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No easy answers for the league, Commissioner Silver or fans of the sport.
Published Feb 20, 2026 • 7 minute read
Dallas Mavericks' Rolando Blackman, left, and NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum pose for photos after Tatum announced that the Mavericks had won the first pick in the NBA draft lottery.
Dallas Mavericks' Rolando Blackman, left, and NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum pose for photos after Tatum announced that the Mavericks had won the first pick in the NBA draft lottery. Photo by AP Photo /AP Photo
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There seemed to be nearly as much off-court talk as on-court happens during the recent NBA all-star weekend in Los Angeles.
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Tanking, the apparent new scourge of the league, was the topic of the day Sunday and beyond.
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It’s clear a lot of powerful people are fed up with what they believe tanking has done to the NBA and now it seems like commissioner Adam Silver is going to act.
ESPN reported Thursday that Silver has told league general managers that anti-tanking rule changes will be made ahead of the 2026-27 campaign.
“The league office’s conversations with stakeholders from the board of governors, competition committee and GMs have been intensifying dialogue about combatting tanking — including starting to propose potential concepts for changes in December during its meeting with owners,” ESPN’s Shams Charania reported.
He added there was also a late-January competition committee meeting where tanking was a topic and that Thursday legendary former Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, the senior adviser to basketball operations for the league office, had said there should be a prompt, tasteful “attack” on the problem of tanking “and that all involved should be prepared to respond to what the league enacts in the coming months and year.”
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WHY THE FOCUS ON TANKING NOW?
Silver said at his media availability in Los Angeles on Sunday that tanking has been “worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory” and that he was considering “every possible remedy” to combat the problem.
He recently fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 US for sitting out star players for the fourth quarter of a pair of recent games, saying the Jazz “compromised the integrity of the league.”
Indiana had been fined $100,000 for sitting former Raptor Pascal Siakam.
Last year, several teams — including the Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers, Washington Wizards, Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks and others — made unorthodox lineup decisions that seemed to increase their chances of losing games.
It paid off for some of them (like the Sixers, who would have lost the pick to Oklahoma City from a prior deal had they not stayed in the Top 6. Instead, they moved to third and landed potential star V.J. Edgecombe), but not for others (like the Wizards, Nets and Raptors who moved down at the lottery) and that has been the case for other teams, too.
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Teams appear to be making tank-like moves this season way earlier than what we’ve seen in the past, ahead of what’s believed to be one of the best draft classes in recent memory, one that boasts a handful of high-end talents at the top.
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ESPN reported “during Thursday’s GM meeting, Silver, the NBA office and the league’s 30 top team executives shared a desire to have ongoing discussions to safeguard the integrity of the sport. Silver was described as ‘forceful’ with his message about wanting to solve the problem that has gained steam across the league in recent weeks.”
Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia went on a rant on X late Wednesday arguing tanking was “worse than any prop bet scandal. This is throwing games strategically. Horrible for fans that pay to watch and cheer on their team. And horrible for all the real teams that are competing for playoff spots.”
This is ridiculous! Tanking is losing behavior done by losers. Purposely losing is something nobody should want to be associated with. Embarrassing for the league and for the organizations. And the talk about this as a “strategy” is ridiculous.
If you are a bad team, you get a… https://t.co/VoUx3YEdB5
— Mat Ishbia (@Mishbia15) February 19, 2026
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Ishbia also called tanking ridiculous and labelled it: “losing behavior done by losers. Purposely losing is something nobody should want to be associated with. Embarrassing for the league and for the organizations. And the talk about this as a ‘strategy’ is ridiculous.
“If you are a bad team, you get a good pick. That makes sense. But purposely shutting down players and purposely losing games is a disgrace and impacts the integrity of whole league,” he said on X.
Ishbia called it “awful behaviour” and said he had confidence Silver would fix it.
Former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had taken a different approach Tuesday, tweeting: “The NBA should worry more about fan experience than tanking. It should worry more about pricing fans out of games than tanking.”
Cuban added: “The worst that the NBA dishes out is that if you don’t lie to your fans about what you are doing, even though it’s obvious to them, you get fined. And (they) threaten you with losing picks.”
