The NBA has a radical anti-tanking plan. Here are 5 predictions for how it’ll change the sport.

The NBA has circled around one proposal to suppress tanking, an issue which the league has identified as its most serious problem. The proposal, as reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania on Tuesday, has been referred to as the 3-2-1 lottery because it would create three tiers of percentages — either 8.1, 5.4, or 2.7 percent — for the now 16 teams eligible for the lottery.

As an anti-tanking measure, it should work. This proposal would create what the NBA has referred to as a “relegation zone”, which will penalize teams that finish with a bottom-three record. Those three teams would each have a 5.4 chance at each pick; teams that finish with the fourth- to 10th-worst record, meaning outside of the Play-In Tournament, would be awarded with an 8.1 percent chance at the No. 1 selection. The ninth- and 10th-place finishers would also be awarded 5.4 percent odds; the two losers of the seven-vs.-eight Play-In games would have ‘one’ lottery ball, or a 2.7 percent chance. To summarize:

• 1-3: 5.4 percent chance
• 4-10: 8.1 percent chance
• 11-14: 5.4 percent chance
• 15-16: 2.7 percent chance

The entire lottery would now be drawn based on these odds; the teams in the relegation zone could fall no lower than the No. 12 pick, per Charania’s reporting, while everyone else could tumble down all the way to No. 16. Teams also could not draft first overall in consecutive years, which happened twice last decade, and could not draft within the top five in three consecutive seasons. The NBA says this proposal has majority support to pass at next month’s board of governors meeting, where the league’s owners could implement these rules to begin next season. This proposal would expire after the 2029 draft; the NBA has clearly communicated its vision that this proposal is a temporary solution.

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We should see less flagrant tanking under these rules; these rules would successfully remove many motivations to lose games. But we will also see many other changes to how teams operate. These are seismic realignments which front offices must fundamentally adjust to. Here are some predictions about what changes this would have to how NBA executives and decision makers would adapt to this system.

Prediction #1: Some tanking will be replaced by ‘coasting’

This proposal does incentivize winning for the teams that, in past years, began seasons knowing they’d be one of the league’s worst five or six squads. There’s no longer any benefit to rosters that can’t compete at all, and teams within that relegation zone or near it will now play games in March and April where winning has real significance.

Every bad team will look more like this year’s New Orleans Pelicans, who had the league’s second-worst record on Jan. 28 but, without its first-round pick next season, were not incentivized to lose. New Orleans finished with the league’s eighth-worst record as many teams who did have those incentivizes happily passed them in the season’s final months. The Pelicans never played its prospects over its veterans, those older players played late into the season, and New Orleans even brought back Dejounte Murray to play 14 games even though he could’ve been shut down for the season due to his Achilles recovery.

The hope should be that the league’s worst teams won’t separate from the others in the lottery. But if they did, teams may still know by mid-March that they have too many wins to tumble into the bottom-three. They won’t benefit from losses, but they still won’t be incentivized to win. Thus, it’s likely we’ll still see teams shut down veterans and prioritize playing rookies, although it might happen later in the season than we saw it happen this year.

Yes, it would also change the incentives around teams like this year’s Washington Wizards; their midseason acquisitions, Trae Young and Anthony Davis, combined to play five games. It should also eliminate most instances of the ugly bench-your-starters strategies to tank that we’ve seen. But if a team with the eighth-worst record has six more wins than the team with the third-worst record with about 20 or 25 games to go, that first team will still understand how little it has left to play for.

It’s possible that undersells how competitive the end of the season would be when every team near the bottom of the standings has reasons to try. That would be this proposal’s best case scenario, that no irredeemable losing rosters emerge. The Pelicans and the Sacramento Kings, however, were two of the league’s worst teams this season despite entering this season with every intention to win. In New Orleans’ case, if every team above them had prioritized keeping them in the relegation zone this season, it’s possible that late season rise up the standings wouldn’t have happened.

Would this proposal recreate explicit tanking incentives for teams in and around the Play-In Tournament? Under the current system, teams finishing 11th and 12th have a 2.0 and 1.5 percent chance at the No. 1 overall selection. The new proposal would elevate those odds to 5.4 percent … and would increase by 2.7 percent if you finished 11th instead of 10th in your conference.

These mid-tier teams are in fantastic positions. Previously, the 10th-placed team with the worse record would have to fall to the sixth-worst record to have odds at the first overall selection that were better than an 8.1 percent chance. I’d still predict some coasting around this part of the standings: Something that isn’t explicit tanking but also has some apathetic directed at the Play-In Tournament chase. If you’re a middling team with young players, let them chase that instead of the veterans. But it’s true that the league’s most blatant tanking violations should vanish under this proposed system.

Prediction #2: The league’s worst teams will stay bad

The lower middle class, once the worst place your team could be in the league, now looks like it should be every bad team’s aim. The Miami Heats and the Chicago Bulls, teams that have regularly finished around 41 wins and made Play-In Tournaments over the past few seasons, have lottery odds designed to reward them for that. The Phoenix Suns, if this proposal applied to this year’s draft (it won’t) and they had their first-round picks, would have a 2.7 percent chance to bolster its low-ceiling team that overachieved with a high-end prospect.

The league will still have three teams that are the worst three each season, and now those teams will be punished for it. I had previously proposed something akin to this: That those three teams chose fourth, fifth, and sixth and the lottery otherwise gets conducted as normal. That would also create incentives to avoid being the worst team. This proposal punishes them more harshly than that: It’s now likelier one of these bottom three teams will pick outside the top-10 than top-three.

