The NBA introduced three potential expansions to the 2027 draft lottery in an attempt to end tanking and is also considering harsher penalties for teams that continue to manipulate their lineups purposefully, player availability and in-game rotations to lose, two league sources told The Athletic.
The possible changes to the lottery, which were introduced this week at the league’s Board of Governors meeting and will be voted on — with likely amendments — in May, widen the lottery from 14 to either 18 or 22 teams, those sources said.
Additionally, if a team, under new rules, was still found by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s office to be tanking, the commissioner would either be able to take away that team’s draft pick, move it to the end of the lottery or first round and also increase fines into the millions of dollars.
“Without stricter penalties, you could still have crazy behavior,” said one league source, granted anonymity so they could freely discuss concepts under consideration. “You have to have something in place that is so drastic, a team would actually think twice about tanking. And if a team tries it and gets caught, then the other teams need to see the penalties and realize it isn’t worth it to try.”
ESPN first reported the lottery expansion proposals. Two of them would see the lottery expand from 14 to 18 teams and include the four teams that reach the Play-In Tournament.
In one of the 18-team proposals, the worst 10 teams would have an equal chance of getting the No. 1 pick (8 percent), with the remaining odds distributed evenly on the teams that finish with the 11th- to 18th-worst records. In the other, there would be a lottery for the first five picks, with the five worst teams having the highest (and equal) odds of a top-five pick. There would be a second lottery for the next 13 picks, and if one of the five-worst teams didn’t get a top-five pick, then the lowest they could fall in the draft would be 10th, according to ESPN.
In a third proposal, the lottery would extend past the Play-In to include teams that lose in the first round of the playoffs, and teams would be ranked for lottery odds based on their records over the previous two seasons. There would be a mandatory minimum for wins in each season as part of that proposal, ESPN reported. For example, if the minimum were set at 20 wins, and a team only wins 18 games in a season, that campaign would count as a 20-win season over the two-year aggregate.
“Exactly what that change is, we’re continuing to work on,” Silver said at his news conference on Wednesday. “I think there’s also unanimous agreement that we need to make this change in advance of the draft and free agency this year, so all the teams understand the rules of the road going into next year.”
Silver said tanking “has business implications. It has basketball implications. It has integrity implications for the league. So it’s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop. And I want to say that directly to our fans.”
— The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov contributed.