NBA can eliminate tanking by doing away with weighted lottery, and other suggestions

The NBA continues to have a tanking problem, but hey, maybe there are ways to fix it. At least, Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic attempted to offer some solutions.

For the record, “tanking” is when teams that aren’t going to the postseason attempt to … well, not win … in an effort to increase their odds in the NBA Draft lottery.

While the league has instituted several ways to try to offset tanking (such as the play-in tournament), it’s been far from foolproof. Teams can still tank with the best of ’em.

Vorkunov proposed several ideas to curtail it even further:

1. Extend the lottery to eight teams

“The NBA could let the lottery drawing determine the top-eight picks in the draft instead of just the top four,” Vorkunov wrote.

“It can flatten the odds even further. Right now, the eight worst teams have a collective 87.5 percent chance of landing the top pick, with the two worst teams each owning a 14 percent chance. But smash that together even more. What if the top-four teams each had a 10 percent chance and the teams outside the top eight had their odds increased? The team with the league’s worst record would be guaranteed to pick no lower than ninth in this scenario (currently, it’s fifth).”

2. Do away with the weighted lottery

“Every non-playoff would have the same odds. It would be chaos. But think of the TV ratings for the lottery!” Vorkunov wrote. “Instead of just a few cities caring about the winner, you’d now have 14.

“In all seriousness, this would be a pretty strong attempt to dissuade tanking. And even to stop the 2023 Dallas Mavericks of the world who have to pivot midseason and protect their first-round selection against the pick protections they’ve cornered themselves with. The choice would become binary — are we a playoff team or aren’t we? — and go from there. A team could still offer pick protections on a selection, but once it realizes it will miss the playoffs, there’s nothing to be done anymore but wait to see.”

3. The two worst teams are locked into the Nos. 4 and 5 picks

“Think about it. If the goal is to create incentives for teams to not be all-out horrible and to try to win games in March and April and treat them seriously, then ensuring that the worst teams don’t get the best lottery odds is one way to do it,” Vokunov wrote. “If this were in place now, the Wizards and Jazz would be desperate to win games right now to avoid getting stuck with the No. 4 and No. 5 picks. They’d be trying to catch up to the Charlotte Hornets, who already have 18 wins. And Charlotte wouldn’t be resting on its laurels, either.

“It’s an odd way of doing things, for sure, but by creating a strong deterrent to be the worst teams in the NBA, it could prod teams to be more strategic and to focus more on winning games, and it would make March and April entertaining because the incentive structure for teams at the bottom of the standings has flipped.”

4. Finally, just get rid of the draft

“Can’t tank if there’s nothing to tank for,” Vorkunov wrote. “This is obviously an aggressive move, but it could be just what the league needs. It could get rid of the draft and allow each team a capped amount of money it can spend on incoming players each offseason. That would put agency back into the hands of players and allow teams to define their rookie classes however they want.”

All are actually quality suggestions. No matter what the NBA decides — if anything — let’s hope it looks into deterring tanking. Pro basketball should always be as good as possible. No matter how bad you are.