Nobody wants to promote tanking.
And with the new lottery format, the benefits of purposely losing have dwindled significantly. Sure, last season’s Pelicans got rewarded with Zion Williamson after benching their best player in the fourth quarter for the last two and a half months, but they also finished tied for the seventh-worst record. Meaning, there were six teams who lost more games then New Orleans and two others that lost just as many and did not get Zion Williamson.
Long story short, the lottery is a bigger crap shoot than ever and it has created way less incentive to tanking.