NBA Anti-Tanking Rule Changes Are Coming Next Season. Here Are the Seven Proposals.

The NBA is taking its tanking problem pretty seriously.

Just before the All-Star break, both the Jazz and Pacers were fined related to players sitting out of games the league believed they should have played. Then at the All-Star Game, commissioner Adam Silver was asked about the issue, and made it clear the league was looking into potential fixes.

“What we’re doing, what we’re seeing right now is not working,” said Silver of the current tanking landscape. “There’s no question about it.”

A few days later, we have our first sense of just what those changes might be. According to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania, Silver informed the league’s 30 general managers that anti-tanking rule changes would be put in place by next season.

Further, he listed seven of the potential changes that have been floated by the league:

1. First-round picks can be protected only top-four or top-14-plus
2. Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date
3. No longer allowing a team to pick top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-three finishes
4. Teams can’t pick top-four the year after making conference finals
5. Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records
6. Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
7. Flatten odds for all lottery teams

Based on Silver’s comments, it appears we could get one or several of these adjustments made to the league in the extremely near future.

Each potential fix will come with its own unique ripple effects. Freezing the lottery odds at a certain date would mean losses later in the season won’t amount to anything, so teams would have no reason to hold back. It could also see some teams simply start their tanking effort earlier in the season. Extending the lottery to include play-in teams would ideally prevent teams on the cusp of the play-in tournament from deciding they’d be better off missing the postseason entirely.

Where the league will ultimately land remains a mystery, but it’s clear that Silver and the NBA are past the theoretical part of addressing the problem and looking toward real-world implementation. The NBA draft lottery has been the product of constant tinkering over the years, but we could be looking at some pretty significant changes soon.

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