The NBA Board of Governors approved a radical change to the draft lottery system, which is officially known as the “3, 2, 1 Lottery.” The primary objective of this measure is to completely eliminate the incentives that teams have to purposely lose games, commonly referred to as “tanking,” in order to secure the highest draft picks for new talent.
This new system will take effect starting with the 2027 NBA Draft and will initially apply to the 2027, 2028, and 2029 editions. The lottery expands from 14 to 16 teams, shifting from complex mathematical percentages to a simplified system where participating teams receive a specific number of lottery balls.
Teams that fail to qualify for the playoffs or the Play-In tournament will receive three lottery balls each, but the three teams with the worst records will face a “draft relegation” penalty and lose one ball, leaving them with only two balls to remove the reward for finishing last. The distribution of the lottery balls is structured as follows:
- Three balls: Allocated to teams that completely miss the postseason and the Play-In tournament.
- Two balls: Allocated to the ninth and tenth seeds of the Play-In tournament in each conference, and the three worst rosters.
- One ball: Allocated to the losing teams of the seventh versus eighth seed Play-In games in each conference.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Full lottery drawing
In the previous system, the lottery drawing only determined the top four selections, while the remaining positions were automatically ordered based on the worst records of wins and losses.
Under the new “3, 2, 1 Lottery” format, the drawing will completely determine the order of selection for all of the first 16 draft picks in the first round. The entire order of these selections will depend entirely on the random chance of which lottery balls are drawn from the machine.
Draft pick floors
To protect franchises that are legitimately performing poorly without intentionally losing games, the new system establishes strict limits on how far teams can drop if they face bad luck during the drawing.
The teams with the three worst records, who are penalized with two lottery balls, are guaranteed to receive, at worst, the number 12 pick. All other participating lottery teams can only fall as far down as the number 16 pick in the overall draft order.
Pick restrictions and trade protections
To prevent a single franchise from accumulating the best young prospects in consecutive years, the league implements strict rules regarding original draft picks, stating that no team can hold the number 1 selection in two consecutive drafts.
Additionally, teams will not be permitted to secure top five draft picks in three consecutive years, regardless of whether they kept the selections or traded them to other franchises. Furthermore, franchises will be completely prohibited from attaching top 12 through top 15 protections to any newly traded draft picks in the market.
League discipline and anti-tanking measures
The NBA league office will possess expanded disciplinary authority to closely investigate franchises, allowing the league to reduce lottery odds, alter draft positions, and impose significant financial fines if teams are caught intentionally losing games.
