Tanking Isn’t Subtle Anymore

It’s not hard to see what’s happening. 

You turn on a random NBA game in February, and a starter disappears in the fourth quarter. A double-digit lead shrinks. The explanation is “rest” or “long-term planning.” Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. 

But enough teams are doing it that it stops feeling accidental. 

The league tried to fix this already. In 2019, the lottery odds were flattened so the three worst teams shared the same 14% chance at the No. 1 pick. The goal was obvious — stop rewarding teams for being awful. 

That didn’t exactly work. 

Instead of one team racing to the bottom, now you get a cluster hovering around it. Middle-of-the-pack lottery teams can jump into the top four. The Mavericks did it. Others have too. So the incentive didn’t disappear. It just widened. 

Add in a draft class that executives around the league think is loaded, and priorities shift fast. When front offices believe franchise players are sitting at the top, development minutes start to look a lot like positioning. 

You can fine teams. The NBA has. But that turns into a guessing game. Is a player hurt? Managing soreness? Being protected? There’s a reason this lives in gray areas. 

The real issue isn’t enforcement. It’s math. 

Right now, record and draft odds are tied together. As long as that’s true, losing will carry value.

So What Would Change It? 

There’s an idea that pops up every few years, a rotating draft system. Some people call it a lottery wheel. The name doesn’t matter. The concept does. 

Instead of tying odds to wins and losses, teams would rotate through preset lottery tiers over several seasons. Your odds would be determined ahead of time. Not by how many games you won. 

Every team would be in the lottery every year. No playoff cutoff. No incentive to drop out of the play-in just to improve positioning.

In one version of this system, the highest tier might carry around a 6–7% chance at the No. 1 pick. Lower tiers would still have smaller chances. The top picks would be drawn, and the rest would slot by tier. 

Over a five-year cycle, every franchise would receive the same total lottery equity. Just in different seasons. 

Is it perfect? No. 

A contender could land a premium pick. A bad team wouldn’t get stacked top odds year after year. A strong draft class could land in the wrong rotation year. 

But compare that to what we have. Right now, teams benefit from losing. 

There’s also a credibility angle. The NBA openly embraces sports betting and markets competitive drama every night. That becomes harder to square when multiple teams are clearly thinking about draft positioning before the All-Star break. 

A rotating system wouldn’t make every team try like it’s Game 7. Rebuilding would still exist. Trades would still happen. Player development would still matter. 

But losing wouldn’t improve your draft odds. 

And that’s the key difference. 

No draft system is going to satisfy every owner. The question isn’t whether a new format would be flawless. It’s whether it would remove the incentive to tank. 

Right now, the incentive is still there. 

And until that changes, so will the way some teams approach February in the NBA.