If the odds freeze at any point in the season, won’t teams just try to tank as quickly as possible to meet that deadline?

Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals

• the Indiana pacers rule 

Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making the conference finals

How exactly is that stopping tanking? Punishing a team for being good the year prior is the OPPOSITE of what the NBA needs to fix.

All of these ideas have a much larger negative than positive imo.

Mavericks wouldn’t have been able to get Cooper Flagg with the ‘Teams can’t pick top 4 the year after making conference finals’ rule and the Pacers wouldn’t have been able to pick top 4 this year

If the lottery odds actually get 100% flattened, then it does kinda make being a middling team/play-in team tenable for roster building.

I’ve also seen Mark Stein propose that teams who win less than 27 games (33% of a 82 game season) should be automatically ineligible for the top pick.

I don’t think it’s an unfair demand to ask teams to win ¹⁄₃ of their games to have a crack at a top pick.

The true trick is attempting to “distinguish” a true tanking team without creating a perpetual underclass of teams that literally cannot ever compete themselves out of a true slump. Plenty of proposals can help with the issue of a middling team temporarily tanking to appear like a bottom team, but there IS a big difference between them and a true bottom-tier team.

What the fuck did the Jazz just cause

Most of these are pretty awful ideas tbh

I’m genuinely shocked they are not saving this for the next CBA discussions. Gives them the time to make a program of some sorts where they can reach out to Ivy League schools about proposals to help fix tanking. Offer a cash price or something like you can go to any game for a season and you will have basketball obsessed college students giving so many better ideas

My idea on protections actually getting used lol 😂 either make them top 4 or lottery protected none of this top 8 then top 10 the next year shit it is ridiculous

“•Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals” this sounds like it’s anti anti tanking

Not being able to pick in the top 4 consecutively seems dumb to me but whatever

This will surely all go over smoothly and without any complications

Flattening odds is just gonna make more teams tank it’s already happened.

What a joke about consecutive top 4 picks. How about actually giving the worst teams top picks instead of the play-in teams.

Some of these just don’t prevent anything, like if we stop the lottery at the deadline doesn’t that just mean early season shenanigans? Am i missing something?

Best ideas: Limiting pick protection, Limiting consecutive lotto wins, Two-year records for odds

Worst ideas: Freezing odds at trade deadline, Can’t win after making conference finals, Can’t win after consecutive bottom-3 finishes

The conference finals one is so weirdly targeted at the Pacers who are having a genuinely brutal injury season. The only other time I can think of it coming into play in the last decade was the Cavs after LeBron left both times, which would be a such brutal and punishing outcome for a team. 

A group of teams will always be below the contenders. Tanking should be embraced and is not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be.

Doing lottery odds based on the last 2 years is interesting, but it seems like a rule targeted exclusively at the Pacers. Same with the Conference Finals rule

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Equal odds for all teams.

Can’t pick in top 4 two years in a row. Top 8, 3 years in a row.

No pick protections and can’t trade a first round pick.

3 round draft.

If this was implemented today the Pacers are gonna be penalized for having terrible injury luck where literally multiple players have missed a significant portion of the season.

The consecutive tanking prevention, and preventing larger market teams from having good picks is in the MLB

Are there any restrictions on which teams can participate in the lottery?

Yes. MLB’s system will have the most restrictions of the major sports and go further in reducing or preventing repeat winners.

Large-market teams (defined as teams that do not receive revenue sharing) are prohibited from receiving a selection in the lottery in consecutive years.

Small-market teams (revenue sharing recipients) are prohibited from receiving a selection in the lottery in three consecutive years.

Clubs that are ineligible to receive a lottery selection in future years due to these restrictions will be permitted to select no earlier than 10th overall.

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-draft-lottery-unlike-any-other

The jays and dodgers pick low in the first round due to them being in the tax.

The rockies, nationals and angels cant pick better than 10th because they were in the lottery consecutive years. Angels picked 8th and 2nd in the previous two drafts.

https://www.mlb.com/draft/2026/order

“•Lottery extended to include all play-in teams”

Why are play-in teams even in the lottery at all? The big problem with this is teams giving up midway during the play-in games in order to enter the lottery. IMO, either commit to trying to make a play-off run OR build through a high draft pick. But not both.

