INGLEWOOD, Calif. — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday that “every possible remedy to stop” tanking is under consideration, including redoing how teams qualify to get the highest draft picks each season.
“It’s time to take a fresh look at this and to see whether that’s an antiquated way of going about doing it,” Silver said of the NBA Draft Lottery, in which the 14 teams that do not make the postseason have a chance to land the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Silver, speaking at his annual All-Star Weekend news conference on Saturday, agreed that “tanking,” the decades-old practice of teams losing intentionally to ensure a better draft pick, is worse this season than in years past. He also said policing the league’s teams for tanking — as he did this week by fining the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 — was not a workable solution to the league’s growing problem of teams being incentivized to lose.
“It will lead to very unhealthy relationships between us and our teams,” Silver said.
How far the league can go in its quest to have all 30 teams compete for the full 82-game season remains to be seen. Changes would require approval of the league’s owners and, likely, the players’ union. There were numerous meetings among league officials this week to discuss tanking remedies, and, of the approximately 10 solutions discussed, the outright abolition of the rookie draft was not among them, one of those officials said.
However, if Silver and his advisers decided the only way to stop tanking, and thereby protect paying customers from forking over money to watch their teams lose on purpose, was to stop the draft altogether and turn rookies into free agents. That same league official said it would get serious consideration.
“I think part of the problem is that if you step back, the fundamental theory behind the draft is to help your worst-performing teams restock and be able to compete,” Silver said. “The issue is if teams are manipulating their performance in order to get higher draft picks, even in a lottery, then the question becomes, even if teams were rewarded for draft picks purely according to predicted odds of the lottery, are they really the worst performing teams?
“My sense is talking to GMs and coaches around the league that there’s probably even more parity reflected in our records. And that goes to the incentive issue. … It’s a bit of a conundrum.”
The NBA has held a draft lottery since 1985, in which non-playoff teams are entered into the lottery in hopes of securing a high pick — possibly the No. 1 pick. The odds of advancing up the draft board for non-playoff teams with “better” records are lower than the worst performing teams, but “tanking,” or deliberately losing, does not guarantee the top pick.
The practice has evolved this season, with teams already underperforming, such as the Washington Wizards, Utah and Indiana, trading for injured stars and essentially stashing them while continuing to lose.
Those three teams have three of the worst records in the NBA. The Wizards traded for former All-Stars Trae Young and Anthony Davis; the Jazz traded for former All-Star Jaren Jackson Jr.; the Pacers, who were in Game 7 of the NBA Finals last season but have been decimated by injury this season, traded for star center Ivica Zubac.
The league fined the Jazz and Pacers on Friday for what they perceived as egregious attempts to tank for a better draft position by resting starters at the end of competitive games. The NBA, perhaps more so than other major American professional sports, often has numerous teams do something like what the Jazz and Pacers were penalized for this week, with as many as two months remaining in the regular season.
To be fair to the players on the court, they are not typically accused of giving less than maximum effort when they’re on teams accused of “tanking.” The practice generally references decisions made by the team’s front office and coaching staff on how much, if at all, the team’s best players play.
“When any economist comes and looks at our system, they always point out that we have the incentives backwards,” Silver said. “It’s not what the fans want at the end of the day.”
In other business, Silver said the league’s governors (owners or their chief representatives) will discuss, but not vote on, league expansion next month.
In December, Silver said the governors would vote on expanding domestically in 2026, and that Seattle and Las Vegas were the two most likely cities to get an expansion team.
On Saturday, Silver said the league wasn’t beholden to adding two teams (though he has said in the past it was his preference). He also said one issue not currently on the table is “relocation,” or teams being moved to locations like Seattle or Las Vegas, which Silver had said in December were the two cities the NBA is targeting for potential expansion.
The Memphis Grizzlies, whose current lease at FedEx Forum expires in 2029, and the New Orleans Pelicans, who have struggled with attendance, are two teams commonly rumored to be candidates for relocation.
In the past, Silver has said the NBA can’t unilaterally move a team — the owner has to want to move — but on Saturday, he took it a step further in ruling it out as a possibility in the near term.