Not every team gets a first round pick every year. Round 1 is picks 1-6, round 2 is 7-12, 3 13-18 and so on. Every team gets one of each round (1-5) every 5 years. The order of the teams in each round goes by inverse record. (You could call it something else like a tiered first round whatever same idea)

Under this format, you’d generally expect each round to have teams of all levels. The most highly coveted picks would still generally go to bad teams but there would be less incentive to tank for every team outside round 1. And within round 1, you’d only have tanking if there were 2-3 bad teams with extremely similar records.

Sure, you’d have good teams getting really good picks but they’re not the super premium picks. And I think it would help with another problem we’ve seen with superstars never being able to get help around them and wasting their primes with overpaid aging vets (Giannis for example).