The NBA has long been struggling with various dramas: trade sagas, playoff projections, and off-court storylines. However, on the floor, one controversy continues to simmer. Tanking, or teams intentionally losing games to improve draft lottery odds, has long frustrated league voices. As commissioner Adam Silver looks for a solution, another league has sent a message.

“No tanking. No Lottery. No nights off. Season 9 incoming,” 3v3 league BIG3’s X account posted, featuring a highlight-filled trailer for their upcoming season.

The post isn’t just hype for the upcoming season, but a pointed critique of the NBA’s system. They contrasted their own shorter, more competitive season with what some see as a structure that incentivizes losing, because by emphasizing that every game matters with no reward for losing, BIG3 directly challenges Silver and the NBA’s marquee stars, like LeBron James, to reckon with incentives they’ve tolerated.

Recent examples just show how bad things have gotten. The Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers were recently fined $500,000 and $100,000 each for resting healthy players in the fourth quarter of close games to perform worse in order to improve their lottery odds.

Despite league intervention over the last few years like flattening the odds and the play-in tournament, incentives for tanking stay embedded into the very structure of the summer offseason draft.

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In contrast, BIG3 is built to avoid these pitfalls. With a short season and a direct path into the playoffs, each matchup has stakes. In addition, there’s no draft lottery, which means that teams cannot build themselves by losing, with stars and owners alike incentivized to compete at the highest level.

Adam Silver’s NBA Weighs Eliminating the Draft as Tanking Solution

According to recent reports, Adam Silver’s NBA is looking at even the most drastic measures to end tanking, more so than fining teams or changing lottery odds even further.

“However, if Silver and his advisers decided the only way to stop tanking, and thereby protect paying customers from forking over money to watch their teams lose on purpose, was to stop the draft altogether and turn rookies into free agents, that same league official said it would get serious consideration,” The Athletic’s Joe Vardon wrote.

This would be nothing short of a structural reset, especially considering how important the draft is to the league’s functioning. It serves as the foundation of competitive balance, and removing it would fundamentally change how teams rebuild and young stars enter the league.

The irony is hard to ignore. The draft is designed to help struggling teams catch up, but now, with it increasingly incentivizing them to fall behind, the league is considering the nuclear option. Turning rookies into free agents would eliminate tanking, but also shift power into larger markets like LA or New York and into the hands of wealthier owners.

That’s what makes the timing of BIG3’s message stand out. One league is debating whether to completely restructure itself, and the other claims that it has already built the solution.