In other words: Next month’s lottery might be the most important lottery we’ve ever seen for teams like the Brooklyn Nets, Sacramento Kings, and Memphis Grizzlies, teams that don’t have middle-class infrastructure in place and may find it challenging to create it in the span of one offseason if they don’t have lottery luck. It means teams that were headed nowhere but could competently win 35-plus games will embrace those rosters and its renewed chances for a transformational star.

To that point: Would the Chicago Bulls have blown up their roster at this year’s trade deadline if they knew this proposal was coming? Most of their moves probably still make sense, but it’s interesting to think how this rule, if the league had decided sooner to address this problem, might’ve changed how front office have operated.

Next season’s bad teams will now be less likely to earn higher draft picks and won’t be allowed multiple lucky years. Teams that have previously drafted thrice in the top-five in recent years include the San Antonio Spurs, the Houston Rockets, the Detroit Pistons, and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Those teams even scored franchise players and remained bad in the interim. I suspect most bad franchises next season will stay bad for these rules’ three-year span. I’m not sure whether this rule will work or not, but I’m certain some franchises’ fanbases will loathe how it makes them feel stuck.

Prediction #3: Small or low-ceiling guards have new value

Chicago has the perfect point guard for the Bulls to embrace this suddenly rewarding lower-middle class. While Josh Giddey had a career season this year, there are still questions in Chicago about the ceiling of a Giddey-led team. But Chicago now understands its ceiling as a team is tied to its floor, which Giddey elevates. The same applies to a player like Trae Young, whose shotmaking decline and defense might not ever make you a contender but should ensure Washington lands in the hoped-for middle class that gives them the best chance at franchise-altering draft picks.

These players may also have renewed value. Let’s say Washington wins this year’s lottery, adds Darryn Peterson, and finishes next season as the East’s seventh- or eighth-best team. Meanwhile, let’s imagine Brooklyn has horrific lottery luck, falling out of the top-five, which means they’re destined to try again in the 2027 NBA Draft. (This is a hypothetical if only because Houston has swap rights with the Brooklyn first-rounder that year; stick with me despite that.) While contenders might not want Young, a team like Brooklyn that’s still stuck near the league’s bottom might look at a floor-raising offense-in-one player much more favorably as a means to escape the standings trap that keeps bad teams bad.

I don’t think this includes players like Cam Thomas, who simply didn’t help teams win much at all, but could increase the value of players like Shaedon Sharpe, who didn’t provide 16-game value in the team’s first-round series after averaging almost 21 points in the regular season.

All these non-Thomas players named are exceptionally good at basketball even if they’re not ones to build contenders around. It’s interesting, actually, that there may now be a new market for what these players can do even for teams who understand what they can’t.

Prediction #4: Teams will take more bets on known youth

I don’t believe this proposal will reenergize free agency, which has increasingly turned into pre-agency as players find teams willing to give them extensions before their contracts expire or work out landing spots long before each year’s July. But restricted free agency, which most teams have abandoned as a team-building plan, might attract more offer sheets for players like, say, Jalen Duren. After this first-round showing, Detroit surely doesn’t want to extend him any max offer … but would Brooklyn now be incentivized to offer him exactly that, knowing it’s most important they have known talent that can help them win even if it comes at the expense of what that player should ideally be paid?

Likewise, we’ll see more teams curious about high-ceiling players who aren’t given room to explore that on their current teams. Payton Pritchard comes to mind as a Jalen Brunson-esque candidate, who himself was a gamble made by the New York Knicks that bet Brunson could provide more than his role had been in Dallas. It’s likeliest we’ll see players like this prioritized by teams nearer the league’s bottom. It’s a chance to acquire players without overpaying for them if it works out: Because franchises will offer them contracts based on who they believe that player can become while their actual employers are more inclined to offer them only the value that they’ve provided to that team in a smaller role.

Prediction #5: Oklahoma City will get a top-five pick

This year’s postseason has already provided the Thunder a cleaner path to a repeat championship than perhaps we expected a month or two back. But the NBA’s title favorites are more suited to benefit from this proposal than almost anyone: They have a couple additional first-rounders this year and next, and they’ll likely convert some of those into more future first-rounders. Suddenly, it’s not a season from hell that teams root for when they have another team’s pick. (Pick protections will still exist, which means teams that don’t own their first-rounders still won’t have incentive to win, by the way.) Even an average, ho-hum season that ended in the Play-In Tournament might earn Oklahoma City one of the league’s best prospects.

There are other teams in these kinds of favorable positions, but I can only imagine the moral panic when Oklahoma City does land the No. 3 or 4 selection especially if they’re in the midst of a dynastic run. I bet it’ll happen.

Oklahoma City came close to have legitimate shots at that this season under the current lottery system. I don’t think this proposal changes the fact they’re a dynastic threat to the league. I do believe it’ll stop the most flagrant tanking we’ve seen from teams. I don’t think that’s what has kept fans from watching more regular season games. And, in three years, I’m unconvinced we’ll look back on this change as a success. But while it’ll have huge changes for how front offices run their teams, I don’t think it’ll make basketball look too much different than it did before.

Tim Cato is ALLCITY’s national NBA writer currently based in Dallas. He can be reached at tcato@alldlls.com or on X at @tim_cato.