The NBA has publicly stated that they are exploring various ways to solve tanking. The end of this past season saw teams looking more like G-league rosters than NBA teams in an effort to boost their lottery odds.
To combat this, the league office has discussed further altering the lottery odds to disincentivising intentional losing. After Sunday’s draft lottery however, it’s clear that the NBA doesn’t need to do anything at all.
Tanking for the first pick didn’t work out for most tankers
The Wizards, Pacers, and Nets had the highest odds at landing the number one overall pick entering the lottery. All three teams fought to earn a 14% chance by sitting starters, benching rotational pieces, and calling up basically anyone eligible to suit up.
The Pacers were so confident in their tanking that they traded away their first round pick, which would belong to the Clippers as long as it didn’t turn out in the top 4. Their 19 win season and trade deadline risk proved futile, as they fell to the 5th pick, losing their selection altogether.
The Nets were another team hoping to attain their future franchise cornerstone in the draft, but for the second straight year, their draft selection dropped in the lottery, and their aggressive losing tactics didn’t pay off. The only one of these teams whose losing season worked out was the Washington Wizards, who secured the first overall pick.
The Wizards will select first but they proved a point
While this seems to support tanking, the fact is that the Wizards actually got extremely lucky and are actually the exception. Since the NBA flattened the lottery odds in 2019, the Wizards are the only team to finish with the worst record and receive the first overall pick.
Historically, teams are better off when they don’t finish dead last. The Dallas Mavericks won the lottery last year with just a 1.8% chance. The year before that, the Hawks did the same with just 3% odds.
The reality is that as much as teams want to guarantee their future, in this case by losing, their season boils down to a lottery. 82 games of failure leading up to a giant bet, with odds that honestly aren’t very good.
While the worst team’s 14% is the highest out of any competitor, the 86% chance of not getting the pick heavily outweighs the probability of actually landing number one. Based on how the lottery has played out in recent years, teams will have to start realizing that losing doesn’t guarantee anything other than a terrible season.
Even with all of that being true, the NBA still wants to eliminate tanking as soon as possible to improve the overall product of the NBA. If they don’t change something quickly, fans will continue to be uninterested, leaving stadiums empty and tanking TV ratings.
The NBA should trust the system in place now
While this is an issue for the league, further flattening the odds can hurt more than it could help. Bad teams still need a way to improve, and for small-market teams especially, the draft is often their only realistic path back to relevance.
Good picks have been given to struggling teams all over sports to maintain balance, and without that safety valve, teams could be relegated into irrelevance for years with no sign of hope.
The current odds system is still fairly new, and teams haven’t fully caught on yet, but it provides the necessary boost to bad teams while also sending a message that tanking can only get you so far.