Mar 28, 2026
3 min read
All of the NBA's proposals would make the lottery bigger — 18 to 22 teams — and reduce the odds.
In an effort to stem the tide, Adam Silver and the NBA presented NBA owners with three different proposals that would fundamentally change and expand the NBA Draft Lottery.All three will increase the lottery to 18 to 22 teams and even out the lottery odds.In addition, the plans open the door to harsher penalties for teams that manipulate their drafts or otherwise make advances to become the face of the league, even moving the team's draft back to the end of the first round.
Those are the three comments presented to the NBA Board of Governors, a story told by ESPN's Shams Charania.
lottery concept 1
• Lottery expanded to 18 teams, 10 teams absent from postseason, plus all 8 teams participating in play-in round.
• The 10 teams that miss the play-in have an 8% chance of winning the lottery, with the other eight teams having a 5%, 3% or 2% chance depending on where they finish.
• When 18 teams participate in the lottery, only the first four spots will be drawn, after which team records will be in descending order (as is now).
Lottery Ideas 2
• The lottery has expanded to 22 teams: 10 postseason teams, eight playoff teams and four teams eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.
• Those 22 teams are ranked by their record over the past two seasons (WNBA system).For example, if a team wins 20 games this season and 30 games the previous season, it will win 25 games for lottery purposes.
Teams • will receive a minimum win total, and if they finish below that line, they will improve their record for the lottery.For example, let's say they win 22, then this season's Pacers/Nets/Wizards - who all have fewer than 22 wins - would see their records increase to 22-60 because of the lottery.The goal is to remove incentives to lose too many games.
• The first four places in the draw will be drawn as they are now and then proceed in order.
The concept of lottery 3
• The lottery has been expanded to 18 teams, the 10 teams that missed the postseason entirely, and all eight teams that made the playoffs.
• All teams with the five worst records have an 11% even chance of getting the top pick — the lottery odds for the rest of the teams are below that.
• There will be two ties.The first will be for the top five picks.There will then be a second drawing for the remaining 13 teams, and if the five teams with the worst records do not make the top five, they will be drawn.They couldn't drop further than 10.
A league source told NBC Sports that none of these are formal proposals in the sense that owners would have to vote on any of the three plans.However, owners can encourage them to combine different parts of the concept.For example, the third concept could be changed so that the system is the same as the current one, but the five worst teams are weighted equally instead of the worst three, and 18 teams are in the mix, but the top five are later eliminated, allowing for record streaks.
In addition to those proposals, the league wants commissioners to increase the power to punish a team that is considered to have manipulated its roster to the tank.Those penalties could include moving the team's pick to the end of the draft (30th in the first round) and fines of millions of dollars, according to Joe Warden at The Athletic, citing a league source.
"If you don't have hard penalties, you can still have a crazy attitude, you have to have something very hard, the team will really think twice about the tanks. If the team tries and gets caught, the other teams need to see the penalty and know it's not worth trying."
The NBA Board of Directors is scheduled to vote on these proposals before this year's NBA Draft.
Stopping the tank has been at the top of Adam Silver's to-do list for years, and he's going to use his political capital to push property owners to adopt some version of one of those proposals.Whether they will work is another question.
