NBA presented three anti-tanking proposals to Board of Governors

During this week’s Board of Governors meetings, the NBA presented team owners with three proposals aimed at discouraging tanking, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania.

According to Charania, the expectation is that those concepts may undergo some tweaks and then will be the subject of a vote in May in order to determine what changes the league makes ahead of the 2026-27 season.

The three proposed ideas are as follows:

Proposal No. 1:

• The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
• The draft odds would be flattened for the bottom 10 teams, giving them each an 8% chance at the No. 1 overall pick.
• The remaining 20% odds for the top pick would be spread out in descending order among the remaining eight teams; within that group, the worst team (ie. the 11th-worst overall) would have the most favorable odds.
• All 18 picks would be drawn via lottery.

Proposal No. 2:

• The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 22, incorporating non-playoff teams and the teams eliminated from the playoffs in the first round.
• Teams’ lottery odds would be determined based on their records over the previous two seasons. For instance, a team that won 45 games one year and 25 the next would be slotted in the lottery as a 35-win team.
• A minimum win floor would be implemented. If the floor were to be set at 20 wins, for example, a team that went 15-67 in a season would be considered to have gone 20-62 for lottery purposes.
• The top four spots would be drawn via lottery, like the current system.

Proposal No. 3:

• The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
• The bottom five teams would each have the same odds for the No. 1 pick, with each team’s odds descending from there (starting with the sixth-worst team).
• The top five spots would be drawn via lottery.
• After the top five picks are determined, there would be a separate lottery for the remaining 13 teams.
• A bottom-five team would be prohibited from falling past 10th in the draft order.

Some aspects of the proposals, as outlined by Charania, may require some clarification. For instance, he describes the 22 teams involved in proposal No. 2 as “the bottom 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament, the eight that qualify for it and the four playoff teams that lose in the first round.” But that doesn’t account for the fact that one or more play-in teams could advance beyond the first round, eliminating a top-two seed.

According to Charania, team owners and front offices are expected to discuss the ideas in greater depth over the next few weeks in order to better understand what exactly these changes might look like and what unintended consequences might arise. The NBA is prepared to maintain an open dialogue with executives around the league in order to potentially modify each proposal before a vote in May.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly vowed to address the issue of tanking, which has been especially noticeable this season ahead of a loaded 2026 draft. Silver said three weeks ago that “substantial changes” would be coming in an effort to deter tanking. At a news conference this Wednesday, he stated, “We are going to fix it … full stop.”