The biggest abuser of this rule was the Dallas Mavericks last year, and it ultimately netted them Cooper Flagg, which we can mostly agree was dumb luck and shouldn’t have been possible. But here’s the catch. They tactically quit early in the 4th once they realized it was better to be in the lottery than fight the uphill battle of getting into the play-offs (and facing OKC in the first round, at that).

Here are the facts: They played the Grizzlies in their 2nd play-in game for the 8th seed in the play-offs. After 3 quarters of trailing, they wave the white flag early in the 4th quarter by benching their starters. This pushed them out of the play-offs and into the lottery. Their decision to tactically give up pushed their lottery odds of a top-4 pick from 0% -> 8.5%.

This ruins the point of the play-in game. This kills the competitiveness and gives teams more incentive to lose

I really like:

Protections only 4+ or 14+, No top 4 in consecutive years or after conference finals. I think these should be so uncontroversial that they should be immediately introduced for ‘27 draft and any future trades.

I also like the balancing lottery odds over a 2 year period. Teams will be bad, and they will cycle, but hopefully it leads to less of that “oh, we’re only 20-40 in march, lets try and go 0-22 the rest of the way”

I really don’t like:

No top 4 picks after consecutive bottom 3 finishes. If you are just a bad team this is going to keep happening, and you won’t ever get a pick good enough to help you get better.

Freezing lotter odds earlier in the season - it will change the time of tanking, and I think young teams in particularly will start trying to tank out of the blocks.

Both flattening all the lottery odds, and including seeds 7 and 8, would achieve the absolute opposite effect - where now teams that could be competing for 8 v 9, or 6 v 7, are going to tank the end of the season to try and get themselves into the lottery. They are not winning the title, and (in most years) they are probably losing a first round series - so I think the winfall of getting a pick in the lottery for one seed lower, or same odds as the bottom team for dropping out of the playoffs, would cause teams to tank entirely.

Lottery should be totally flattened and extended to teams that lose in the first round. Every spot in the lottery should be drawn instead of just the top 5. It makes no sense that there’s more incentive to suck than be a first round exit.

The only ones I see really helping are protections and limits on picking high consecutive years.

The rest are either infrequent (top 4 after conference finals), will hasten the tanking (freezing odds), or make teams tank for even longer (2 year average, extend lotto, flatten odds).

Where is the obvious solution of splitting TV revenue directly proportional to the amount of wins?

With the current deal it comes out to ~$6 mil per win and would work wonders to prevent both tanking and load management

What were they smoking with stopping the lottery at the deadline lol?

A bunch of teans are second half teams that make pushes after the deadline and somehow they’ll get rewarded with a good pick lol.

Only good idea here is the 2 year record rule…

•First-round picks can be protected only top-4 or top-14+ This will help for a few games at the end of the year. Realistically, this shouldn’t prevent more than 5 games a year. Not really effective.

•Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date OK, so the last 2 months of the season have teams trying, but December/January are going to be full of tanking teams. Then a tanked game is 1/50th of a season, and not 1/82nd. That could get really ugly.

•No longer allowing a team to pick top 4 in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-3 finishes Cool, you got a top 3 draft pick, but you drafted a bust that barely touches the rotation? Now you have to wait an extra year where you have no hope until you get a change to draft your next star.

•Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals Kind of indifferent. I don’t like the look, but it might help some.

•Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records All this does is move tanking from (hopefully) a one or two year process into a three or four year one. You tank longer, then try winning instantly with your new rookie superstar. Your record lags behind, so you may even make the playoffs and get a top 4 pick.

•Lottery extended to include all play-in teams

In that case, you just made the 7th/8th seed a great spot for all teams. You give up home court advantage, but you there are no byes. You still play 4 rounds, just like the top seeds. And you get a shot at a lottery pick? No downside there, so it may cause tanking to get from 6th to 7th.

•Flatten odds for all lottery teams

Yes, it stops tanking, but now the teams that are truly bad get stuck. Never get good draft picks, can’t get free agents. Stuck in the 30 win purgatory.

I don’t like any of these “solutions”. The issue is, you want good players to go to the bad teams to make more parity. The problem is, then there is a clear incentive to look as bad as possible. A 20 win team has better odds than a 25 win team, but the 25 win team isn’t “closer” to a championship, they are also a bad team that will need a full rebuild to contend. Unless the incentives are changed, there will always be tanking.

