NBA Considering New Rules to Curb Lingering Tanking Issue

The NBA is exploring new changes to curb tanking as previous efforts have failed to deter teams from deliberately losing games to improve their draft lottery odds.

The league presented possible rule changes during a board of governors meeting Friday as it looks for input from team owners and general managers, according to ESPN. 

The timing of the potential changes comes months after a gambling scandal led to the arrest of several current and former NBA players and coaches, including Heat guard Terry Rozier. Tanking played a factor in the alleged fraudulent betting incidents with inside information relayed about players sitting out games late in the season. 

On Friday, the NBA also announced rule changes to injury report timing and frequency aimed at lowering the risk of leaked information around player availability. 

Tanking has also factored into other league problems, including the growing issue of star players missing games that has affected the on-court product, especially in the final months of the season.

Here are the proposed solutions and their possible effects:

1. Teams are not allowed to draft in the top four for consecutive seasons 

In the NBA Draft Lottery, only the top four picks are selected based on odds. The rest fall in order of worst to best record. This new rule would mean that a team can’t luck into a top-four pick in consecutive years. This would discourage struggling teams from tanking to add a second top pick in consecutive seasons. 

The rule would have impacted several teams in recent years, most notably the Spurs, who have drafted three straight top-four picks in Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper. San Antonio is 22–7 this season, the third-best record in the league, after going 78–168 the last three years.

2. Locking lottery positions on March 1 

The NBA regular season runs until the second week of April, so this rule would lock lottery positions with about six weeks left in the season. Teams trying to improve their lottery odds—especially those trying to keep their draft picks—wouldn’t be able to do so late in the season. The Sixers did this last season when they lost 29 of their final 37 games to keep a top-six protected pick they owed the Thunder. The Sixers not only kept that pick, but jumped to the No. 3 pick in the draft, which they used to select rising star V.J. Edgecombe. 

If this rule change is implemented, however, it wouldn’t totally prevent teams from trying to tank early in the season, like this year’s Wizards and Nets.

3. Removing pick protections in the top four or 14 and higher 

This rule has a similar intention to the second rule, as pick protections give teams targets to aim for in the standings to protect their pick by season’s end. 

In 2019, the NBA changed the NBA Draft Lottery odds for the first time in decades in an effort to discourage tanking. The league flattened the lottery odds, giving the teams with the three worst records a 14% chance at the top pick compared to 25% for the worst team under the previous system. 

The new system somewhat worked in that it has given teams with lower odds a chance at jumping the lottery, most notably this past offseason when the Mavericks lucked into the No. 1 pick with just a 1.8% chance. 

But it hasn’t fulfilled its main purpose of stopping teams from tanking. The first month of the season saw historic levels of tanking, and the Wizards, Pacers, and Kings are all on pace to win fewer than 20 games.