NBA commissioner promises to fix the tank, but it’s unclear how he’ll do it

The tank issue has become a hot topic this season and Silver considers it one of the league’s biggest priorities.

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“It’s something we take very seriously,” Silver said. “And we’re going to fix it. Full stop.”

But it’s not entirely clear how Silver and the NBA’s best minds plan to fix the tank.

Last month, after a previous meeting with NBA decision-makers and the competition committee, ESPN reported that several solutions and concepts had been raised during the discussions:

• First-round draft picks can be protected only for picks in the top four or top 14 or higher.

• Lottery Odds Freeze at Trade Deadline or Later Date

• A team is no longer allowed to pick in the top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom three finishes.

• Teams cannot pick in the top four the year after reaching the conference finals.

• Lottery Odds Assigned Based on Two Year Records

• Lottery expanded to include all participating teams

• Flatten the odds for all lottery teams

The problem is that very few, if any, of these ideas would stop the stalemate and there would be unintended consequences for teams that have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the NBA.

Do these solutions make sense?

Changing the protections that teams can put on draft picks when they trade them will likely change how the trade is made and how picks are valued in those trades, but teams that have a protected top-four pick are going to do everything they can to keep it. Unless, of course, the team trading that pick is a legitimate contender, in which case the pick would finish lower in the first round.

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If the lottery odds were frozen at the trade deadline or any other date, that would simply ensure that teams collapse earlier in the season, diluting the NBA’s product from the first week of games instead of slowly inching toward collapse at the end of the NBA schedule.

Saying that a team can’t have a top-four pick in consecutive years or after consecutive bottom-three finishes or the year after reaching the conference finals assumes that all teams that finish at the bottom of the standings are tanking. But let’s represent a very plausible scenario.

The Indiana Pacers were really bad this season, in large part because their most important player, Tyrese Haliburton, was sidelined after tearing his Achilles tendon in Game 7 of last year’s Finals. The team went through a number of other injuries and also had some major roster changes during the offseason.

Does Indiana deserve to have its draft pick taken away?

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What if Haliburton returns next year, but there are significant injuries to role players on the Pacers roster? What if Haliburton doesn’t quite come into his own and the team just can’t find its footing?

Should the Pacers be penalized for injuries that change the dynamic of their team? Most people would agree that there are definitely situations where consecutive years at the bottom of the standings don’t mean a team is sinking and an appearance in the conference finals doesn’t mean a team is guaranteed a successful season next year.

Making lottery odds based on two years’ worth of records instead of a single season and reducing lottery odds for lottery teams are not solutions that will end or stop the stalemate. If anything, the previous time the league shortened the odds, in 2019, it opened the door for more teams to believe they had a chance.

Changes coming soon

The point is that as long as the NBA draft is based on records, the NBA will have to deal with the failure of some teams. It always has been. The incentive structure is built into the NBA structure.

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To that point, Silver said a solution for the tank will have to change the way teams are incentivized.

“Incentives need to be fixed. We’ll fix them,” he said, noting that gridlock is not a new problem facing the league.

Silver also noted that NBA brass had lengthy discussions on Wednesday about how to address this issue and solutions, but nothing was voted on. But he did say there was unanimous agreement that a change needs to happen soon, before the draft in June and free agency in July.

“That means we will most likely have a special board meeting in May,” Silver said. “At that time, we will vote on any modifications we come up with.”

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So, we’ll know more in May and see if the NBA has something up its sleeve that will really change the way NBA teams are incentivized and if the changes will actually be a move in the right direction for the league.