Credit commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA for understanding that tanking is the biggest threat to the modern game and its business interests. The problem is that the powers that be continue to ignore the most obvious solution to their biggest problem.
Shams Charania of ESPN reports that the league presented several ideas to the Board of Governors on how to "combat tanking." The recent betting scandals involving Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones provided the impetus for the NBA to start to take action on teams intentionally losing games.
The league focused their discussions on how to disincentivize teams from tanking to improve their draft position. Limiting pick protections, locking the draft odds in on March 1st and stopping teams from drafting in the top four in two consecutive seasons were all discussed. Each idea would likely serve to stop teams from overtly sitting their best players in late season games to improve their draft odds.
Sources said multiple ideas were proposed Friday as a brainstorming measure, including:
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 23, 2025
•Limiting pick protections to either top four or 14 and higher
•No longer allowing a team to draft in the top four two years in a row
•Locking lottery positions after March 1 https://t.co/ieLaS4P4qe
The problem with these proposed solutions is that they all are negative outcomes for teams who might be looking to tank. The smarter path forward for the NBA would be to find a way to incentivize teams to go all out to maximize their win totals. League owners would likely push back on any plan that only permitted the best run teams to capture elite talent via the draft.
That is why the optimal path forward for the league would be to eliminate winning and losing from impacting draft position. The idea that teams with the most losses somehow deserve to receive the top picks in the draft is an antiquated notion. It's time for Silver and his leadership to go with a more modern, progressive system.
The NBA needs to institute a draft wheel
The idea of a draft wheel has been kicking around the NBA for years. The rationale behind it is beautifully simple. Each team would receive the No. 1 overall pick exactly one time every 30 years. The timing of that selection would be set in advance. As such, win/loss record would play no role in determining a team's draft position at any point in their future.
It would naturally follow that each franchise would receive each pick (1 through 30) during each cycle. Setting the initial order would be a thorny predicament for Silver and his administration to handle. One potential solution might be to hold an initial lottery with even odds to see which team starts out with the top pick.
Teams mired in rebuilds would push back against this sort of plan while contenders would likely embrace it wholeheartedly. It would be imperative for Silver to wield his influence to convince owners to go with what's best for the association's long-term health. That would cost the commissioner a great deal of political capital, but it could also go down as the defininig moment of his tenure atop the NBA.
Will the NBA really institute lottery reform?
Lottery reform is coming whether it's a draft wheel or one of the items floated in Friday's Board of Governors meeting. The league knows it cannot afford to sit idly by without reacting to the betting scandals that have dominated the recent news cycle.
Unfortunately, it seems that the association is dead set on punishing teams from tanking rather than removing their incentives to do so. The draft wheel continues to be the obvious answer for the league whether it likes it or not.