NEW YORK — NBA commissioner Adam Silver made it clear Wednesday that fixing tanking is his top priority and that there will be fundamental changes to the league’s draft system to try to prevent it from happening moving forward.
“I do think ultimately this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level,” Silver said following a two-day NBA board of governors meeting. “It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league.
“So, it’s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop.”
The tanking issue has escalated this season because of the loaded 2026 NBA draft class and because, as Silver pointed out, the incentives currently in place push teams in the lottery to do whatever they can to maximize their chances of getting lucky in the NBA’s draft lottery each spring.
In a move that underscores the urgency of the situation, Silver said the NBA will hold a special board of governors meeting in May to address the problem so teams are aware of what the rules will be ahead of the offseason.
“Certainly going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now,” Silver said.
The commissioner noted that it is difficult to tell whether teams are legitimately bad and rebuilding or they are gaming the system to try to artificially improve their draft positioning.
“There is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild, a rebuild with integrity,” Silver said. “The problem we’re having these days is it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.”
“There’s such a subtlety to this when incentives don’t match, when we’re now into it with coaches’ decisions on lineups and when players come in and out of the game, injuries, doctors going back and forth with each other, pain levels of players,” he continued, “that my sense is when I say fix now, yes, we need to do something more extreme than we did with those incremental changes the last four times along.
“I will say, I really like where the league is right now because I’m sorry to have to talk about tanking because it takes away from the incredible competition we’re seeing from roughly 20 teams in the league right now going into a wide-open playoffs … It’s really exciting basketball. And what’s so incredible about live sports at this level — and I think it’s wide, not just the NBA, but we’re seeing a rising tide among all premium sports — is that people have this hunger for this live, unscripted drama. Of course, the opposite of that is when there’s a sense that both teams aren’t out there trying to kill themselves to win a game. And so as I said, we have to fix that problem.”
Silver left open the possibility that in addition to whatever changes are made at the May board of governors meeting, further ones could come when the collective bargaining agreement is revisited as the current deal gets closer to expiring toward the end of the decade.
Also Wednesday:
• Silver addressed a pair of statements that the National Basketball Players Association put out Tuesday.
One was regarding Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo and his desire to return to play for Milwaukee this season despite a left knee injury that has sidelined him since March 15.
Silver said before the NBPA issued its statement, the league didn’t know anything about the matter.
“We knew Giannis was injured,” Silver said. “He was within the sort of usual period it was taken to come back from that injury. So, I was a bit surprised by that press release.”
He later added the league will look into the matter but that so far it had yet to hear from Antetokounmpo himself about it.
The other NBPA statement was regarding Detroit Pistons star Cade Cunningham and the 65-game requirement for end-of-season awards. Cunningham will miss the rest of the regular season with a collapsed lung and as a result will be ineligible for any of those awards.
Silver said he sympathized with Cunningham and his injury but believes the rule is working as intended.
“A few years ago when I was standing in front of all of you, you weren’t asking me about tanking, you were asking about load management,” he said. “And you were saying, ‘What in the world are you guys going to do about the fact that star players aren’t playing enough games?’ And we did a number of things, but one of the things we did in agreement with the players association was to put in place a 65-game rule to ensure that to be eligible to be MVP or All-NBA or All-Defense that you needed to play those 65 games. We always knew when there’s a line you draw that somebody’s going to fall on the other side of that line and it may feel unfair in that particular instance.
“I think [the rule] is working. I think if you look at the numbers pre-implementation of this rule, numbers were going in the wrong direction … There’s always new issues, but I’m not ready to say standing here today that because there may be a sense of unfairness for one player, that means the rule doesn’t work.”
• Silver said he has yet to have discussions with the WNBA Board of Governors over whether commissioner Cathy Engelbert will remain in the job after this year.
“I would only say Cathy’s done a fantastic job since she’s come to WNBA,” Silver said. “I mean, obviously you can see just in the results, but I haven’t had those discussions recently with Cathy and even in terms of her future plans and how long she wants to do this. She had a storied career before she came to the WNBA as a CEO at Deloitte, but I would say the results speak for themselves. I’m very happy and I know that ownership is very happy with where things stand.”
