NBA commissioner Adam Silver informed general managers Thursday that the league plans to make rule changes to curb tanking ahead of the 2026-27 season, league sources confirmed to The Athletic.<\/p>\n
Silver conveyed the league\u2019s intentions in a previously planned meeting with the NBA\u2019s 30 lead executives.<\/p>\n
League sources said some of the proposals being discussed include lottery odds being allocated based on two-year records, flattened and\/or frozen by the trade deadline or another in-season date. There is also discussion of extending the lottery to include the eight Play-In Tournament teams.<\/p>\n
Several other changes are also being considered. Among them:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Limitations on first-round pick protections;
\u2022 Teams not being allowed to pick in the top four a year after making the conference finals;
\u2022 Teams being prohibited from selecting in the top four in consecutive years;
\u2022 Teams being prohibited from selecting in the top four after consecutive bottom-three finishes.<\/p>\n
ESPN was first to report news of the league\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the first time the league has taken measures to disincentivize tanking, with the most recent change coming when the lottery odds were flattened in 2019, with teams with the league\u2019s three-worst records having a 14 percent chance to win the No. 1 pick. But the conversation about possible solutions was rekindled, in earnest, heading into the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
As The Athletic\u2019s Joe Vardon reported Saturday, one of the 10 potential solutions that was discussed in meetings among league officials last week was \u201cthe outright abolition of the rookie draft.\u201d The willingness to discuss such extreme measures was as clear a sign as any that the NBA was taking this problem very seriously \u2014 again.<\/p>\n
According to one source with knowledge of the meeting, Duke legend and current NBA adviser Mike Krzyzewski praised the general managers on the call for \u201cacknowledging the issue and attacking it.\u201d Krzyzewski, who was named a league adviser in May 2023, is typically involved in the NBA\u2019s general manager meetings and competition committee meetings.<\/p>\n
There was, according to the source, a consensus on the call that this issue threatens the integrity and long-term viability of the league. And when Silver emphasized the importance of finding a solution, there was an acknowledgement that a change to the current system is needed.<\/p>\n
As one general manager on the call put it in regards to tanking, \u201cWe\u2019re all to blame.\u201d Another GM said the tanking discussion took up the majority of the meeting \u2014 more than an hour \u2014 with other planned topics pushed to accommodate.<\/p>\n
Silver said Saturday<\/a> at NBA All-Star Weekend in Inglewood, Calif., that \u201cevery possible remedy to stop\u201d tanking is under consideration by the league. Last week, the Utah Jazz were fined $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for perceived tanking<\/a> and violating the league\u2019s player participation policy with what league officials called \u201cconduct detrimental to the league.\u201d But Silver noted that such fines regularly would \u201clead to very unhealthy relationships between us and our teams.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the NBA Draft Lottery, in which the non-playoff teams have an opportunity to win the No. 1 pick in a particular year\u2019s draft, Silver said, \u201cit\u2019s time to take a fresh look at this and to see whether that\u2019s an antiquated way of going about doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 The Athletic\u2019s Joe Vardon contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA commissioner Adam Silver informed general managers Thursday that the league plans to make rule changes to curb…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5997,5670,7221,590,7210,85,11898,7211],"class_list":["post-491496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-indiana-pacers","tag-nba","tag-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-sports","tag-utah-jazz","tag-washington-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}