SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah Jazz are exiting their rebuild at the perfect time.
Not just because fans, coaches, players, and the league as a whole have grown weary of tanking.
The Jazz are finally reversing course, aiming to climb the NBA playoff mountain rather than slide further down it, just as Commissioner Adam Silver is trying to make that pathway far more difficult.
On Friday, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported three new proposals designed to curb tanking. All three would expand the lottery, while reducing the ability of the league’s worst teams to improve their draft odds.
Explaining, and trying to simplify, the NBA’s new radical anti-tanking reform concepts for ESPN NBA Today: pic.twitter.com/qYREHgYDE2
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) March 27, 2026
Like most of Silver’s solutions, the fixes grow more convoluted with each iteration.
Those proposals highlight the league’s two biggest issues: Tanking works, and Silver has yet to find an effective way to stop it.
Tanking has helped the Utah Jazz
The Jazz have unquestionably benefited from tanking.
In 2023, Utah lost 14 of its final 20 games and was rewarded with the ninth pick, selecting Taylor Hendricks, who later became part of the trade package that brought Jaren Jackson Jr. to Salt Lake City.
In 2024, the Jazz dropped 25 of their final 30 games and used the 10th pick to select Cody Williams, who has shown flashes of improvement but has yet to fully justify his lottery status.
ACE BAILEY is the 5th-youngest player in NBA history with 3-straight 25+ point games!
The only players younger:
LeBron James
Cooper Flagg
Carmelo Anthony
Devin Booker pic.twitter.com/lnmEWPzkzZ
— NBA (@NBA) March 24, 2026
In 2025, Utah finished with the league’s worst record and, despite slipping to the fifth pick on lottery night, landed Ace Bailey, who looks like a star in the making.
Tanking is not solely responsible for the Jazz’s expected improvement next season, but it has played a significant role.
And they’re far from alone. Zooming out, nearly every NBA team has benefited at some point from the current lottery system, which heavily weights the odds in favor of the league’s worst teams.
New tanking rules aren’t fixes — and may create bigger problems
While the NBA’s proposed changes, which will be voted on by the league’s governors this summer, could alter how struggling teams approach the final months of the season, they fail to address the core issue that drives tanking.
That issue is simple: How do bad teams improve their rosters, especially those in less desirable markets?
The new rules may discourage teams from losing as often as possible, but they will not eliminate the competitive gap between the league’s best and worst teams.
In fact, the proposals are more likely to punish lower-tier franchises by making it harder to climb out of the basement after a bad season.
🏆 PLAYOFF PICTURE 🏆
▪️ ORL rises to #8 in East
The NBA Playoffs presented by @Google begin April 18th. pic.twitter.com/QQDv3pWcpS
— NBA (@NBA) March 27, 2026
The two most surprising teams in the NBA this season are the Detroit Pistons, who hold the best record in the Eastern Conference, and the Charlotte Hornets, who look capable of winning at least one playoff series.
Just two seasons ago, Detroit finished with a league-worst 14-68 record. Last season, Charlotte posted the NBA’s third-worst mark at 19-63.
Their ability to add young talent through the draft — creating a long-term foundation that later allowed for targeted veteran additions — helped both teams climb rapidly out of the league’s cellar.
The Houston Rockets helped establish that blueprint, finishing with the league’s worst record in 2022 before jumping to the Western Conference’s second-best mark last season.
The Jazz are utilizing that same strategy, and it has given the team’s fan base legitimate reason for optimism.
Had any of these teams been unable to land top-five draft talent — made possible by lottery odds that favor the league’s worst records — they may have languished for years before finding footing and returning to postseason relevance.
What will the league’s new rules actually fix?
There will be success stories under the NBA’s proposed changes. The race to finish with the league’s worst record will diminish somewhat, and teams with poor win-loss totals may bottom out more organically.
But those same teams will probably face steeper climbs back to contention, enduring prolonged stretches of mediocrity until flattened lottery odds finally break in their favor.
With the core of its roster nearing completion — and its 2027 first-round pick owed to the Memphis Grizzlies — the Jazz are positioned to avoid the consequences of Silver’s latest attempt to solve tanking.
Related: Jazz suffer key loss to hapless Washington Wizards
If Utah had not traded Hendricks for Jackson Jr., landed Bailey last season, or, likely added another top-10 pick this year, this rebuild could have stretched on for several more seasons.
The Jazz are getting out of the tanking business at the right time.
Other franchises may not be so fortunate.
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Ben Anderson is the Utah Jazz insider for KSL Sports and the co-host of Jake and Ben from 10-12p with Jake Scott on 97.5 The KSL Sports Zone . Find Ben on Twitter at @BensHoops, on Instagram @BensHoops, or on BlueSky.