The NBA is trying to kick tanking to the curb, and the league’s newest draft-lottery setup is built to make losing less appealing.
Commissioner Adam Silver unveiled the changes last spring, with the goal of pushing bottom-feeding teams to keep competing deep into the 82-game regular season instead of chasing better draft odds by piling up losses. That behavior had become a familiar part of the league’s late-season landscape, with teams openly angling for position at the bottom of the standings.
The old incentives were clear enough. The more a team lost, the better its lottery position, and the better its shot at landing the No. 1 pick and a potential franchise cornerstone. The 76ers became the poster team for that approach under Sam Hinkie’s “Trust the Process” blueprint, and plenty of other franchises followed the same path.
The new system changes the math. Beginning with the 2027 draft lottery, 16 teams will be in the mix: the 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament and playoffs, the four teams that finish as the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds in each conference’s play-in field, and the two losers from the No. 7 vs. No. 8 play-in game.
The twist is in the ball distribution. The three worst teams no longer get the biggest reward.
Instead, they receive two lottery balls apiece. The seven teams that miss both the playoffs and the play-in tournament without finishing in the bottom three get three lottery balls each.
The four No. 9 and No. 10 play-in seeds get two balls apiece, while the two teams that lose the No. 7 vs. No. 8 play-in game get one ball each.
That setup is already shaping the early 2026-27 standings picture. On Thursday morning, just over two weeks into the regular season, there were five 1-7 teams in the league. Under the new rules, the Clippers, Bulls, Jazz, Bucks and Kings would all be trying to stay out of the bottom three and grab that extra third lottery ball.
There’s also a wrinkle at the top of the current West picture. The Warriors have a better record than four other teams, all in the East, but are projected to be the loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 play-in game as the current No. 8 seed in the West.
The league is calling this the “3-2-1” system, and it will be used for the next three draft lotteries - 2027, 2028 and 2029 - before the NBA decides what comes next for 2030 and beyond.
For context, the NBA’s setup is just one version of how major leagues handle draft order. The NFL does not use a lottery at all; the worst team gets the No. 1 pick unless there’s a tie, in which case the weaker strength of schedule wins the tiebreaker.
MLB gives all 18 non-playoff teams a shot at one of the top six picks, though no team can land in the top six in three straight years. The WNBA, meanwhile, has historically used a lottery for the top five picks among the five worst teams, but it is expanding to the top seven picks in 2027 because of incoming expansion teams.
This year in the WNBA, the Comets (formerly the Sun) and the Tempo are tied for the best odds at the No. 1 pick at 32.9%. The first two picks will be decided by lottery balls, while the No. 3 pick goes to the remaining team with the worst cumulative winning percentage over the past two WNBA seasons.
The same process then determines picks No. 4 through No. 7.
The NHL also uses a lottery, one that decides the first 16 picks of its draft. In 2026, the Canucks had the worst record and an 18.5% chance at the top pick, but they fell to No.
- The Maple Leafs, with an 8.5% chance, moved ahead of them, and the Sharks, at 5%, also jumped Vancouver.
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