Normally, NBA tanking is just a topic of conversation in years when there is a game-changing player entering the draft. The 2026 class does not have a Shaquille O’Neal,
Tim Duncan, LeBron James, or even a Victor Wembanyama in it. Even without a
generational talent, tanking is at the forefront of NBA conversations a little over halfway
through the season.
For the first time that anyone can remember, teams have been fined for tanking, with
the idea that fines will curtail the behavior. There is a flaw in this strategy, because
“tanking” is different than losing. A team can lose any game against any opponent, so
they can’t be fined just for losing. In order for it to be tanking, there has to be an
intention to lose, and any lawyer worth a nickel will tell any client that intent is nearly
impossible to prove without a confession.
The motive for intentionally losing could only be one of two things. Either the team is
trying to secure a high draft pick, or they are in a movie/tv show about an owner who
gets some sort of reward from owning a bad team. Since the NBA doesn’t exist within
the cinematic world of Major League or Ted Lasso, any team trying to lose games is
doing it for the first reason. The only way to curtail the behavior is to remove the reward
for being bad.
NBA Draft Lottery Reform
The biggest change that needs to happen with the NBA lottery, is that the entire lottery
needs to be televised. It shouldn’t be the assistant commissioner opening envelopes
(yawn), it should be the entire world witnessing the actual drawing of the ping pong
balls. For dramatic purposes, the balls would need to be ordered in line with where
the team finished the season.
In other words, the team that finished 15th, just missing the playoffs, would get 14 balls
in the machine. The team with the worst record would get one ball. This way, the lottery
isn’t determining the top three picks in the draft; it’s determining the order of every team
in the lottery, starting with the 14th pick. This would mean that the team with the best
record in the lottery would have a 13% chance of getting the 14th pick, and the team with
the worst record would have a 0.9% chance.
Once the 14th pick is selected, the machine is emptied and filled again without balls
representing the team that was just selected. The machine would be started, and the
same process would be used for the 13th pick, and so on. Every ball that is used in the
lottery could be auctioned off to fans, and the money could go to charity, or whatever
else the league would choose to do with that money.
This process would ensure that with every pick that is determined, the teams with the
worst record remaining would become more likely to pick later in the lottery. In the
example where the team with 14 balls is picked first, the odds for the worst team to get
the 13th pick would go from 0.9% (1 ball out of 105) to 1.1% (1 out of 91). Imagine the
drama of the team with the NBA’s worst record, sweating out whether they would get the
14th pick on live television.
The drama gets even better if the team with the best record somehow survives until
there are only 2 picks left. One ball left to be drawn, and they would have 6.7% chance
at the top pick, and a 92.3% chance at the number two pick. This is must-see television.
Nobody wants to watch someone open envelopes and just trust that everything done in
the secret back room was on the level.
NBA Tanking Goes Away
With the prospect of getting a pick outside the top 10 (currently a statistical impossibility
with the lottery), teams would have no incentive to have the worst record. It would still
make sense to miss the playoffs to be part of the lottery, but taking away the advantage
of finishing the season with 10 wins could be enough to scare teams into trying to win.
It’s a sad state of affairs when teams in a professional sport think it’s better for their
franchise and their fans to lose, but right now, the thought of winning is scarier than
missing the playoffs. Take away the advantage by making every pick in the lottery
decided, and let the fans watch it unfold live. There really is no downside.
