The NBA has changed the rules governing the NBA Draft. Beginning in 2027, the league will replace its existing draft lottery format with a new system intended to discourage teams from deliberately positioning themselves near the bottom of the standings. The move represents the NBA’s latest attempt to address an enduring tension in its competitive structure. The draft is supposed to help weaker teams rebuild. But the more valuable the reward for losing becomes, the greater the concern that teams may have an incentive to pursue draft position rather than wins.
For the NBA, the perception that teams benefit from losing threatens the credibility of the regular season and the experience of fans watching teams play out the schedule, and the evidence is mounting that tanking may be more than perception. The central question raised by the new lottery is therefore whether the league has reduced incentives to tank.
To evaluate that question, this analysis compares how a team’s competitive position translates into draft outcomes under the outgoing lottery and the NBA’s new model. It examines how the reform redistributes the likelihood of every draft position, changes access to the No. 1 selection, and alters the expected draft pick associated with different finishing outcomes.
How The New NBA Draft Lottery System Will Work
The NBA’s outgoing draft lottery included the 14 teams that did not qualify for the playoffs. Beginning with the 2027 NBA Draft, the league will replace that format with the new “3-2-1 Lottery,” expanding the field to 16 teams and changing both how lottery chances are allocated and how the draft order is determined. Under the outgoing system, only the first four picks were selected through the lottery. The remaining lottery teams were ordered by regular-season record, with the worst remaining team receiving the next available pick. The new system eliminates that partial-lottery structure: all 16 participating teams will have their lottery balls drawn to determine the order of the first 16 selections.
The “3-2-1” name refers to the number of lottery balls assigned to different categories of teams. Teams that miss both the playoffs and the Play-In Tournament receive three lottery balls, with one exception: the three teams with the worst regular-season records are “draft relegated” and receive only two balls each. The four teams that enter the Play-In Tournament as the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds also receive two balls each. The two teams that lose the No. 7-vs.-No. 8 Play-In games receive one ball each.
The result is a lottery system in which regular-season position, Play-In status and draft opportunity are linked differently than before. To understand what that means for tanking incentives, it is necessary to move beyond the structure of the rules and measure their effects: how the probability of each draft outcome changes, how the chance of securing the No. 1 pick shifts across eligibility paths and whether the expected value of finishing near the bottom of the standings has meaningfully declined.
New NBA Draft Lottery Redistributes Upside
The NBA’s new lottery format materially changes the draft value associated with different losing and Play-In outcomes. Three comparisons illustrate the shift: how the probability of receiving each individual pick changes, how the odds of receiving the No. 1 pick move across eligibility positions and how the expected draft pick changes under the new format.
The No. 1 Overall NBA Draft Pick Is No Longer The Reward For Finishing Last
The new NBA Draft lottery is most easily understood by focusing on the single most valuable outcome in the draft lottery: the No. 1 overall pick. Under the outgoing lottery system, the incentive structure at the bottom of the standings was straightforward. The three worst teams each received a 14.0% chance at the top pick, the highest odds in the lottery. From there, the probability generally declined as a team’s regular-season position improved. The new system breaks that relationship. The three worst teams’ chance of receiving the No. 1 pick falls to 5.4%, a decline of 8.6 percentage points. Instead, the highest odds now belong to the seven teams that miss the Play-In Tournament without finishing among the bottom three. Each of those positions receives an 8.1% chance at the first overall selection.
For the NBA’s anti-tanking objective, this is the clearest change in the data. The league has removed the No. 1 pick advantage previously held by its worst teams and replaced it with a structure in which falling into the bottom three is statistically disadvantageous relative to finishing just above them.
The Bottom Three Lose Value Across The NBA Draft Distribution
The change in No. 1 pick odds is only part of the reform’s impact. The heat map shows how the new lottery redistributes probability across every possible draft outcome. For the three worst records, the losses extend well beyond the first selection. In addition to their decline at No. 1, each loses 8.4 percentage points at the No. 2 pick and 6.7 points at No. 3. The team with the worst record also loses 41.9 percentage points at No. 5, and it is replaced by increased probability across picks six through 12.
Positions four through 10 experience a more mixed redistribution. Because all seven receive the same lottery-ball allocation under the new model, their draft outlooks become more similar. Teams closer to the bottom give up some prior protection, while teams nearer the Play-In gain substantially more upside. The 10th-worst position, for example, gains 4.7 percentage points at No. 2 and 4.4 points at No. 3, in addition to its increased odds at No. 1. The effect continues for the No. 9 and No. 10 Play-In seeds. The final two columns represent a new category altogether. Teams that lose the No. 7-vs.-No. 8 Play-In game now enter the lottery. Every shaded cell in those columns therefore represents newly available draft upside. The NBA Draft reform removes much of the draft-order protection previously attached to the worst records and extends meaningful lottery upside closer to the playoff line.
Expected NBA Draft Position Has Changed
Expected draft position captures the new reality facing NBA teams and summarizes the average selection a team would receive over repeated drawings. Under the outgoing system, the worse a team finished, the better its average draft outcome. The team with the worst record had an expected pick of 3.66. The second- and third-worst teams followed closely behind at 3.86 and 4.06, respectively.
The new system disrupts that relationship at the bottom of the standings. The three worst teams each fall to an expected pick of 8.01. Teams finishing fourth- through 10th-worst, as long as they miss the Play-In Tournament, instead receive a slightly better expected pick of 7.56. Compared with the outgoing model, the expected selection tied to the worst record becomes 4.35 picks worse, while the second- and third-worst positions deteriorate by 4.16 and 3.96 picks. The four No. 9 and No. 10 Play-In seeds each carry an expected selection of approximately ninth overall. The newly lottery-eligible teams that lose the No. 7-vs.-No. 8 Play-In games have an expected selection of 11.74.
This is the most comprehensive illustration of the reform’s effect on tanking incentives. Under the outgoing system, finishing closer to the bottom generally improved a team’s expected draft position. Under the new system, the league’s three worst teams no longer hold that advantage.
The League Has Made Extreme Tanking A Worse NBA Draft Strategy
The NBA’s new lottery system is designed to make the most extreme form of losing less rewarding. On that measure, the mathematical effect is clear. Under the outgoing system, a team attempting to maximize its draft position had a straightforward objective to finish among the three worst teams. Under the new system, the statistical value of pursuing the league’s worst record has been sharply reduced.
The reform does not eliminate every draft-related incentive that could influence late-season behavior. Teams near the edge of the Play-In may still weigh the value of competing for a postseason path against entering a lottery that now offers meaningful upside in the NBA Draft. The system may also create new strategic questions around staying outside the bottom three while remaining outside the Play-In. But those questions are different from the old tanking problem. The NBA has made the most obvious optimization strategy, lose enough to secure one of the worst records, materially less attractive. Whether team behavior changes accordingly will be tested over future seasons.
