Five ways new NBA lottery rules could impact this season

This NBA season, for the first time, teams can't win by losing. After a tanktastic 2025-26 campaign, the league has instituted a new draft lottery setup with several new features, including: Flat lottery odds for the teams with the fourth- through 10th-worst records A "relegation zone" in which the three worst teams get worse odds of landing a top pick A lottery that draws each of the first 16 picks, rather than just the first four from the old system This new setup will invariably produce plenty of ripple effects as teams respond to new incentives with new behaviors. Exactly how much things will change, and how these anti-tanking measures might alter transactional decisions such as the trade and buyout markets, remains to be seen. But for now, here are five predictions for how the new rules will affect on-court outcomes in the 2026-27 season. Fewer blowouts In the 2025-26 regular season, 281 games were decided by at least 20 points, which broke the record of 259 set just one year earlier ... which broke the record of 235 set just one year before that ... which broke the record of 232 set just two years before that. On a percentage basis, last season set a record, too. On a percentage basis, last season set a record, too, as 22% of games were blowouts. If you rank every season in NBA history by the proportion of games decided by 20-plus points, five of the top six have come since 2021. While the leaguewide blowout rate remained relatively consistent through the first 70-plus years of NBA history, it has skyrocketed in the 2020s. Several factors explain this sudden rise, including the increased variance of 3-pointers and a general rise in offense; it's easier to win by 20 points when the average team scores 115 points per game instead of 95. But when scoring was also high in the 1960s and 1980s, blowout rates in those decades weren't close to where they are now. Instead, it appears that teams' modern approach to late-season games has skewed competitiveness. The NBA's blowout rate increased considerably as the 2025-26 season went on, especially in games involving tanking teams. From the start of February through the end of the season, a full third of games involving the NBA's worst teams ended with at least a 20-point margin. Now that the league's cellar-dwellers no longer have an incentive to keep losing -- and in fact might have an incentive to win games to avoid the relegation zone -- the blowout rate should theoretically stop spiking in February, March and April. Broader increases in competitiveness could also make the league's best teams look a little less dominant. In the 2024-25 season, when the Thunder set an NBA record with a plus-12.9 point differential, they received a big boost from competition that wasn't trying to win. The Thunder were plus-10.5 against non-tanking teams and a whopping plus-22.6 against that season's tankers, with five of their seven largest wins -- which were all by 33 points or more -- coming against teams that preferred to lose. A relatively unchanged offensive environment One of my first impulses when brainstorming the potential ripple effects of the new lottery rules was that scoring might decrease across the league, on average, now that there won't be uncompetitive defenses to torch on a nightly basis. One of last season's standout games was the Miami Heat's 150-129 win over the Washington Wizards on March 10, as Bam Adebayo scored 83 points against the worst team in the league. Zooming out, the NBA's bottom nine defenses last season all belonged to teams that lost 50-plus games. And the three worst defenses were the Wizards, Jazz and Kings, who all lost at least 60 games while allowing more than 120 points per 100 possessions. According to Stathead, those teams had the three highest defensive ratings in NBA history. Indeed, if you remove the six teams that seemed to most desperately want losses by the end of last season -- the Wizards, Pacers, Nets, Jazz, Kings and Grizzlies -- the average of the other 24 teams' defensive ratings would have improved by 1.2 points. But at the same time, the average offensive rating would have improved by a similar 1.0 points. After all, the three worst offensive ratings last season belonged to the Nets, Wizards and Pacers, who all lost more than 60 games, as well. And the nine worst offenses belonged to teams that lost 50-plus games, too. It turns out that not trying to win made teams almost equally bad at both offense and defense, so forcing all those teams to flip a switch should have a relatively neutral effect on leaguewide offensive totals. More compressed standings As some teams raced to accumulate as many losses as possible last season -- all for the purpose of improving their lottery odds -- their opponents who wished to make the playoffs all picked up plenty of "free" wins. Fittingly, a record 19 teams finished with winning records last season. For some of those teams that snuck above .500, that feat was only possible because they beat up on the league's worst teams. The Trail Blazers, for instance, won just 41% of their games against non-tanking opposition, but went 16-2 against the six bottom-feeders to finish 42-40 overall. The 76ers won 44% of their games against other opponents but went 17-1 against the tankers, en route to a 45-37 finish. The Clippers, Hornets, Suns, Heat, Hawks, Magic and Raptors all went from below-.500 to above because they racked up wins against teams that weren't really trying to beat them. And even if there will always be vast differences between the NBA's wheat and chaff in any given season, those gaps shouldn't be as extreme under the new lottery setup. Even if the bottom six teams had all won just five more games apiece last season -- meaning they still would have lost 50-plus games and been well outside the playoff picture -- there would have been 30 fewer wins to go around for the teams in the middle and top of the standings. Put another way, the 37-45 Warriors were the only team that finished with between 32 and 43 wins last season. There will likely be many more teams stuck in that middle ground this year. More familiar late-season rosters One of the main ways that teams have tried to plummet down the standings is to shut down their stars and rely on unproven, relatively anonymous players down the stretch. That practice reached overdrive last season. Out of the 11 players on the Jazz and Grizzlies who averaged at least 30 minutes per game in April, seven were on 10-day contracts: Utah's Bez Mbeng and Kennedy Chandler, and Memphis' Rayan Rupert, Toby Okani, Lucas Williamson, Dariq Whitehead and Adama Bal. Also in April, two-way player Ethan Thompson led the Pacers in minutes, while Malachi Smith (on a 10-day contract) and Tyson Etienne (on a two-way contract) led the Nets. Under the new lottery structure, however, teams won't need to resort to such roster shenanigans to improve their lottery odds by fractions of percentage points. They might still prefer to ramp up youngsters' playing time in March and April as they focus more on development, but that shift should be much subtler now, and involve actual prospects rather than fungible, fringe NBA talent on 10-day deals. That change will hurt the Mbengs and Ruperts of the world, who won't have a route to 30 minutes a night anymore. But it's probably a win for fans who will be more familiar with, and connected to, the players they're watching. Some teams still not trying to win, regardless Despite the NBA's best efforts, it's unlikely that all 30 teams will have a steadfast devotion to winning every game this season. The problem is that some of the squads with the worst projections don't control their own 2027 first-round selections, so they won't have the same strong motivation to clinch the best lottery odds. The Clippers owe their pick, via swap, to the Thunder. The Bucks owe their pick to the Pelicans or Hawks. And the Nets owe their pick, via swap, to the Rockets. If those teams linger near the bottom of the standings, they won't have any reason to win frequently enough to escape the relegation zone. If anything, a non-playoff team that doesn't control its own pick might be incentivized to lose to stay in the relegation zone. Beyond the reconfiguration of the lottery odds, the new rules also prohibit teams from winning back-to-back lotteries or picking inside the top five for three consecutive drafts, which could encourage bad behavior. Let's use the Nets as an example. If Brooklyn is a run-of-the-mill bad team this season, it could land the No. 1 pick but have to send it to Houston, and then be prevented from landing the top pick again in 2028. However, if the Nets target the relegation zone, their odds of winning the No. 1 pick in 2027 will be lower, which could benefit them in future lotteries when they control their own pick again. That sort of double-reverse tanking possibility won't be nearly as common or widespread as more straightforward tanking motivations in the past, but it still lingers. All in all, the new lottery system will likely produce more competitive, watchable basketball down the stretch this spring -- but it won't be a perfect solution right away.