In 2017, Silver had seen enough tanking in his league and decided that something ought to be done about it. As a consequence, the NBA’s Board of Governors implemented a new lottery system to be debuted in 2019 which evened the odds of obtaining a first overall pick between the bottom three teams, increased odds at a top pick for the more successful lottery teams, and increased the number of drawings from three to four. The Chicago Bulls were directly impacted through this change.
The commissioner hoped that this new initiative would cause teams to put forth their best efforts on a nightly basis, which would help keep the league more competitive and keep ratings up.