Why the NBA's New Anti-Tanking Ideas May Backfire

NBA insider Sham Charania reported that Commissioner Adam Silver met with all 30 GMs on Thursday morning to inform them that the league is exploring ways to implement anti-tanking measures.

He also listed some of the ideas floated in the meeting, which range from reduced lottery pick protections to freezing lottery odds at the trade deadline to not allowing teams to pick inside the top four in back-to-back years to leveling out lottery odds.

I just don’t understand how any of these ideas are supposed to fix tanking in the NBA. If anything, I believe these measures would only make things worse. First off, I honestly just don’t love the lottery in general. Yes, teams tank to improve draft position, but normally the team that finishes last finished there for a reason.

I’ve always been of the idea that a lottery only increases the number of teams that are going to tank. Unlike the three other major sports, there’s normally only two to three teams max that have a real shot at the title. Because of this, teams are far more willing to blow a team up if they feel they don’t have a real shot at the title.

When this happens, you only need to be bad enough to make it into the lottery, then you can hope the balls fall into place, and you land the first pick. Dallas has been a fun landing spot for Cooper Flagg, but they really had no business getting the first pick to select him.

Another suggestion that made no sense was freezing lottery odds at the beginning of the season. The NBA already struggles to compete with the NFL and MLB playoffs. If you change when lottery odds are decided, why wouldn’t teams just start their tanks earlier in the year? If you already thought November basketball was a tough watch, it’s going to get embarrassingly bad if they made this move.

I also don’t believe that banning teams from top four picks in back-to-back years is a great decision, especially when the lottery randomizes where you are picking.

The MLB currently has rules that prevent teams from receiving top picks multiple years in a row, but that makes more sense for them. NBA revenue sharing is inherently fairer than MLB, and the NBA has a salary cap. The MLB punishes big market teams that tank more severely than small market teams that tank, but that wouldn’t work in the NBA, where there isn’t a significant imbalance in team payrolls.

Tanking happens in every sport, but it’s always going to be worse in basketball. One draft pick can turn around the fortunes of a franchise, so teams are always going to want a shot at a top pick. I think these suggestions only incentivize more teams to tank and don’t address the problem.

You’ll never hear the same tanking issues in baseball or football due to how the sports are set up. The MLB recently expanded its playoffs, and any team playing in October thinks they can win the World Series, which disincentivizes tanking. Then, in the NFL, the season is much shorter, which makes obvious tanking far more palatable.

Unfortunately, I think tanking will always be an issue in the NBA, but punishing teams just because they’re bad will never make sense to me.