It’s safe to say that figuring out how to curb tanking and fixing the NBA Draft lottery have not been Adam Silver’s strong suits.
This is something covered in great detail by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps on a recent Hoop Collective Podcast. But in Silver’s defense, it’s not been for a lack of trying.
“Since enacting the original version of the lottery in an attempt to curb tanking 41 years ago, the NBA has gone through several variations, only for the league’s race to the bottom to repeatedly come up as a controversial topic,” Bontemps said.
“Silver has tried to do something about it twice. He initially failed more than a decade ago after becoming commissioner to enact lottery changes before succeeding in flattening the lottery odds ahead of the 2019 draft.”
Instead, if anything, tanking has become more widespread than ever.
“A decade ago, four or five teams were leaning into the act of tanking,” Bontemps said. “Now we are annually seeing eight to 10 teams shutting things down after the All-Star break to try to improve their lottery chances and putting out an increasingly poor product.”
Apparently, no one is pleased with all that. Not team owners, Not front offices. Certainly not the fans.
“In private conversations, no one — denizens of NBA headquarters, fans or members of any of the 30 teams — is happy with the current setup,” Bontemps said. “That’s why Silver has repeatedly said there are extensive changes coming to the lottery system ahead of 2026-27.”
As ESPN reported Friday, the league made three proposals to the Board of Governors at this week’s meeting to try to eliminate full tanks. None seemed all that great.
“But several league and team officials, publicly and privately, have agreed there is not a clean simple fix to this issue,” Bontemps said. “It will be interesting to see what will come out of the special session of the Board of Governors in May, when the league has said it will unveil any changes to prepare teams for next season.
“It was striking to hear Silver say Wednesday that (Silver is) an incrementalist and that fundamental changes to the incentive structure need to happen — and to say both of those things in the same answer, and even to bring up potential CBA changes down the road to try to fix the problem.
“So while Silver did say the league is going to ‘fix this — full stop,’ doing so is going to be more difficult.”
