Suggested way to stop the tanking

[BIG BEN'S FRO]

Long time no post, but I have been lurking.

Question for all. Nursing many beers with my friends we came up with a suggestion to stop tanking. Would love your input.

1. Lotto is 4 slots instead of 3.

2. If your team wins the lotto, you may now CHOOSE to move up or not. If you move up to your slot, you can no longer move up for the next 3 years.
3. If a team above you chooses not to move up, you advance into their slot if you won the lotto and opted in.

We liked this idea as each year, at least 4 teams would have no incentive to repeat tank following years. Perennially there would be 10-12 teams with no incentive to tank since they couldn’t intentionally land in the top 4. They could however still get a top spot while trying to win if everyone above them claimed a prior lotto spot.
GMs could pass on a given year if the next was an amazing class, but honestly most would feel too much winning pressure to do that.

Thoughts?

[GreekAlex]

I like the idea of not being able to move up repeatedly.

I think there also needs to be an incentive to win for the teams that aren’t playoff contenders.

I’ve heard a few suggestions but I’m always interested to hear more.

[Snakebites]

Long time no post, but I have been lurking.

Question for all. Nursing many beers with my friends we came up with a suggestion to stop tanking. Would love your input.

1. Lotto is 4 slots instead of 3.

2. If your team wins the lotto, you may now CHOOSE to move up or not. If you move up to your slot, you can no longer move up for the next 3 years.
3. If a team above you chooses not to move up, you advance into their slot if you won the lotto and opted in.

We liked this idea as each year, at least 4 teams would have no incentive to repeat tank following years. Perennially there would be 10-12 teams with no incentive to tank since they couldn’t intentionally land in the top 4. They could however still get a top spot while trying to win if everyone above them claimed a prior lotto spot.
GMs could pass on a given year if the next was an amazing class, but honestly most would feel too much winning pressure to do that.

Thoughts?

The lottery currently is four slots. Unless I'm misunderstanding your point in the first part.

I think this could be an interesting idea overall though- I like it.

[DetroitSho]

Tanked for 4 years, finally makes the playoffs, and now we got our nose stuck in the air like tanking wasn't the staple of the whole Weaver tenure. Pretty pretentious.

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[Kalamazoo317]

Wouldn't this *incentivize* tanking for multiple years since it'd limit how many teams moved up and stole your hard earned high lottery pick?

[bstein14]

Wouldn't this *incentivize* tanking for multiple years since it'd limit how many teams moved up and stole your hard earned high lottery pick?

I agree completely this really doesn't solve anything. Tanking is already way less worth is because top teams only have a 14% chance at a #1 pick. If anything they could just flatten out the odds a bit more so the worst 5 teams only get a 12% chance of hitting #1.

[BadMofoPimp]

A simple fix is not being able to have a top 5 pick in consecutive years.

[breezypeezy]

You want to end tanking you simply end rewarding picks to losers.
Id be fine with making draft picks a random draw event for all 30 teams.
No reward for being ****, none whatsoever.
Thats the end of tanking, simple.

[bstein14]

A simple fix is not being able to have a top 5 pick in consecutive years.

But then with 5 bad teams being guaranteed to not get a top 5 pick, there's incentive for other fringe play-in teams to shut people down because they are much more likely to get a good pick.

In 2024 you had the 36 win Hawks who were the 10th seed and lost in the play-in land the #1 pick. You had the 41 win Rockets move up and land the #3 pick. The worst team once again was the Pistons who didn't get lucky enough to land one of the top 5 picks. The Blazers and Hornets were the 3rd and 4th worst teams and they moved back to 6th and 7th.

If you eliminated 5 teams from being able to get a top 5 pick this year in a good 2025 draft that just really encourages more of the mid teams to tank IMO because it greatly increases your odds of getting one of the best picks in the draft.

Here's how you eliminate tanking even further all you really need to do is slightly change the odds even further.

Worst record = 11% chance - Currently 14.0%
2nd worst = 11% chance - Currently 14.0%
3rd worst = 11% chance - Currently 14.0%
4th worst = 11% chance - Currently 12.5%
5th worst = 11% chance - Currently 10.5%
6th worst = 9% chance - Currently 8.0%
7th worst = 8% chance - Currently 7.5%
8th worst = 7% chance - Currently 6.0%
9th worst = 6% chance - Currently 4.5%
10th worst = 5% chance - Currently 2.5%
11th worst = 4% chance - Currently 2.5%
12th worst = 3% chance - Currently 1.5%
13th worst = 2% chance - Currently 1.0%
14th worst = 1% chance - Currently 0.5%

This slight shift makes the four worst teams less likely to stay in the top 4 after the lottery.... This gives the best teams(12th/13th/14th) twice as good of a chance at moving up and it flattens out the top even more so there is no difference in odds between finishing 5th worst and the worst in the league.

[Invictus88]

I suggested something simplified in a recent thread:

1. Shrink the lottery to 10 teams
2. If you participate in the lottery (bottom 10 eligible) then you aren't eligible the following year.
3. Non eligible teams draft in record order as they do now.

Unless a team wants to tank for 3 straight years there's little incentive to do so beyond the current season. (Pick 11 is hardly worth tanking for).

[NYPiston]

This whole idea of "tanking" is a myth. Tanking got the Pistons back to back #5 picks (although Ivey and Ausar is a nice haul) and the worst team in the league hasn't won the draft lottery under the new format in 6 years. The odds are almost 50/50 to get merely get a top 4 pick.
The odds are so smoothed out in the lottery that tanking means virtually nothing nowadays. It did get us Cade but there were two teams that tanked harder than the Pistons that struck out on Cade.

[Canadafan]

You want to end tanking you simply end rewarding picks to losers.
Id be fine with making draft picks a random draw event for all 30 teams.
No reward for being ****, none whatsoever.
Thats the end of tanking, simple.

That would be awesome I'd luv it

[Absolutia]

30 balls in the lottery for the 30th place, all the way up to one ball for the champs?

[theBigLip]

There is another way - don’t reward anyone for losing. Get rid of the lottery. For the next 30 years, all picks are rotated, so every franchise gets each pick # over that span. Obviously would need to do some kind of random draw to start the distribution. But then each team would know when they are drafting each year. There would be no incentive to lose.

[Absolutia]

Moving away from just lottery odds, but what if (transitioning from the current format to this proposed format):

-The top 4 teams of each conference enter the playoffs and gain qualification for next years top tier (I'll explain the further down).
-The fifth spot gains automatic qualification for next years top tier.
-Spots 6,7,8 and 9 go into a 7-game qualifier series against 10,11,12 and 13, with the losers (along with 14 and 15) entering an exclusion bracket for next season.

This would mean:

-That only nine teams from each conference would be eligible for the playoffs each year.
-That the six teams in the exclusion bracket would compete for four places in the qualifiers.
-That the only way out of the exclusion bracket would be to beat a team from qualification in a 7-game series.

Points to note:

-Each team would still play every other team through 82 games of the regular season as they do now.
-The top four seed in the qaulifiers would come from qualification; the bottom four would come from exclusion, but win percentage would determine homecourt advantage.

I think this would make the lengthy 82 game season more significant; would make an in-season tournament win very desirable for those in exlusion; make the needless resting of players more costly and keep almost all fans much more interested all the way to the end of the season.

[Kalamazoo317]

Take 10 games off the regular season and every game counts more. Less time for rest, fewer back to backs that make teams want to rest or cause injuries, and less time to throw away games.