It’s really quite simple: instead of basing draft order on the most recent season’s record, base it on the length of time since a team has most recently been in the playoffs (or seed a lottery accordingly). While teams may ‘tank’ within a season in hopes of improving lottery odds, I find it vanishingly improbable that a team would purposely avoid making the playoffs for successive years in hopes of landing a top pick at some point years down the line. After all, if the draft is a system to try to ‘help’ teams that have not been successful, is a 15 win franchise that is out of the playoffs for the first year in several and two years removed from a championship really in more need than the 20 win team that hasn’t seen the playoffs in 3 seasons?

Of course, this seemed more reasonable when I watched my Warriors miss out for 13 straight seasons.

I think it’s just a structure issue. While sometimes teams overvalue high first round picks in the NFL, the trend has gone away from this. One player won’t make a franchise. Even someone like LT in San Diego needs an O line or he loses so much value. and in baseball, how many times does a #1 pick actually make the pros?

hockey is more like the nba, in that picks have very high value. in that sense, perhaps it is interesting that they haven’t started a lottery. on the other hand, the lottery doesn’t really reduce the incentive to lose enough.

All this is hearsay, itll never happen because the NBA is run as a business, and its primary goal is profit.

Based on trades like the Giants trade for Eli Manning, the first pick in the draft is regularly highly coveted, but late in the NFL season when two teams ‘vying’ for that first pick are playing, there is never any material indication of tanking.

Similarly, in baseball where the top half of the draft is dramatically more successful (according to Baseball Prospectus) than the rest of the draft, you do not see signs of teams tanking at the end of the season. Again, some teams will play their younger players, as they are encouraged to do by expanded rosters, and teams that are eliminated from post-season contention do not play with the same gravitas, but you don’t get the indication that anyone is fighting for improved draft position.

And in baseball, if you get your hands on a quality player, the CBA allows you to hold a players’ rights until about age 30 (their most useful years). In football, you can hold a player’s rights for five or six years on a rookie deal (which are frequently their most useful years) with franchise tags for the most useful players. The NBA is the only league in which most a players’ useful years are enjoyed under free agent deals (even when signing with the original club). Orlando lost Shaq. The Spurs nearly lost Duncan to Orlando (by some accounts). Cleveland is already fretting losing LeBron. Kidd spent most of his years out of Dallas. In other words, the rookie deals offer NBA teams a lower percentage of their draftee’s careers than other professional drafts, yet they are the ones viewed as tanking most frequently.

No point here, other than to wonder why the other leagues do not tank games.