The NBA’s War on Tanking.

Written By: Landon Pulmano

Contributor | Sideline Society Media

The NBA has had enough.

After years of watching franchises deliberately crater their seasons in pursuit of transformative draft picks. Commissioner Adam Silver and league executives are preparing their most aggressive anti tanking measure yet. A sweeping overhaul of the draft lottery system designed to reshape how teams approach losing.

For months, Silver has led a quiet but deliberate push to address tanking, holding repeated meetings with team executives in response to what many viewed as a compromised 2025–26 season. On a recent call, his message was direct: “You should assume for next season your only incentive will be to win games.” Now, the league is backing that statement with action.

At the center of the proposal is the “3-2-1 lottery”. A system that expands the lottery pool from 14 to 16 teams, flattens odds for the top pick, and determines all 16 selections via lottery. But the real headline is what the league calls “draft relegation.”

Under this model, the three worst teams in the league would actually be penalized, receiving lower odds (5.4%) than other non-playoff teams (8.1%). In other words, the worse you are, the less you’re rewarded for it. Additional restrictions would prevent teams from winning the No. 1 pick in consecutive years or holding top five selections across three straight drafts. Even pick protections in trades would be tightened, while the commissioner’s office gains expanded authority to step in if teams are perceived to be manipulating outcomes.

Supporters argue the change is long overdue. Tanking has evolved from a quiet rebuild strategy into an openly accepted organizational philosophy one that stretches across seasons and sells fans on long term “processes” instead of present day competition.

But the risk? It might not eliminate tanking it might just reshape it.

Critics point out that teams hovering around the play-in particularly the ninth and tenth seeds could now be incentivized to lose just enough to improve their lottery odds. We've seen this before, when the league flattened odds in 2018, it didn't curb losing it expanded the number of teams willing to do it.

The San Antonio Spurs are the last team to run the tank correctly, landing Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, Carter Bryant, and Dylan Harper with four consecutive top-five picks building what looks like a dynasty from the ground up.

There's also a deeper structural issue the proposal doesn't address: the draft remains the NBA's most reliable path to contention.