were gonna get a solution thats just gonna cause a million more problems and even more conspiracies about how the lottery is rigged

Feel so bad for Jazz and pacers fan (even if we do benefit from this). Some years the tank is more egregious depending on the players in the draft but it’s crazy two teams who have never drafted that high and rarely have tanked are the reason why there might be change.

I went back and looked at the year people were tanking for Wemby and Zion and it was just as bad except not as blatant where they pulled starters in the 4th but Starters rarely played 30+ mins, guys were who good mysteriously being out for injuries against other tanking teams, etc

i’m sure the “new way of doing things” won’t be an overreaction…

people are asking how do they expect small market teams to get good they would much rather the jazz be ass forever than have to deal with this drama its that simple

If Adam Silver truly ever wants to fix ‘tanking’ he should go to a different sport where one player isn’t worth 15 others. The fact of the matter is, if you don’t have a Cade, or a Wembanyama, or a Lebron, you just have no chance of winning a title in the NBA. So the benefits of losing out to get one of those guys far outweigh the negatives.

The one real problem I’d say is the punitive cap measures and the lack of stronger odds for being last-place in the NBA. If teams truly had to bottom out to win the lottery, and good players could be moved more easily, teams like the Jazz could just trade Markkanen to a better team, bottom out playing rookies, and the playoffs would be made more interesting for Markkanen’s inclusion on a title contender. Instead the current system incentivizes this kind of ‘strategic’ tanking, where good players are held out of games but not traded away, as coming in 3rd-worst is just as good as coming in last.

It’s time to fix it because the spurs,okc,pistons did but now and can’t have other teams building up like that

OKC and Spurs get to have multiple number 1 picks and top 3 picks in successive years and Utah gets as close as 5 once and 3 twice in 50 years. What the fuck. 

I’m not sure how they fix this. It’s not really a league rules thing, it’s the nature of the sport itself.

The NHL also has a 16 team playoff, but legitimately any team could win it all. The game is just different and talent differences can be eroded. So many famous upsets and crazy cinderella runs in hockey. So teams generally don’t want to tank. The culture is also very different in terms of injury management. Players don’t rest for small strains and are very rarely shut down for the entire season. I understand why it’s different (not as much impact on ligaments, very rare that ligaments are torn), but it’s a big one.

The NBA middle of the pack teams just don’t really have a shot to win the championship. There’s just no hiding from the talent differences in basketball. There’s no reason to be just okay, so teams on that trajectory just tank. If you aren’t at the top, you aren’t winning it all. Combine that with how acceptable it is for NBA players to sit out nowadays and you have a league where it’s really easy to tank.

You can’t just even out the lottery odds for everyone. Teams shouldn’t be punished for being bad. Small market teams will never be able to randomly sign a superstar they don’t draft.

I’d say keep the lottery system as it is but stop the ridiculous rest and benching trends. It sucks that the league might have to dictate when a player plays and when they don’t, but these guys are getting paid very very well after all.

Maybe partner with more sports betting apps, Adam. Maybe if you fucking cram more commercials and betting into your shitty product, people won’t mind the tanking

Weird convo to have, like everyone including all the media around the NBA constantly shit on those middling teams that sneak into play-in games or used to get the 8th seed and be absolutely shit canned by the 1st seed. If you’re a good player on a team like that and you stick to that team your fate is your name coming up 10 years down the line like “you remember so and so? yeah he was sick”, so why not do the smart thing, trade them for picks, play the lottery and trust in your scouts.

Like, if you aren’t a free agent destination it doesn’t matter if your team is super well built and you need a star to put you over the top AND you got the money for it because those guys wont go there unless they’re traded, drafted or specifically trying to team up with someone they see as a peer. If you most likely don’t land one of those guys welcome to the play ins buddy enjoy your stay unless you blow it up you’re stuck here for like 10 years.

The jazz lose their pick if they do tank and if they don’t tank? Cool system, Adam 

The Clippers have paid Kawhi Leonard more than 10m dollars under the table.
The majority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies primary business has been discovered committing war crimes.
Giannis is becoming a major promoter and part owner of a company that takes bets on the outcomes of whether or not he will be traded.

Meanwhile, you yourself the commissioner of the league helped create a system in which you incentivize teams to not try to win every game, and now you want to punish them for it.

At some point you are bad at your job.
Fire Adam Silver.

Edit: slight wording.

This is literally the flirting vs sexual harassment meme. OKC and San Antonio blatantly tanking is all good for Silver, but god forbid the Jazz get a top pick

Such a cunt. When big market teams tank it’s fine. When small market teams tank ban them from the league

You guys are so stupid. Why are you guys defending tanking?

If ¹⁄₃ of your league is trying to lose with 3 months to go in a league where 16 teams make the playoffs then there is a massive issue

I don’t care if they give the first overall pick to the champion every year that would still be better than having a third of the fucking league tanking in February

It’s always been a small problem but the last decade has been especially egregious

The worst league commissioner of any sport ever.

Am I the only one that thinks that the tanking isn’t that bad? 

It’s just egregious this season because of the number of teams that have stars out injured and the 26 draft being stacked. 

The Wizards and Jazz are clearly going to be competitive next season. The Nets don’t have their pick and probably make some moves for some good players in the off season. Realistically it’s probably only the Pels, Bucks, Grizz and the Kings that tank next season, which is whatever.

