The NBA’s campaign against tanking may be moving toward a new and politically sharper phase. According to a report by Yahoo Sports’ Kevin O’Connor, one general manager floated an extreme idea during league discussions: make the bottom three teams entirely ineligible for the No. 1 pick.
The league considered that version too severe. But a toned-down alternative appears to have found real traction; a proposal that would still penalize the league’s three worst teams by giving them slightly worse lottery odds than clubs ranked fourth through 10th. Adam Silver reportedly responded enthusiastically to that softer version and that the league is considering it for an official reform proposal.
Right now, the worst records still carry the strongest lottery position, even after previous reforms flattened the odds. This new concept would go further by making the very bottom of the standings less rewarding than finishing just above it, which is exactly the behavioral pressure the league appears to be exploring.
The broader context has been building for weeks. The league had already presented three large anti-tanking concepts to team executives, including one that would expand the lottery to 18 teams, flatten the odds among the 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament, and draw all 18 draft positions instead of only the top four. Another proposal would expand the pool to 22 teams and use a two-year record, similar to the WNBA model. A third would create a dual-lottery system. In other words, the NBA is not casually brainstorming around the edges. It is actively workshopping major structural change.
What the newly reported wrinkle does is add a more aggressive anti-tanking twist to that process. Instead of merely flattening the odds, it would reverse the incentive at the bottom by making absolute failure less profitable than finishing slightly better. That would be a meaningful philosophical shift. The league would no longer just be trying to reduce the rewards of tanking; it would be trying to create a small punishment for doing it too blatantly. That is an inference from the reported proposal structure, but it is clearly supported by the direction of the discussions.
