The NBA on Thursday announced its new anti-tanking rules, which will expand the lottery from 14 to 16 teams, further flatten odds and penalize teams with the three worst records.
The new rules will be implemented for the 2027 draft and run through 2029. The league’s board of governors will determine in 2030 whether to keep the new rules or reform again.
Teams that fail to make the playoffs or play-in tournament will each receive three lottery balls for next year’s drawing, except for the three teams with the worst records. They will instead get two lottery balls, as will the four play-in teams that fail to make the playoffs.
The eighth seed from each conference will also receive one lottery ball apiece.
Furthermore, no team’s pick can land No. 1 overall in successive drafts or top-five in three consecutive drafts, regardless of which team owns that pick. The San Antonio Spurs, for example, could not have picked Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper in three straight drafts, as they did, respectively, at Nos. 1, 4 and 2 in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The winners and losers of these new rules, then …
Winner: The viewing public
This may not totally end tanking, but it should put a serious dent in it.
Franchises will not want to finish in what the NBA is calling “the relegation zone” (or with one of the three worst records in the league), and it should be fun watching those mostly young teams — and the Sacramento Kings, probably — trying to scrap their way out of it.
Might an organization tank its way out of a play-in tournament and into three lottery balls (instead of two)? Sure. But at least that won’t be happening with two months to go in the regular season. And you’d have to talk your players out of vying for their playoff bonuses.
What would really be a shame is if we see tanking in the play-in tournament. But, again, you’d have to talk a coach and his players (a team like this year’s Philadelphia 76ers) out of competing for a seventh seed — and risking missing the entire playoffs entirely — just for a single lottery ball (and a 2.7% chance at the No. 1 pick). Seems far-fetched. But possible.
Loser: The ping-pong ball industry
The viewing public also wins because the actual lottery drawing could now be televised. Instead of the (complicated) existing system, which from a closed-door room draws four numbered combinations from a thousand ping-pong balls, we’ll just have what I assume will be a lotto-style drawing from 37 team-branded ping-pong balls, streaming live to you.
Somewhere a ping-pong ball salesman’s quota just got harder to reach. The NBA, meanwhile, can donate all its spare numbered ping-pong balls to the nearest frat house.
Winner: Most draft picks
A ton of draft picks just became more valuable.
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The seven teams with three lottery balls (i.e., the teams with the fourth- through 10th-worst records): 8.1% chance at the No. 1 overall pick, 24% shot at a top-three pick, 39% chance at a top-five selection and 73% shot at the top 10. (Previously only six teams had better than 8% odds at the top pick in the lottery.)
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The seven teams with two lottery balls (the three teams with the worst records and the four play-in teams that fail to make the playoffs): 5.4% chance at the No. 1 overall pick, 16% shot at a top-three pick, 28% chance at a top-five selection and 59% chance at a top-five selection. (While previously only seven teams had a 28% chance at a top-five pick, now twice as many teams get that opportunity.)
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The two teams with one lottery ball (the eighth seeds from each conference): 2.7% chance at the No. 1 overall pick, 8% shot at a top-three pick, 15% chance at a top-five selection and 35% shot at the top 10. (While previously only 10 teams had a 35% opportunity at the top 10, now all 16 teams in the lottery get that shot.)
Consider, say, the ninth spot in the draft lottery. This season, it was the Chicago Bulls, who had a 4.5% chance at the No. 1 overall pick and a 20.3% chance of landing in the top four (which they ultimately did, hitting on No. 4). Under the new flattened lottery odds, they would have had significantly higher chances of landing No. 1 (8.1%) or top 4 (32%).
One year, if we continue this lotto-style reform, a contender will land the No. 1 overall pick, and maybe then they consider further restrictions, but this is a step in the right direction.
Loser: Memphis Grizzlies
The Grizzlies own an unprotected pick in next year’s draft from the Utah Jazz, courtesy of this year’s Jaren Jackson Jr. trade. But because the Jazz selected Ace Bailey with the No. 5 pick in last year’s draft, and they own the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s draft, that 2027 pick can no longer fall in the top-five. Memphis surely wishes it knew this rule in February.
That is precisely why the Grizzlies were reportedly the lone dissenting vote among the NBA’s 30 teams at Thursday’s board of governors meeting, even as they support reform.
It does seem rather unfair that the best asset the Grizzlies got in return for Jackson just arbitrarily became less valuable because of this vote. Dozens of other unprotected picks, which have already been traded, are also potentially impacted by this same new system.
Could the NBA’s owners not have grandfathered in picks that had already been traded?
Winner: Prospects
In the past, there was a pretty good chance, if you were an elite prospect, you were going to join a team that was just trying to lose and may still have been trying to lose again with you on the roster. Now, those incentives have been largely wiped away, and there is a far greater chance that you land on a team that isn’t as far away from contention, if not in it.
Loser: The Process
No longer can teams intentionally lose as many games as possible, as was the case for former executive Sam Hinkie’s Philadelphia 76ers, who gave themselves great odds of landing the Nos. 3, 3, 1 and 1 picks in the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 drafts, respectively.
Team-building, in general, just became harder. The second apron has made everything more restrictive, and not only is there a salary cap on free agency, but the new rules make it more difficult to plan on building through the draft itself and through trades, since the value of a team’s own draft picks just skyrocketed. Might we see less player movement?
Winner: San Antonio Spurs
Sure, great scouting got them Castle, but it really was the luck of the draw that landed them Wembanyama three years ago and Harper this past year, and no longer will anyone be able to build their team in such a manner. Just as it becomes more difficult to plan for team-building, the Spurs will field a 22-year-old Wembanyama, a 21-year-old Castle and a 20-year-old Harper against a league that can no longer follow its plan toward contention.
Loser: Fans of the three worst teams
Not only must they watch a futile team fall to the bottom of the standings, but there is no longer the reward for spectators at the end of the tunnel. Instead, their favorite team will lose a lottery ball, and now its draft selection could fall all the way down to as low as 12th.
Winner: Adam Silver
The commissioner is entering his NBA’s championship round juggling a lot of issues — the Aspiration and gambling scandals, tanking and flopping among them — and before we have even gotten to Game 1 of the Finals he has now addressed one of them in a major way.
Now, Silver gets to watch as the New York Knicks’ Jalen Brunson and Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander potentially exacerbate the flopping issue in a title tilt, but at least he will have one less thing to worry about if, indeed, he watches the league’s biggest media market contend with the very real possibility of a back-to-back champion.
As part of the new anti-tanking rules, Silver will also have the “added ability to reduce teams’ lottery odds, modify teams’ draft positions and impose significant fines,” the NBA announced. Normally, it is a dubious thing to give one person with incredible power more of it, but if you’re Silver, you’ll take the win and the added responsibility that comes with it.
Loser: The second round
As if the second round of the NBA draft, with all its trades and pick protections, isn’t complicated enough, under new rules the first 16 picks of the second round will be in inverse order of the first round. Likewise, the final 14 picks of the second round will also be in inverse order — of regular-season record. Understand all that? Me neither, really.
Winner: Randomness
Hey, if you like things to be more random, consider yourself a winner.