The NBA will overhaul its lottery system in time for next season, Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday, emphatically claiming he will eliminate what he believes has been rampant tanking leaguewide. “We are going to fix it -- full stop,” he said at his at Board of Governors press conference in New York.
Referencing the BOG sessions both Tuesday and Wednesday, Silver said no solutions were vetted or voted on during the meeting, but that a decision likely will be formalized at a special board meeting in May. He also said the BOG was unanimous that the new lottery protocol should be locked in before the upcoming 2026 draft and free agency period.
“We’ve been hard at work on this issue for several months now that’s led by Byron Spruell and Evan Wasch and James Jones in the league office,” Silver said. “Of course, we have a competition committee. They’ve been working on that issue with us. We’ve been talking separately to our general managers. I do think ultimately this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level. It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league.”
Sources familiar with the meetings said multiple lottery proposals were presented at BOG this week, with an overall belief that the eventual reimagined system will give every non-playoff team the same odds of securing the No. 1 overall pick -- to discourage overt tanking. Sources said that all the flattened-odds scenarios received positive feedback this week, although those sources also called it a work in progress with few ready to say it was the most likely path.
Another scenario could make play-in teams eligible for the No. 1 pick, as well, which would obviously incentivize teams to win on a whole new level.
For instance, Silver said that “roughly 20 teams” are playing “exciting basketball” right now and then pointed out “the opposite of that is when there’s a sense that both teams [on the court] aren’t out there trying to kill themselves to win a game.” Those are presumably the other 10 teams.
“There is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild, rebuild with integrity,” Silver said Wednesday. “The problem we’re having these days is it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.”
