NBA Explores New Ways To Prevent Tanking

Tanking and load management are two issues that seriously impact the integrity of the NBA and two problems that don’t seem to have a solid fix. During the recent Board of Governors meeting, Commissioner Adam Silver announced that several solutions to the league’s tanking issue included:

* Limiting the legal protections on traded first-round draft picks to the top four or 14, or above.

* Teams will no longer be allowed to draft in the top four in consecutive seasons

* Locking lottery positions after March 1

As long as losing games gives teams a better shot at adding top-tier talent, they will find ways to lose on purpose. While each of these rules sounds decent and fair at first glance, once you consider them for a few minutes, they simply become similar to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. 

Take that March 1st deadline. Teams won’t stop tanking; they’ll just tank earlier and more aggressively. As for banning back-to-back top-four picks, that wouldn’t make bad teams any better. It would just incentivize teams picking fifth through eighth to lose more, knowing their path to a premium pick just got easier. And limiting pick protections? That just makes trades even more complicated in an era where the CBA has already made dealing difficult enough.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: as long as losing games gives teams a better shot at generational talent, they will find ways to lose on purpose. The league already altered lottery odds in 2019 and added the play-in tournament, but the Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, and Utah Jazz are still racing to the bottom this season.

The real issue is that curbing tanking actually hurts the competitive balance Silver claims to want. He says any well-managed team should be able to compete for championships, but every anti-tanking rule makes it harder for the worst teams to improve. You can't have parity while simultaneously punishing teams for trying to get better through the draft, especially when most free agents won't sign with rebuilding franchises, no matter how much money they're offered.