{"id":1846854,"date":"2026-03-25T20:32:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1846854"},"modified":"2026-03-25T20:32:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:32:45","slug":"adam-silver-says-nba-will-change-lottery-to-curb-tanking-we-are-going-to-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1846854","title":{"rendered":"Adam Silver says NBA will change lottery to curb tanking: \u2018We are going to fix it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver vowed to fix his league\u2019s tanking problem<\/a> on Wednesday, telling reporters that significant changes will be made to its lottery system that will take effect for the 2027 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n

Silver, speaking after two days of Board of Governors meetings in New York, deemed the support for such measures \u201cunanimous,\u201d with the league likely holding a special Board of Governors meeting in May to vote on modifications. The internal debate about how to deter teams from intentionally losing \u2014 an issue that\u2019s come into sharp focus this season as several teams jockey for better lottery odds ahead of a stacked draft \u2014 will continue in the coming months.<\/p>\n

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\u201cExactly what that change is, we\u2019re continuing to work on,\u201d Silver said. \u201cNo votes were taken today. (But) I think there\u2019s also unanimous agreement that we need to make this change in advance of the draft and free agency this year, so all the teams understand the rules of the road going into next year. \u2026 We\u2019ve been hard at work on this issue for several months now.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI do think, ultimately, this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level. It has business implications. It has basketball implications. It has integrity implications for the league. So it\u2019s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop. And I want to say that directly to our fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Silver said the discussion will be led by Byron Spruell (the NBA\u2019s president of league operations), Evan Wasch (executive vice president of the NBA), and former player and Suns general manager James Jones (executive vice president\/head of NBA basketball operations), as well as the 30 general managers. The league\u2019s competition committee, which is made up of a select group of general managers, coaches and players, will also play a pivotal part in the process.<\/p>\n

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The league has changed its lottery system four times since implementing it in 1985, most recently in 2019, when it flattened the odds teams had of acquiring the highest picks. The worst team\u2019s chances for the top pick went from 25 percent to 14 percent, with the second- and third-worst teams also being given a 14-percent chance. But the combination of several teams racing to the bottom this season<\/a> and the strength of this forthcoming draft are widely seen as driving forces in the continued tanking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think even teams that are trying hard to compete with the rosters they have, in many cases, are being told by their fans that they\u2019re better off being bad or somehow manipulating the system to be worse than maybe they really are,\u201d Silver said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what puts enormous pressure on our team. So as I said, incentives need to be fixed, and we will fix them, and I\u2019m looking forward to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In February, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 and Indiana Pacers $100,000 for \u201covert behavior \u2026 that prioritizes draft position over winning.\u201d But Silver acknowledged that they need to do much more to curb the trend.<\/p>\n

\u201dThere is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild, you know \u2014 rebuild with integrity,\u201d Silver said. \u201cThe problem we\u2019re having these days is it\u2019s become almost impossible to distinguish between a tank and a rebuild. There\u2019s such a subtlety to this when incentives don\u2019t match, when we\u2019re now into it with coaches\u2019 decisions on lineups and when players come in and out of the game, injuries, doctors going back and forth with each other. Pain levels of players.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sense is when I say fix (this) now, yes, we need to do something more extreme than we did with those incremental changes the last four times.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story will be updated<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver vowed to fix his league\u2019s tanking problem on Wednesday, telling reporters that significant changes will be made to its lottery system that will take effect for the 2027 NBA Draft. Silver, speaking after two days of Board of Governors meetings in New York, deemed the support for such measures \u201cunanimous,\u201d with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1846854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}