NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Wednesday promised to address the widespread tanking issues plaguing the league and said changes are expected for the 2027 draft.
Silver said there were “lengthy” conversations during the past two days of the NBA’s board of governors meeting regarding the league’s tanking problem.
“I will say it seemed unanimous in the room that we needed to make a change and we needed to make a change for next season,” Silver said. “Exactly what that change is, we’re continuing to work on [it].”
Tanking is not a new phenomenon within the league. The heightened urgency to address the issue now, though, is because teams are being so blatantly obvious with their tanking — so much so that the NBA fined the Jazz $500,000 and the Pacers $100,000 for “overt behavior… that prioritizes draft positioning over winning.”
Fines alone won’t solve the problem. It’s why Silver said the league is actively working to stop teams from manipulating game results to improve draft odds.
Silver expects the league to host a special board meeting in May to vote on “whatever modification we come up with.”
NBA president of league operations Byron Spruell, executive vice president Evan Wasch and head of NBA basketball operations James Jones as well as the league’s 30 general managers are all on the clock to figure out a solution to tanking, according to Silver.
The league’s competition committee, which includes a select group of general managers, coaches and players, is also tasked with helping contribute to an answer for one of the league’s most pressing matters.
“This is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level,” Silver said. “It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league. It’s one that we take very seriously. We are going to fix it, full stop.”
The NBA introduced the draft lottery in 1985 and has modified the process four times since. The most recent change came in 2019 by flattening the odds so the worst team had only a 14 percent chance at the top pick as opposed to a 25 percent chance in previous years.
Silver anticipates the league will “need to do something more extreme than” it did in the previous incremental changes to the lottery system.
“I really like where the league is right now,” Silver said. “What’s so incredible about live sports at this level … is people have a hunger for this live, unscripted drama. Of course, the opposite of that is when there’s a sense that both teams aren’t out there trying to kill themselves to win a game. As I said, we have to fix that problem.
“I guess I should just not overstate something that you’re going to be asking me a question in five years, saying, ‘You said this was a forever fix,’” Silver continued. “If I’m the one standing at the podium, I want to make it clear that I recognize things may change also because there also may be changes that we see through collective bargaining or other changes to the system that may impact what we’re doing now. Certainly going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now.”
Other items the board of governors discussed included voting to explore expansion, continuing conversation about the NBA in Europe and completing the finance committee vetting process for the imminent sale of the Portland Trail Blazers by the Paul Allen estate to a group led by Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon.
Seattle and Las Vegas are the favored markets to host the NBA’s newest teams. Expansion would be a “strategic decision for the league,” according to Silver, though it is not guaranteed.
“There’s absolutely a chance expansion may not happen,” Silver said. “That’s why we were careful to say ‘exploring the process.’ It’s also possible we could expand to one market and not two, to two or zero markets. That’s sort of what’s on the table right now.”
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