How are you gonna determine what’s tanking and just losing

Fuck this. Silver just ends up making arbitrary decisions where 1 or 2 disfavored teams will get punished while other offenders get excuses made for them.

Tanking is inevitable as long as the draft exists in a format that gives valuable picks based on winning percentage. Either make it completely random or stfu.

Never will happen, but to curb it just tie a significant portion of the national TV revenue to wins.

Let the bad teams get the better odds for draft picks, but make it financially difficult to impossible to tank for years at a time.

the really cool thing is that the Thunder and Spurs, the most promising young franchises in the league, egregiously tanked to get where they are now. they were the last choppers out of Saigon.

Should just set a limit where any NBA team can only be in the top 3-5 in the lottery twice in x years before they are out and another team replaces them in the top 3-5 picks the following years.

He probably just wants to give the #1 to the Lakers every year

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What’s crazy is the lottery is clearly rigged to begin with. For Dallas to get the #1 pick after they traded Luka was insane. Same with the year the Pels traded AD, and many other instances.

You can make any change you want but everyone knows the NBA Draft “lottery” is not set up to help the worst teams get better. It’s set up for the NBA to prop up the teams THEY want to get better and keep the teams who don’t make money (jazz, hornets, etc) into the abyss.

If we can’t have world peace I’ll settle for Danny Ainge losing his pick

Fuck Silver

So long as bad teams pick higher in the draft there will always be the incentive, but it does give them chances to dig out of misery. Wolves would be in the same limbo without Ant right now so it feels hypocritical to advocate pulling the ladder up behind us.

I’d just ditch the lottery and make it straight worst record pick order and punish tanking by inflicting a pick position penalty. For cases like the Jazz sitting starters in the 4th when the game is close? Next pick gets punished 2 spots in draft order and the other teams move up.

Hardest question is what is ‘punishable’ tanking. Fake injuries to the best players? How does one prove that?

The problem is teams giving away protected picks in the future in order to shed contracts, then tanking to keep said picks. Wizards and Jazz for example.

Rockets arguably would’ve done it if they still sucked as we had their 2026 unprotected

Funnily enough the issue of tanking isn’t borne out in the result of the lottery, the shameless tankers rarely win it, and attempts to flatten the odds will only compound the issue that we see with Utah.

If we look at the winners of the last few lotteries: Dallas, Atlanta, San Antonio, Orlando and Detroit; none of them actually engaged in a shameless tank worth of handing out violations. The first two jumped really high in the lottery, the last three just had terrible rosters (look at how the wizards aren’t drawing any flak or fines for how their season is going).

The real issue is teams in multi-year rebuilds having to get desperate. Every time a mid team jumps up in the lottery, a terrible team goes through another year of tanking.

Not saying bad franchises should just be handed future stars, but Utah likely isn’t tanking this year if they got Flagg, Detroits ugly basketball likely wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did if they got someone to pair with Cade earlier.

Where I think the issue lies is allowing teams to hedge their bets by guaranteeing their pick won’t fall further than a certain spot if they bad enough. Because even if you’re not likely to win the lottery as the worst team in the league, not being able to fall below #5 is an amazing consolation prize.

My proposed fix (please poke holes in it if you can find them) is not to flatten the odds even further, or take away picks because the nuances of a tanking team can be difficult to judge. For example, as a Bulls fan, should the trades we made be scrutinised because we left ourselves with so many guards? Kneecapping our ability to win games on purpose? Or is our FO just mentally deficient? Hard to say for certain. What we should do is not just a lottery for the top 4 spots, but for all 14.

The worst team in the league could very easily fall to 7 or 8, while a team at 10 has a chance to move up to 5, even if they miss out on a top 4 pick. Without changing the odds for the #1 pick, you remove the necessity of being one of the worst teams in the league, because as your multi year rebuild team progresses, your chances of getting franchise changing talent are still decent. I don’t think it fixes everything, because I’d still rather fall from 1 to 7 than 3 to 11, but I’m less likely to tear my team apart knowing that potential fall in the lottery awaits me.

My NBA Draft Lottery Rework

I created a “Misery Score” to rank teams before assigning lottery balls. The idea is to reward both current failure and long-term suffering.

Misery Score Formula

Misery Score =

Previous Season Record Tier Bonus (Bottom 8 Only)

• Worst record: +300 points

• 2nd worst: +200 points

• 3rd worst: +100 points

• 4th worst: +50 points

• 5th worst: +25 points

• 6th–8th worst: +15 points

• Everyone else: +0 points

Loss Bonus

• +5 points for every 10 losses the last year

• +3 points for every year since last championship

• +2 points for every year since last playoff appearance

The Misery Score is just used to rank teams.

After ranking, I normalize the lottery balls into a 2000-ball pool for a Top-5 draw:

• #1 by Misery → 1000 balls (50%)

• #2 → 280 balls (14%)

• #3 → 136 balls (6.8%)

• Remaining 584 balls split proportionally among the other 27 teams, based on their Misery Index Score.

This structure makes it so:

• The worst team wins Pick #1 about 50% of the time

• The 2nd-most miserable team lands Top 3 about 50% of the time

• The 3rd-most miserable team lands Top 5 about 50% of the time

It still rewards tanking, but long-term irrelevance matters just as much.

Do what MLB does. Top 4 pick in consecutive years means you pick no better than 10th in the following season.