All for curbing tanking , and combining a few things at once to do so, but as a thought exercise im gonna point out negatives for these ideas (if any):

>First-round picks can be protected only top-4 or >>top-14+

I like this one a lot, but you’ll see less trades involving future picks because of it. Not necessarily a bad thing but very well could happen.

>Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a >>later date

Horrible. Will just have teams tank harder, earlier. Also, doesn’t incentivize teams to play hard after this cut off. The angle of tanking people don’t consider much, is teams bubble wrapping players to be moved healthy in the offseason. Or, since the season is already lost attempting to keep them healthy going into the next season

> No longer allowing a team to pick top 4 in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-3 finishes

Sorta on the rightish track imo. The problem, is there are plain dogshit teams that will get punished even if not purposely tanking. Especially if there is an expansion draft coming soon, the talent in the league will be spread more thin.

> Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals

This one is odd, and is dumb in my opinion. What if a team went on a crazy run and probably shouldnt have been there? What if a core guy leaves via trade/fa or retires? What if they suffer multiple horrible injuries? Doesnt make sense to me. We don’t often see the purposeful tank after a highly successful season like this is trying to prevent.

> Teams can’t pick top-4 the year after making conference finals

Sorta has the same issues as the last one, and seems to want to prevent teams who suffer a terrible injury to pick higher. Feels like it’s considered to prevent a Mavericks situation from happening again, which was absolutely a bad look for the league. Don’t hate it, don’t love it.

> Lottery extended to include all play-in teams

Keeps teams wanting to play late in the season, but at the same time does this include winners? Why wouldn’t you as an FO want to tank to playin if you’re barely in the final seed before playin so the pick could still convey to a very high one? Play-in Losers are enough.

> Flatten odds for all lottery teams

Again, this punishes teams that are just bad just as much as purposeful tankers. Though I understand why it’s thought as effective. Just miss the playoffs and you have the same chance? Might as well play hard.

Overall, I don’t think there’s much you can do without bad unintended side effects. The NBA is too rash with decision making sometimes, the new CBA being another one that brought about quicker tanking cycles.

The best one I’ve seen is the Golden Tanking system. After a certain point in the season, every win increases your chances at the first pick if you don’t make the playoffs.

No longer allowing a team to pick top 4 in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-3 finishes

Make that bottom 6 and we have a deal. You can’t do bottom 3 because then they will simply try to get a bottom 4 or 5 and then have better odds to get a top pick.

It should be after 2 consecutive years, you can’t pick in the top 2 picks and then after 3 years it should be top 3 and then 4 top 4.

First-round picks can be protected only top-4 or top-14+

This.

You can only have a top pick twice in a decade.

You only need these three. If you tank more than 2 years, it starts to hurt, NOT four years.

I liked the carryover lottery odds the best among all the ideas I heard

Does the wording of this make it so that the Thunder can’t pick top 4 with any of their unprotected picks they traded for?

I’m all for making the attempt. Teams trying to lose on purpose is just bad basketball. I don’t care what anyone says about needing to be bad to get better. Not every team is going to the NBA Finals.

Implement three changes: 1- No more pick protections  2- Calculate odds based on past 2 seasons  3- Restrict the # of times a team may pick in the top 4 within a certain period of time. Like- anyone who picks in the top 4 cant pick in the top 4 the following year, or something like that. 

The above would be easy to implement and greatly reduce tanking imo

Include the play in teams and do the two year thing maybe?

Still doesn’t solve a team losing their star deciding to punt a season for slightly better odds or smth for example, but ideally it at least makes the middling teams more comfortable trying to compete, which is probably the worst part of tanking imo

Maybe also add some restriction on picking top 1-3 like multiple times in a span too if you’re really gonna go for it?

Idk

Banning teams from picking top 4 for X years for Y reason is stupid

How about everyone but the conference finalists get to be in the lottery (and adjust odds accordingly). We just saw even a 1-2% chance hits sometimes, maybe that’s enough

Lmfao no one cares until the Kings actually tank

Good. Tanking is so dumb I have no idea why American sports are so obsessed with losing on purpose