Adam Silver Planning To Add Anti-Tanking Rules Next Season

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced on Thursday that the league intends to add an anti-tanking policy starting next season.

The talks of adding an anti-tanking policy intensified during its December meeting with the NBA owners. They started proposing concepts of what the policy may look like.

The concepts that have been discussed include:

• First-round draft picks can be protected only for top-four or top-14-plus selections
• Lottery odds freeze at the trade deadline or a later date
• No longer allowing a team to pick in the top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-three finishes
• Teams can’t pick in the top four the year after making the conference finals
• Lottery odds allocated based on two-year records
• Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
• Flatten odds for all lottery teams

During Thursday’s GM meetings, Silver and the league expressed interest in maintaining the integrity of the league to help combat the ongoing tanking problem.

The senior advisor to basketball operations, Mike Krzyzewski, the former Duke Blue Devils legendary head coach, gave a message saying that there should be a “tasteful” attack on the problem, and everyone involved should be ready to respond to whatever the league implements.

This comes in the wake of the NBA fining the Utah Jazz $500,000 and the Indiana Pacers $100,000 for players who were deemed healthy sitting out.