The NBA has 3 proposals to fix tanking and none of them will work

NBA commissioner Adam Silver wants to make sure that the teams in his league are doing whatever they can to avoid tanking. But it sadly won't work.

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Silver recently told reporters that the league is "going to fix it" and it will be "completely different" for future seasons. The NBA sent three "anti-tanking concepts" to the Board of Governors earlier this week, per ESPN, and the team owners are expected to vote on the rule change in May.

Here are the ideas, with modifications potentially coming, reported by Shams Charania:

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.
2. 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.
3. 18 teams in a "5 by 5" lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.

Let's take a step back for a second and avoid trying to dissect the potential benefits and unforeseen drawbacks of these complicated proposals. While some of them are difficult to understand, they all lead to the same place.

Research suggests that the best way to land an All-Star on your roster is through the NBA Draft. So long as there is an NBA Draft Lottery, teams are going to do whatever they can to rig it in their favor.

With the first proposal, flattened odds don't kill the incentive: Now 10 teams are encouraged to perform badly. For the second proposal, once a team hits the win-threshold, you've just moved the finish line instead of removing it. Then, for the third, teams will do whatever they can to reach the bottom-5 cutline to land exactly there.

As long as one draft pick can change a franchise (like Victor Wembanyama did for the Spurs), teams will have incentive to game the lottery format.

Any time there is a system that allows teams even slightly better odds to get players like AJ Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer or Darryn Peterson, teams will do what they can to manipulate their roster and cater to that.

The new proposals reward the middle instead of the bottom, and with only so many ways to improve your roster in the NBA, that means front offices will do whatever they can to create a middling roster. If players like Cooper Flagg end up on playoff teams, the bad teams will get stuck in basketball purgatory and continue to struggle, remaining a bottom-feeder for the top-tier teams.

The only real fix is eliminating the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft entirely, like the NWSL, and both are events the league will likely never give up.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: The NBA has 3 proposals to fix tanking and none of them will work

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