Erasing Lottery Could be Easiest Solution to NBA’s ‘Tanking’ Problem

The 2026 NBA Draft is set to be one of the best we’ve seen in decades, offering three No. 1-level prospects, a talented lottery range made up of five-stars, and a deep first round. The league has responded accordingly, with more teams than usual positioning themselves for the draft, opposed to the NBA’s postseason.

The Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers were recently fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for violating the league’s player participation policy — effectively sitting healthy players to increase their chances at losing, and thus their draft odds.

Given the number of teams positioning themselves, along with some out-in-the-open strategies, NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently addressed “tanking.”

“Yes, it’s been part of this league for a long time,” Silver said. “To further answer your question, are we seeing behavior that is worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory? Yes, is my view, which is what led to those fines.”

“The competition committee started earlier this year, examining the whole approach to how the draft lottery works — there have been different ideas out there over the years, not just necessarily changing the lottery odds once again, but looking at whether there’s a better system here.”

The NBA’s draft lottery has undergone several changes in its history, most recently being flattened odds-wise, which has allowed teams like New Orleans, Atlanta and Dallas to jump to No. 1 despite lesser odds. In some ways, the recent changes have made tanking worse, allowing teams in the eight to 14 range to leave with talent that should likely be going to the actual worst teams in the league.

With that being the case, the erasing of the odds entirely could be a viable option to limit tanking, especially across multiple seasons, which should be the goal. Erasing tanking completely is impossible given the draft sends talent to the league, but limiting it to fewer teams across fewer seasons is preferable.

The NBA is the only major sport in the country with a draft lottery, with all of the NFL, NHL and MLB simply using reverse order. The worst team gets the first pick, and the best team gets the last pick. In this way, the truly worst teams theoretically get the most talent, and even in the case better one's join the race for picks, they won't be there long if done right.

As an example, this would allow the Kings, Wizards and Hawks — currently the three worst teams in the league, or owners of the pick in Atlanta's case — to grab the likes of Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and AJ Dybantsa.

That would leave these three teams with less incentive to join next year's tank race, able to move into the future with elite talent. Teams in the middling range, such as Memphis, Chicago and Milwaukee, would get fine picks, and then have a better chance at landing a talent in the future.

There's no perfect solution, but the nixing of the lottery entirely would at least make the current system better.