Potential Options to Stop NBA Tanking Revealed, inc. Losing 1st Rd. Pick

While the NBA struggles with ideas on how to stop tanking, the player's union has revealed its own ideas.

Tanking has become an epidemic in the league, as teams consistently try to lose to improve their lottery odds. This season, there is absolutely no playoff race happening in either conference. A nine-game gap separates the 10th seed and final Play-In team in the East, while a whopping 11-game gulf separates the 11th seed from the 10th in the West.

The NBPA is proposing a three-prong approach to the league's ongoing tanking/draft lottery reform discussion, @TheSteinLine has learned, which would first financially reward wins and penalize losses, second flatten lottery odds, and third strictly enforce meaningful penalties.
— Jake Fischer (@JakeLFischer) March 27, 2026

To that end, the NBPA is proposing the following measures, as reported by insider Jake Fischer:

Financially reward wins and penalize losses
Flatten lottery odds
Strictly enforce meaningful penalties

For the first point, the union wants the league to distribute national TV revenue based on regular-season team performance and conference seeding. The English Premier League (soccer) does something like this.

Secondly, they would like to see the lottery expanded to 18 teams (instead of 14), with odds of landing the No. 1 pick for the league's bottom 10 teams set at 7%, instead of the 8% that the league is considering, and the remaining eight teams should be at a 3.75%.

Penalties for tanking teams could include losing their first-round pick

Finally, for penalties for teams who blatantly tank, the union wants to see a reduction in those teams' lottery odds, moving their pick to the end of the lottery or the first round, and/or stripping them of their first-round selection altogether.

For their part, the NBA itself has presented a series of concepts to its Board of Governors:

The NBA presented three comprehensive anti-tanking concepts to its Board of Governors on Wednesday, with modifications expected to each before a formal vote in May, per ESPN sources.

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10…
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) March 27, 2026

The league and its union seem to be on the same page in some respects.

The league also wants to see the lottery expand, and go to 18 or 22 teams, increase fines for offending teams into the millions of dollars, and, like the union, they would also want add penalties of moving those teams' picks to the end of the lottery or first round, or voiding their first-round pick.

“You have to have something in place that is so drastic, a team would actually think twice about tanking. And if a team tries it and gets caught, then the other teams need to see the penalties and realize it isn’t worth it to try," a source told Joe Vardon of The Athletic.

NBA teams will vote on the changes in May, and they'll go into effect immediately, before the 2026 Draft and free agency.