Let’s hear some ideas on how to end tanking. How about the most obvious one:
If you are a lottery team, you have a 1/14 chance of getting the first overall pick. After the first overall pick, a 1/13 chance of getting the second overall pick, and so on.
The counter-argument: Gives teams a strong incentive to tank in play-in tourneys. So perhaps in the above, after the first pick is made you get a 1/23 chance of getting the second overall pick, then a 1/22 chance of getting the third overall pick, and so on - once all lottery teams are off the board, revert the remaining picks based on record. In other words, the eight teams with the worst records who made the playoffs (visiting teams in the first-round who rarely advance anyway) still get a shot at a top five pick. Order remains unchanged for the eight best teams in the league. Yeah, it creates the unintended consequence of teams trying to squeak in as the number five seed, but ownership may not look so kindly on giving up potential playoff home team revenue. And perhaps an independent arbiter using statistical analysis can assess whether anybody does that intentionally and, if so, they automatically get the 30th overall pick as punishment (if more than one team does it, they all go to the bottom of the draft with orders determined by coin flips). That’s probably a strong enough incentive to not play that game. Perhaps all of this finally ends the scourge of tanking?
Other thoughts? Obviously any such plans would need to go into effect 7-8 years in the future so as to not affect picks that were traded under the presumption of different probable values. The value of first-rounders would obviously go way up, which could make for interesting trades/results in the future.