In response to the persistence and increase in NBA teams allegedly tanking to ensure better draft-lottery odds, commissioner Adam Silver told all 30 general managers that the league will make rule changes to combat the practice starting next season, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday.
The league has owned up to the issue, with Silver saying at a press conference during All-Star weekend that the problem is “worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory.” A meeting of the NBA’s competition committee in January reportedly also focused on tanking.
The Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers were fined $500,000 and $100,000, respectively, earlier this month for conduct detrimental to the league related to the player participation policy. Utah, in particular, sat its two best players, Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr., for the entire fourth quarter of back-to-back games that were both winnable.
ESPN and The Athletic reported that several options were under consideration, including flattening the spread of the odds for all lottery teams; freezing those odds at the trade deadline or another date in-season; and no longer allowing a franchise to pick in the top four in consecutive years, or after consecutive bottom-three finishes.
Extending the lottery to include teams in the play-in spots (Nos. 7-10 in each conference) is also on the list, along with basing lottery odds on teams’ two-year records, which is currently the policy of the WNBA.
As the NBA resumes play Thursday after the All-Star break, no team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, but five teams (Brooklyn, Indiana, New Orleans, Washington, Sacramento) have winning percentages below .290.
Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia said in a social media post earlier in the day that tanking was “losing behavior done by losers” and “much worse than any prop bet scandal.”
