NBA reportedly entertaining a wild idea to fix tanking

While tanking has always existed in the NBA, teams had never been as blatant or obvious about it.

Some are now resting their starters in the fourth quarter, even when they're in the lead, and shutting down star players before the All-Star break. Considering that, Commissioner Adam Silver is exploring all potential avenues to prevent tanking from further harming the product.

According to Miami Herald columnist Barry Jackson, ESPN insider Shams Charania reported that the league is considering a tournament to determine draft order.

NBA is looking for ways to prevent tanking 

"Shams says having a tournament among lottery teams- to determine draft order - has been discussed," Jackson wrote on X. 

As Jackson pointed out, this would essentially kill the incentive to win the Play-In Tournament, another idea Silver implemented to keep the regular season competitive. Instead, teams would benefit from missing the playoffs and try to get the No. 1 pick in that tournament.

There's nothing set in stone, and Charania said on ESPN's "NBA Today" that the league is also considering other options. 

“The three ideas that came into fruition earlier in the year that the league office came up with were limiting pick protections as one solution, possibly not even allowing teams to draft in the top four in consecutive years and then maybe another idea being locking lottery positioning after March 1,” Charania said.

Tweaking the lottery odds only aggravated the problem, and it looks like there's no ideal solution. The system is clearly broken, and adding two teams with the rumored expansion will probably only make things worse.