will be less incentivized to sabotage their own win-loss records.

The allocation based on two-year records also makes sense, as teams would eventually have to endure a longer wait in order to see the fruits of their tanking labors. Of course, fans of the Philadelphia 76ers know that there is precedence for long-term tanking, which might not bode well for this suggestion.

The inclusion of all play-in teams in the lottery sounds off-base, unless it’s part of a more intricate anti-tanking strategy. Rewarding play-in teams that are good enough to secure a playoff spot doesn’t appear to be a direct response to tanking.

While the NBA could do without the basis of two-year records and the inclusion of all play-in teams, the proposal to flatten lottery odds is a sound strategy. This suggestion can potentially poke major holes in the schemes of NBA teams trying to improve their placement in the Draft.