NBA commissioner Adam Silver has gotten his benefactors’ wish.
The league’s Board of Governors has ratified major lottery reforms in a 29-1 vote, according to Shams Charania of ESPN. The only holdout: Memphis Grizzlies owner Robert Pera.
No doubt feeling pressure from his gambling partners, Silver looked to make sweeping changes to punish tanking for draft odds.
Charania hopped onto ESPN’s “NBA Today” with host Malika Andrews to break down some additional new rules.
Commissioner Silver has received increased authority to penalize tanking teams, per @ShamsCharania:• Fines up to $10M• Forfeiture of draft picks• Change draft picks• Change lottery odds pic.twitter.com/MoAWpUEtR6
— Underdog NBA (@UnderdogNBA) May 28, 2026It’s no secret that some of us at Bleacher Nation were deeply skeptical of these rules when they were first leaked last month. But let’s see how this all shakes out.
The big changes that Charania has confirmed so far:
The draft lottery has indeed expanded to 16 teams, and will now include the eighth seed in the playoffs. That means that, had these rules been in place this year, the Phoenix Suns and the Orlando Magic would have each had a non-zero chance of moving up and nabbing AJ Dybantsa! That is the kind of thing that absolutely will happen now, and will be met by groans in the press — even if folks are excited for these changes at the moment, watch out for that. The new lottery is set up in what Charania nicknames a “3-2-1” distribution. Now, the teams that finish with the three worst records in a given season will actually have worse lottery odds of snagging the top three picks than the teams with the fourth-through-10th-worst records. Those seven squads will all receive three lottery balls apiece. The clubs with the three worst records will earn two lottery balls. Teams with the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th-worst records will all nab one lottery ball. In another frustratingly punitive wrinkle, no team will be permitted to draft the top pick in consecutive seasons or even be allowed to draft in top five for three straight seasons. Tanking teams can be dinged for as much as $10 million. Silver will also now be permitted to remove teams’ draft picks, demote their selections or change their lottery odds.How the Bulls Should Thrive Despite Adam Silver’s New NBA Tanking Changes
Bulls owners Michael and Jerry Reinsdorf. © David Banks-Imagn ImagesOur Chicago Bulls rarely tank.
During the fraught tenure of Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, the team was just bad, but not bad enough to really contend for a top lottery pick under the old rules — until this season, when Chicago did move up to claim the No. 4 pick with just the ninth-worst record.
Former AKME-era Bulls head coach Billy Donovan, not an adherent to logic when it came to maximizing lottery odds at the time, seemed happy to push for as many wins as he could, even with deeply flawed rosters. It was confoundingly annoying to witness as a Bulls fan. Now, however, the Windy City faithful actually should be rooting for the team’s next head coach to take this exact approach with sub-par personnel.
So a deal that rewards bad teams that actually try to win games could, in theory, deeply reward the Bulls specifically. That said, this current Chicago roster is pretty darn bad. One wonders if — even after selecting pick Nos. 4, 15, 38 and 56 — the Bulls will legitimately be good enough to be able to avoid that bottom-three “relegation zone” of bad records ahead of the 2027 NBA Draft.
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