In the short term, the Portland Trail Blazers are set to benefit from the number of teams around the league that are tanking. Their weak strength of schedule to finish the season is coming at a perfect time as they look to improve their seeding and build momentum heading into the Play-In Tournament. Still, this is a team that has patiently rebuilt its roster as it continues to prioritize its future.
One major reason that the future outlook is promising is the blockbuster Damian Lillard trade. The Milwaukee Bucks' roster is crumbling, and they could potentially find themselves without superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, with trade rumors inevitably picking back up in the offseason. As a result, the draft capital Portland acquired from the Lillard blockbuster (a 2029 first-round pick and swaps in 2028 and 2030) is projected to be among the most valuable assets in the league.
However, the NBA's overreaction to the tanking problem could negatively impact Portland's return, limiting its rebuild ceiling in the process.
Blazers' path to contention lies in the value of the Bucks' picks
The league recently proposed three "comprehensive anti-tanking concepts," per ESPN's Shams Charania. None of them seem to incentivize winning, with perhaps the exception of the second proposal:
"22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of the lottery, as is currently."
But even then, the idea of including 22 teams in a lottery is unnecessarily complicated. It's true: whether you want to admit it or not, tanking is a problem in the NBA. But Adam Silver is trying way too hard to solve it, likely making the issue even worse.
It's also making the NBA landscape unfair for teams like Portland, in particular, who are so reliant on another team's future draft capital as their most realistic pathway to contention.
These proposals were predictably not received well by NBA Twitter. Sam Quinn of CBS Sports even specifically mentioned the Blazers as a team that would get hurt by these proposals:
"I feel for teams that traded for future draft picks right now. Take Portland. The asset package they got back when they traded a franchise icon in Damian Lillard was built almost entirely around draft picks that will convey after a rule change they couldn't have known about then."
The silver lining is that the Blazers' roster is in good shape regardless of how this plays out. They are already a borderline playoff team in large part thanks to the ascension of their youth. The tanking odds don't really matter to them directly, as their building blocks have proven too good for this team to bottom out.
But these questionable, overly complicated proposals could prove to be poor timing for Portland, as they have yet to cash in on the most significant assets of their entire rebuild.