Breaking news: NBA is planning major reforms and has submitted multiple optimization proposals aimed at preventing teams from tanking.

On December 23 Beijing time, according to renowned reporter Shams, sources disclosed that following the shocking betting scandal early this season, the NBA has begun soliciting feedback from team owners and general managers on new measures to prevent teams from tanking.

At the league council meeting last Friday local time, multiple insiders stated that the league put forward several reform proposals covering draft pick protection rule revisions and lottery mechanism enhancements.

On Friday, the league introduced a series of new policies aimed at combating insider information leaks and match-fixing. Previously, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, and former NBA player Damon Jones were federally indicted. The federal complaint highlighted that injury report rules were exploited by gamblers to obtain insider information, which was linked to tanking behavior, prompting the league to intensify its crackdown on tanking.

In recent years, multiple teams have frequently rested or benched key players early to improve their draft position, often linked to protected draft picks. Sources revealed that the recent meeting discussed several preliminary ideas to prevent tanking, including—

Limiting draft pick protections to only the top four picks and those after the 14th pick, removing the controversial protections for mid-lottery draft picks;

Banning teams from securing lottery picks in the top four for two consecutive seasons;

Locking each team’s lottery position rankings after March 1st.

These proposals, put forward by league executives, theoretically aim to curb teams out of playoff contention from resting starters all season, encouraging them to compete fully during the season’s final stretch. Several sources emphasized these measures target teams deliberately adjusting rosters late in the season to chase higher draft picks or meet draft pick protection conditions, not those legitimately rebuilding with young players.

The NBA last modified the lottery rules in 2019, setting the odds for the three worst regular-season teams to each have a 14% chance at the first overall pick, with a combined 52.1% chance of landing a top-four pick. Since then, three teams outside the top five odds have won the first pick, including the Atlanta Hawks (10th odds) and Dallas Mavericks (11th odds) achieving this feat in the past two seasons.

Besides the anti-tanking proposals, the league also presented the council with recent examples where protected draft picks influenced teams’ end-of-season performances.A striking case occurred in April 2023: the Mavericks, theoretically still able to reach the play-in tournament, rested Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić in the final regular-season game against the San Antonio Spurs to protect a top-10 protected 2023 first-round pick owed to the New York Knicks. Previously against the Chicago Bulls, Irving did not play and Dončić only logged 12 minutes. The Mavericks lost both games.

The Mavericks were fined $750,000 for actions harming the league’s interests but retained the draft pick. They later traded it with the Oklahoma City Thunder, moving the pick down two spots and ultimately selecting Drake Levell II at number 12.

Last season, the Philadelphia 76ers, aiming for a championship, successfully preserved a top-six protected pick owed to the Thunder. The team lost 29 of its last 37 games, finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record and entering the lottery, where they improved their position by two spots and selected guard VJ Echikum third overall. This pick is top-four protected in the 2026 draft; currently, the 76ers hold a 16-11 record, with the pick projected around 21st, and Echikum averaging 16 points per game this season.

In March last year, the Utah Jazz were fined $100,000 for resting star Lauri Markkanen in multiple games. The Jazz lost 21 of their final 23 games. At the June press conference, new basketball operations president Austin Ainge was asked if the team would manipulate player minutes or performance to tank; he responded, “That absolutely will not happen this year.”

However, due to a 2021 trade with the Thunder to clear Derrick Favors’ contract, the Jazz must send a top-eight protected pick to Oklahoma City. The league is closely watching the Jazz’s moves this season. The pick was top-10 protected the past two seasons, and the Jazz successfully kept it. Currently, the Jazz hold the eighth-worst record; if a team surpasses them in the lottery, they risk losing this pick.

In the sports betting lawsuit involving Rozier and Jones, prosecutors mentioned an unnamed accomplice whose description closely matches Billups. This accomplice allegedly informed a gambler that the Trail Blazers began tanking in March 2023, with several players missing a game that month. At that time, the Blazers were 32-40, losing 9 of their final 10 games and finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record.

The league’s newly implemented injury report policy showed initial results on Tuesday.The new rule requires teams to submit injury lists between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. local time on game days and update public injury reports every 15 minutes on the NBA website, instead of the previous hourly updates.

Before the Utah Jazz vs. Denver Nuggets game, Markkanen’s injury status was upgraded from “questionable” to “probable” at noon; before the Dallas Mavericks vs. New Orleans Pelicans game, Klay Thompson’s status changed from “questionable” to “likely to play”; and before the Charlotte Hornets’ away game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, LaMelo Ball’s status was raised from “likely to play” to “probable,” while two other players’ statuses were downgraded to “out.”

Conversely, in the Sunday game between the Mavericks and 76ers, before the new injury report rule took effect, the Mavericks only updated Thompson’s status from “questionable” to “likely to play” at 5:15 p.m. and 5:31 p.m., then later changed it to “probable.”