How the NBA’s new anti-tanking proposals would work — and which one seems the most promising

The element of tanking within the NBA has always been a thorn in the side of the league. Recently, the league distanced itself from the practice, by promising changes to the format.

Now, three proposals have seen the light of day.

Advertisement

Proposal 1: Lottery expansion to 18 teams

According to Shams Charania of ESPN, the first proposal would see 18 teams — the bottom 10 that miss the play-in tournament, as well as the eight qualifying play-in teams — all take part in the NBA draft lottery. Per ESPN:

“The bottom 10 teams will all have an 8% chance of moving up in the lottery, with the remaining 20% of the odds being split among the eight play-in teams in descending order from 11th through 18th.

“All 18 spots would be drawn as part of the lottery in that format.”

Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season

Quick take: This is essentially a lottery expansion, which leaves out only teams that have made it to the playoffs directly off a top-6 seeding.

The idea, in isolation, isn’t that terrible. The truly good-to-elite teams are still excluded, and the rules would be easy for fans to grasp, which may not be the case for the second and third proposals.

Proposal 2: The 22-team lottery

In the second proposal, according to ESPN, the 10 bottom teams that miss the play-in tournament, the eight that qualify for the play-in, as well as the four playoff teams that lose in the first round — a total of 22 teams — would all be included in the NBA draft lottery.

Advertisement

Those 22 teams would get ranked across two seasons (the previous season and the one just completed) by their combined record, instead of just the one season as is custom.

In this proposal, per ESPN, “each team would need to reach a minimum win total floor in each season, to mitigate the need to lose every game possible.”

For example: If the minimum floor for an individual season was 20 wins, a team that wins under that amount of games would still be 20-62 for lottery purposes. And should a team win 40 games and 20 games across the two seasons, it would average out to 30 wins for the lottery.

Per ESPN: “In this system, the top…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/how-the-nbas-new-anti-tanking-proposals-would-work–and-which-one-seems-the-most-promising-173055915.html

Author : Morten Stig Jensen

Publish date : 2026-03-27 17:30:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.