NBA Commissioner Adam Silver calls it "rebuilding."

That's what the league's new boss said Wednesday when asked whether the NBA needed to do more to discourage teams from pinning their hopes on the draft lottery. Limiting the definition of tanking — at one point referring to it as "the T-word" — to intentionally losing individual games, Silver says he doesn't think it exists.

"The coaches and players, or some subset of that group, trying to lose, I don't think that's going on anywhere in the NBA," he told reporters after a speech to the Chief Executives' Club of Boston at a downtown hotel. "And I would take action immediately if I thought it was."

Silver didn't rule out changes that would eliminate the perception that teams aren't trying to win.

"We have a system in place that encourages teams to rebuild," he said after the talk sponsored by Boston College in the hometown of the Celtics, who are among the league's rebuilding teams. ""They are responding to the incentives that are built into the system. If the incentives aren't right, we have to change them."

The year's draft is expected to be stocked with superstars like Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker, giving teams the hope that they will land a franchise player to lead them out of the lottery.

So when the Celtics traded away Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce — and even let coach Doc Rivers walk — they could at least hope that help would be coming soon. Same for the Philadelphia 76ers, who after traded away Spencer Hawes and former No. 2 overall pick Evan Turner in February had lost 17 games in a row heading into Wednesday night.

Silver noted that winning the draft lottery is no guarantee of getting back to the playoffs. And he added that having the worst record only gives a team a one-in-four chance of landing the first pick (though this year, with a deeper draft of potential superstars, the team with the worst record would be guaranteed the chance to pick one of them).

Silver said that as long as the players and coaches on the floor are trying to win games, he doesn't have a problem with organizations trying to rebuild. Asked if fans were getting their money's worth for season's worth of games in which their team was hoping to lose, he said fans are usually patient if they think the lottery will pay off.

"Fans want to be part of a vision," Silver said.