Analysis: Good Start to Combat Tanking Shouldn't Be the Final Word

The NBA has its newest proposed solution to tanking, and unsurprisingly, it has been met with significant questions.

In what is being referred to as the “3-2-1” system,” the league presented a draft lottery reform proposal to all 30 teams Tuesday that could go into effect for 2027 if approved.

Teams that do not qualify for the playoffs or the play-in tournament but avoid finishing with one of the three worst records would get three lottery balls (or an 8.1% chance at winning the lottery). Teams that finish in the bottom three, as well as the ninth and 10th play-in seeds in each conference, would receive two lottery balls (a 5.4% chance at winning the lottery). The losers of the play-in games between the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference would receive just one lottery ball (or a 2.7% chance at winning the lottery).

The lottery would expand to 16 teams. Other new rules would include that no team could pick in the top five in three consecutive years and that the bottom three teams could not fall below 12th in the draft order.

I’ll run through the biggest impacts of these proposals, but first, I want to discuss a common question that I see from fans: Why don’t other leagues make such a big deal about teams losing at the end of the year or care about tanking when there is so much focus on it in the NBA?

The reality is that a single player can change the fortunes of an NBA franchise so much more drastically than in other sports. For MLB teams, a batter will get, at most, 750 plate appearances in a season, or a pitcher will throw, at most, 230 innings. In the NHL, the best players outside of the fickle goaltending position will play, at most, 25 minutes per game. Even in the NFL, quarterbacks are on the field for only half of the game.

In the NBA, the best player is on the court for well over 75% of the game and can, theoretically, operate every moment offensively on the ball if he’s that good. Defensively, he can control the game on the interior. See how Victor Wembanyama’s presence has transformed the San Antonio Spurs after he was taken No. 1 in 2023.

That is what makes this problem unique to the NBA. Because you must have a top-five player in the league to win the title -- something that I don’t believe to be true in baseball, football or hockey -- the incentive to try to acquire one of those talents by whatever means necessary is more urgent.

That’s why the NBA needs to be more vigilant in protecting its competitive integrity. When there is serious incentive to lose -- especially in a draft such as 2026 that features potential stars including AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer -- the league must make some sort of shift to incentivize winning.

But is this new proposal the right approach? Let’s talk it through.

The biggest adjustment is not for the No. 1 pick.

Over the past five years, NBA teams have tanked to maximize their chances at the No. 1 pick. But by and large, the main goal of runaway tanking is not necessarily to get the first selection. Even the worst team had only a 14% chance to get that pick -- hardly a percentage that teams could count on. Rather, the goal was to create a floor for where your team would select on draft night. If by finishing last in the league you could not fall outside of the top five, and you maximized your chances of picking even higher, that was a huge win.

This notion is often undervalued. Under the new proposal, that floor no longer exists in the same way. In theory, the worst team in the league could drop all the way to No. 12 on draft night, a huge value difference from picking in the top five. This is realistically what will likely curb the worst impulses of tankers. If you lose 65 games and end up with the 10th pick in the draft, it will be awfully difficult to sell to your fans that the season was worth it.

In that vein, I think that the league succeeded in its goal, which was to create more variance and potentially punitive results for teams that attempt to lose games on purpose. But does it actually help with the main issue?

Does this hurt smaller markets?

The entire reason to have a draft is to create parity. It is an opportunity for fans of bad teams and in certain markets to keep the faith. Drafts generally work well in that respect and keep fan bases engaged even as their teams hemorrhage losses.

In this case, the NBA is essentially removing that primary goal from the equation in favor of attempting to create more competitive games at the end of the season. I think some sort of adjustment is the right call. Multiple executives and scouts I have spoken with over the past four months have noted that it’s hard to even assess talent in the league at the end of the season because of how noncompetitive the games are.

Yet I worry that the NBA has gone too far with this proposal.

By going down this road, the league would make it harder for the markets that are, let’s say, less than desirable for players to live and play in. This reform would not take building through the draft completely off the table -- half the league’s All-Stars this season were selected outside of the top-five picks in their respective drafts -- but it would make it more difficult for some markets to get star players. And given that free agency has essentially turned into pre-agency, with the best players often either signing extensions or dictating their desired landing spot via trade before hitting the open market, the avenues to go out and get the talent you need to contend are harder to find.

I’m worried that long-term adoption of this draft lottery solution may turn the league into a set of haves and have-nots, where the bigger markets gain an even greater advantage than they currently have.

But it is important to keep in mind that this is just a temporary solution. Commissioner Adam Silver and league officials felt that they needed to address tanking in some manner after the blatant tactics of this season. However, the proposal contains a sunset provision -- the league will take a look at this again in 2029 and could vote to extend it or adopt a new plan.

The next two NBA drafts could be rough.

I recently attended the Nike Hoop Summit and talked to dozens of scouts who were watching many of the best prospects in the 2026 recruiting class. There was not much enthusiasm for the top of the 2027 draft. There is even less enthusiasm right now for the 2028 draft class.

Because of that, the tanking issue might have sorted itself out for the next two years without the implementation of aggressive reform. That’s not to say that players will not emerge from those classes and become All-Stars; undeniably, some will. Rather, the players in those classes are just much more incomplete right now than many top prospects in the past decade. I think teams would have been much less brazen with their attempts to tank in the next two years than they were this past year.

If there is less of a delta regarding top-end talent as compared with talent in the middle of the lottery over the next two classes, then the worst teams dropping from No. 1 to No. 8 or so in the draft order may not make a big difference.

Scouting and player evaluation are now more important.

If the NBA essentially removes the ability to tank for the best players in the draft, teams will have to get much more creative in how they attack improving their roster. Obviously, teams are going to have to get stronger at evaluating the draft to hit on players in the middle of the lottery. It is much harder to find elite talent the further you go into the draft class.

I also wonder if we will start to see teams get more aggressive in trying to acquire buy-low candidates whom they like on other NBA teams. If this type of lottery reform had been in place five years ago, could a team have decided to try to pluck, say, Jalen Brunson away from the Dallas Mavericks to find out if he was a star? Would someone have been more forceful than the Portland Trail Blazers in trying to acquire Deni Avdija? Would someone look at the Boston Celtics’ Payton Pritchard as a potential starter and overpay to find out?

If your team needs a star and you cannot rely on the draft or free agency to go and get one, you’re going to have to do it by making stronger, more informed bets via trade. In that vein, this kind of lottery reform may create more excitement in the offseason and before the trade deadline.

I wonder if we will see teams start investing more of their front-office resources into pro personnel scouting. Even as someone whose job it is to evaluate draft prospects, get intel and slot them onto a board, I am always surprised by how much work front offices put into that part of the equation as opposed to the pro personnel side. One team that has invested substantially in scouting current pros is the Indiana Pacers. They reaped the benefits by acquiring Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Aaron Nesmith and Obi Toppin and nearly won the NBA title last year.

Yes, teams are going to have to take chances and hit in the draft on upside swings more consistently. But one of the biggest marginal advantages that teams have had the past three years has been strong pro scouting departments. Now, I would imagine that every team will start to beef up those departments to try to uncover diamonds in the rough who have not gotten more run with their current NBA teams.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company