NBA Draft: One Anti-Tanking Concept Reportedly has ‘Most Momentum’

Weeks ago, three anti-tanking proposals were reportedly working their way through NBA circles, with the league determined to combat tanking across the league.

Losing teams and the NBA Draft have been a major subject this season, largely due to the depth of the class with talents like Cameron Boozer, AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson, causing a good portion of the league to position itself not for the postseason, but for the upcoming draft. Teams such as Washington, Indiana, Brooklyn, Utah and Sacramento are all trending toward 60-plus loss seasons, with others such as Dallas, Chicago, Milwaukee and more not far behind.

That’s caused the league to evaluate its draft lottery, which could see changes as early as the next few months.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out what the solution to this is,” ESPN’s Shams Charania said on NBA Today. “There was a GM call on Tuesday night where they’re all continuing the conversation on this. The prospect concept with the most momentum right now — we reported on three different proposals — the one with the most momentum is option one, that’s the one with the flattened odds.”

Reporting for NBA Today on a Board of Governors vote expected for May 28 to make anti-tanking rule changes: pic.twitter.com/Wlhp378i2T
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 8, 2026

Per his earlier reporting, Charania is referencing a change that would expand the lottery to 18 teams, rather than 14. The bottom 10 teams that miss the Play-In tournament and the eight that qualify would all take part in the lottery, with the bottom 10 having an equal 8% chance at moving up, and the remaining 20% of odds being split among the Play-In teams.

“Modifications are expected to this concept,” Charania continuing. “Is there a way to tier these teams, like top-eight, then nine and 10 separately, and 11 to 18? They’re going to continue to discuss ideas and figure out some kind of a holistic approach. There’s going to be unintended consequences to all of this, there is not a perfect solution.

“The one thing the league is trying to do, and their GM’s and everyone is trying for here, is de-incentivizing jockeying for the bottom.”

Should the league hope to curb the worst of the worst, this rule would certainly do that, theoretically making it to where the worst team would have the very same odds as the 10th-worst team. The much more serious problem here is this could lead to years and years of teams failing to get good draft picks, becoming truly bad instead of the fabricated version.

The aforementioned tiered system would likely work best, splitting up the top-five, then five through 10 and so on. Though that wouldn’t help the league’s problem of teams jockeying for the very bottom.

Charania also reported that there will be a Board of Governors vote on May 28, where anti-tanking draft lottery reform will be the subject.