NBA Floats 3 Radical Plans to Kill Tanking

NBA Floats 3 Radical Plans to Kill Tanking

The NBA is serious about stopping teams from losing on purpose. Commissioner Adam Silver met with the league’s Board of Governors to talk about new ideas. The goal is to make it impossible to tell the difference between a team that’s rebuilding the right way and one that’s just trying to get a top draft pick by losing games. Silver said the league needs to do something more than just small changes. “There is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild. You know, rebuild with integrity,” Silver stated. “The problem we’re having these days is it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between a tank and a rebuild.”

Three New Proposals Emerge

Reporter Arsham Shirana shared three big ideas the league is looking at. These proposals aim to stop teams from playing lineup games or resting players just to lose. They’re designed to make losing on purpose a bad strategy.

Proposal 1: Expanded Lottery Pool

This plan includes 18 teams in the lottery. That’s the bottom 10 teams and the eight teams that make the Play-In Tournament. Right now, only the bottom five teams in each conference and the four Play-In teams that lose get a shot. In this new idea, the bottom 10 teams would each have an 8% chance at the No. 1 pick. The other 20% chance would be spread among the next eight teams. All 18 spots would be part of the lottery drawing.

Proposal 2: Two-Year Records and Win Floors

This is a more complicated idea. It involves 22 teams in the lottery. Their chances would be based on their records over two seasons. Plus, teams would have to reach a minimum number of wins each season. If they don’t, their record for the lottery would be bumped up to that minimum. For example, if a team went 20-62 one year and then 30-52 the next, their two-year win total for the lottery might be calculated as if they won 55 games. This is to stop teams from being bad for too many years in a row.

Proposal 3: More Lottery Drawings

This plan also includes 18 teams in the lottery, up from the current 14. The five teams with the worst records would have the best odds, in order from worst to fifth-worst. There would be a separate lottery drawing for each of the top five picks. Then, a second drawing would happen for the remaining 13 teams. This proposal also includes protections to stop the worst teams from falling too far in the draft order.

Expert Analysis and Concerns

Shams Charania, who reported on these proposals, explained that there are no easy answers. “One thing that’s been made very clear to me is there are no perfect solutions to tanking,” Charania said. He noted that the ideas are meant to stop teams from trying to lose. One variation of the 18-team format has flattened odds, meaning the top 10 teams all have the same chance for the top pick. This is similar to how the NBA used to do it.

Another idea, called the “5×5,” would give the bottom five teams equal odds for the top pick. The 22-team format uses two-year records and win totals, similar to the WNBA. Charania added that Adam Silver might also get more power to discipline teams if they break these new rules.

However, some experts are skeptical. Brian Windhorst called the idea of figuring this all out by May a “pipe dream.” He believes there will be too much fighting for position. “I want to acknowledge that fixing something that they’ve been trying to fix for 40 years is hard,” Windhorst commented. He also questioned the NBA’s ability to enforce new rules, asking, “What’s your discipline? Tell me what your discipline is because I want to know what the penalties are.”

Windhorst also pointed out that even with these changes, it’s unclear if they truly encourage winning. “It doesn’t look to me like there’s enough incentivizing winning in there,” he stated. The core problem, as he sees it, is the tension between telling teams not to lose and still needing to include struggling teams in the lottery.

The Tanking Dilemma

The discussion highlighted the difficulty of making tanking a bad strategy. The Dallas Mavericks were fined a few seasons ago for tanking to avoid the Play-In Tournament and keep a top-10 protected pick. The question was raised: would they do it again if it meant getting a player like Dereck Lively II and reaching the NBA Finals the next year? The league is clearly struggling to find a way to stop teams from making losing a smart business move.

Adam Silver wants a solution by May, but it’s a tough challenge. The NBA is trying to balance rewarding good teams while still offering a chance to improve through the draft for those that aren’t as successful. Whether these new proposals can truly fix a 40-year-old problem remains to be seen.

Source: NBA presents 3 anti-tanking proposals to board of governors 👀 | NBA Today (YouTube)