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Cuban also said his Mavericks “didn’t tank often, only a few times over 23 years, but when we did, our fans appreciated it. And it got us to where we could improve, trade up to get Luka (Doncic) and improve our team.”
WHAT MIGHT BE PROPOSED?
According to ESPN, some of the changes Silver might implement include:
Only allowing teams to place Top 4 or Top 14-plus protections on first-round draft picks (ie. not Top 2, or Top 6, or something like dual protection, Top 4 and 10-30, meaning the pick would only be conveyed if it lands 5-9. Indiana just made a deal like that to get former Los Angeles Clippers centre Ivica Zubac).
Freezing lottery odds at a certain date (like February’s trade deadline, or perhaps slightly after).
Not allowing teams to select in the Top 4 in consecutive years and/or after two straight bottom-three finishes.
Not allowing teams to select in the Top 4 a year after making a conference final (which seems like a clear shot at the Thunder).
Changing lottery odds to being based on two-year records (which is how the WNBA does its draft lottery).
Adding play-in teams to the lottery (currently 14 teams are in the lottery).
Flattening the odds for all lottery teams even more. (The system had been changed in 2017 to start with the 2019 draft. Those changes gave the three worst teams the same 14% odds of winning the lottery, instead of the 25%, 19.9% and 15.6% odds they’d had respectively previously. The team with the worst record also was able to potentially fall to the fifth pick instead of only to the fourth as had been the case before the changes were made).
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Multiple sources with knowledge of Thursday's GM meeting as well as a late January Competition Committee meeting told ESPN that the following concepts have been discussed to curb tanking:
•First-round picks can be protected only top-4 or top-14+
•Lottery odds freeze at the… https://t.co/Vk2n1cSzde
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 19, 2026
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HAS TANKING EVEN WORKED RECENTLY?
Since the NBA flattened the lottery odds there have definitely been some odd results.
Dallas moved from No. 11 to No. 1 last summer and ended up with Cooper Flagg. San Antonio jumped from eight to two, the Sixers from five to three in that same draft. The two worst teams each dropped four spots.
A year earlier, Atlanta had gone from 10 to one and Brooklyn from nine to three. Last-place Detroit fell to the fifth pick and the third- and fourth-worst teams each fell three spots (second-worst Washington landed the second pick).
In 2023, last-place Detroit fell four spots (as they would again in 2024), the third-worst Spurs jumped from three to one to get Victor Wembanyama and the fourth and fifth-worst teams both moved up two spots, with the second-worst team falling two spots.
In 2022, league-worst Houston fell two spots, as did third-worst Detroit, but second-worst Orlando won the lottery and the fourth-worst Oklahoma City Thunder ended up with the second pick.
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In 2021, Detroit jumped from two to one (to get franchise player Cade Cunningham), Houston fell a spot to second, Cleveland moved from five to three, Toronto from seven to four (nabbing franchise player Scottie Barnes) and third-worst Orlando fell to five.
In 2020, third-worst Minnesota jumped to get Anthony Edwards, their top player. League-worst Golden State fell to second, Charlotte jumped from eight to three and second-worst Cleveland fell three spots.
In 2019, the first draft under the new lottery rules, seventh-worst New Orleans leapt to one to get Zion Williamson. Memphis also jumped, from eight to two, to get Ja Morant, while NBA-worst New York dropped to three and landed RJ Barrett. That year also saw the Lakers go from 11 to four and the second, third and fourth-worst teams all fall three spots as the craziness unfolded.
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If you’re scoring at home, the NBA’s worst team (or best tanker) has not drafted first since the rules changed in 2019, while the second- or third-worst teams (with the second- or third-best lottery odds) have only picked first twice each of the seven drafts.
Before the changes, the worst team had ended up with the first pick in four straight drafts, which encouraged tanking so much, in the league’s eyes, that they had to do something about it.
This week alone, teams hoping for lottery luck like the bottom-dwelling Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks announced star players like Kyrie Irving, Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine would be shut down.
Irving was recovering from an injury, but won’t even bother to suit up (the team often also was without Anthony Davis, before he was finally traded), while Sabonis was a popular rumour mill candidate, but all of a sudden is no longer able to play?
Even though the lottery now seems a lot more random than before, it’s not enough to deter tanking, so more changes appear to be on the way.
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