The NBA is headed toward its most significant draft lottery changes in decades, with owners set to vote May 28 on a 3-2-1 proposal that would reshape how the league treats its worst teams. If the Board of Governors approves the plan, the changes would start with the 2027 draft.
The proposal was first shown to teams in an April 28 virtual meeting with general managers, and it would widen the lottery from 14 teams to 16 while putting 37 balls into the draw for the top 16 picks. Under the new system, the three worst teams would each get two balls after losing one as a penalty tied to the relegation tier, and none of those teams could fall lower than 12th. Teams slotted Nos. 4-10 in the lottery standings would get three balls each, the ninth and 10th teams in the Play-In Tournament would get two balls apiece, and the losers of the 7-8 matchup would get one ball each.
The biggest change is the math at the top. The best shot any team would have to win the lottery would be 8.1 percent, down from the current 14 percent and far below the 25 percent chance in the previous version of the lottery. At least 23 of the league’s 30 governors must approve the change for it to pass, and league executives are already debating whether it would solve tanking or simply change the way teams chase the bottom.
That debate has only sharpened in recent days. Last week at the draft combine, team executives were polled about the reform, and on Monday at the NBA’s most recent general managers’ meeting, concern was raised that the bottom-three teams could linger in the lottery longer under the new setup. Some executives believe a strong draft class helped drive the push for reform, while Commissioner Adam Silver has made clear he wants a fix for tanking. The tension is that the league may be trying to punish losing without creating a new trap for the teams already stuck at the bottom.
“Teams that aren’t trying to tank will then get penalized,” one front office staffer said. Another assistant general manager was even blunter: “They’re hellbent on doing this,” he said. That is the core of the fight now. The NBA has spent years trying to reduce incentives to lose, and this proposal would go farther than past tweaks by limiting the downside for the worst teams while spreading lottery chances more broadly across the middle of the pack.
The vote on May 28 should show whether enough governors are willing to take that risk. If the measure clears the required 23 votes, the league will have chosen a new way to police tanking — and accepted that the fix may come with a cost for the teams it already says it wants to protect.
