Plan to End Tanking in the NBA

 New Anti-Tanking Draft Rules

• The 4 Play-in losers automotatically get picks 11-14
• 4 2nd round losers automatically get picks 7-10
• 8 First round losers and 10 non-playoff teams go into the lottery and draw the top 6 picks. The remaining 12 teams will pick 15-26
• Conference finals teams automatically get picks 27-30

Teams in each of the picks brackets after the top 6 lottery picks  are in order of best record, instead of inverse order as now. So every game of the season  does count for something. 


You can’t win a top 6 pick in the lottery 3 years in a row. (The Spurs rule) 


So the obvious concern with this system would be that a team playing in the 2nd round might throw the series for a top 10 draft pick. So let’s say this year the Spurs are playing the Nuggets in the 2-3 matchup. Denver is trying to win while Jokic is in his prime. But the Spurs could say, we have Wemby and a young core, our championship window is 10 years, let’s bow out now for one more high draft pick. I think that only happens if Wemby is injuried. Of course if Wemby is injured, then the Spurs would be expected to lose, so it might not make a difference.  The issue would be if Jokic and Wemby both went down and neither team wanted to face the Thunder  in the conference finals with out their best player, so they both try and throw the series. That would be bad. Like a horrendously ugly blight on the league. I can’t over state how bad that would be be. But I would say it is unlikely for 3 reasons. 

1. Players and coaches don’t think of tanking the way organizations or fans do. So it is unlikely that players would play bad on purpose. Winning matters to their legacies and bank accounts. They won’t purposely throw a games for future draft picks when their is no guarantee they will even be on this team next year. They will try to win while they can. 
2. Tanking in the regular season works because there are so many random games that the scrutiny is not there all the time, I mean  somebody has got to lose every game right? In the playoffs the intense scrutiny of every play and every coaching  decision should prevent any concerted effort to throw a game. 
3. And the Commissioner could always penalize a team suspected of throwing a series by confiscating their draft picks. So that removes any incentive to try and throw a 2nd round series. 

One more provision to help a team that makes the playoffs but has no lottery luck is to give them the hope to buy more talent……
 If you have picked outside the top 10, and not advanced out of the first round in 3 consecutive years, and are a receiving team in revenue sharing, and you have the cap space, you can petition the commissioner for a waiver that allows you to offer a Supermax contract to a free angent. 
This is actually the more dangerous idea because teams absolutely would long term plan to be mediocre for 3 years until a certain free agent is scheduled to come the market