NBA commissioner Adam Silver informed all general managers Thursday that the league plans to institute rule changes to combat tanking next season, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania.
A competition committee meeting in late January and Thursday's gathering of the NBA's 30 GMs reportedly discussed several potential measures to solve tanking, Charania added.
The proposals reportedly included limiting first-round pick protections to top-four or top-14-plus protected; freezing the lottery odds at the trade deadline or a later date; flattening the odds for all lottery teams; adjusting the lottery odds based on a team's two-year record; and extending the draft lottery to include all play-in teams rather than half of them.
The WNBA currently bases teams' draft lottery odds on their cumulative record from the past two regular seasons.
The NBA and executives also reportedly discussed restricting teams from picking in the top four in consecutive years and preventing teams that reached the conference finals or better from selecting in the top four the following year.
Silver revealed at NBA All-Star Weekend that a number of options were on the table in an attempt to curb tanking.
The league recently handed out hefty fines to the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers for violating the player participation policy.
