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2025-2026 Tank Race Prediction Contest and Current Results Thread

Handlogten's Heros said:
This is where Austin Ainge should have kept his mouth shut on not manipulating the schedule. Its time to get shady... sorry. No room for ethics if you want to straddle both sides of the fence.
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We'll probably be fine....but we're likely looking at that 5-8 range which is too close for comfort. And even then....higher is better. We have to make some sacrifices. Let's say you don't want to trade Lauri and don't want to do fake injuries....OK well can you play Cody Williams? Do you have to give Svi 30 minutes a night? Does Lauri have to play B2B and average a career high in minutes? There are little things that aren't blatant tanking that would put the franchise in a better position. I can almost guarantee you we'll start doing them at some point and when it happens we'll say "why did it take until now".

I keep going back to this, but those half and half years really sucked. If this was a video game situation, sure, time is infinite and you can always just tank hard later. But in the real world human patience is a thing, and we used up a lot of patience from players, coaches, ownership, fans etc. during those first two years. It's going to make an impact on our decision making going forward. I think we've already seen impatience creeping in beyond the press conference.
 
KqWIN said:
We'll probably be fine....but we're likely looking at that 5-8 range which is too close for comfort. And even then....higher is better. We have to make some sacrifices. Let's say you don't want to trade Lauri and don't want to do fake injuries....OK well can you play Cody Williams? Do you have to give Svi 30 minutes a night? Does Lauri have to play B2B and average a career high in minutes? There are little things that aren't blatant tanking that would put the franchise in a better position. I can almost guarantee you we'll start doing them at some point and when it happens we'll say "why did it take until now".

I keep going back to this, but those half and half years really sucked. If this was a video game situation, sure, time is infinite and you can always just tank hard later. But in the real world human patience is a thing, and we used up a lot of patience from players, coaches, ownership, fans etc. during those first two years. It's going to make an impact on our decision making going forward. I think we've already seen impatience creeping in beyond the press conference.
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the tank race is also getting more crowded more quickly than anticipated. All of a sudden Dallas and Sacramento looked in the mirror and now look like they could really go hard. When everyone is trying to lose that's when the drastic actions catch the eye of the league. Doing small things early in the season to swing a game or two for a head start is the smart stealth tank.

Yes... Lauri should play a couple less minutes. Svi should be in the Kevin Love vet minute range. Hardy is coaching to win and everyone is spinning it as some master plan.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
the tank race is also getting more crowded more quickly than anticipated. All of a sudden Dallas and Sacramento looked in the mirror and now look like they could really go hard. When everyone is trying to lose that's when the drastic actions catch the eye of the league. Doing small things early in the season to swing a game or two for a head start is the smart stealth tank.

Yes... Lauri should play a couple less minutes. Svi should be in the Kevin Love vet minute range. Hardy is coaching to win and everyone is spinning it as some master plan.
Click to expand...

Careful, you don't want to suggest that around these parts lol
 
Hey everyone. With so much chatter lately about the Jazz’s 2026 draft pick situation and what level of “tanking” might actually be necessary to keep it, I wanted to step back and take a more systematic look at where things stand to ground the discussion in some numbers and realistic scenarios about how the league’s bottom tier is shaping up.
Quick refresh, just in case anyone here isn’t up on the situation: Utah’s 2026 first-round pick is top-8 protected; if it lands 9th or worse, it conveys to OKC. This makes finishing among the league’s bottom-4 the only surefire path to keeping the pick. If we finish with the 5th–7th worst record, then we enter the danger zone, but still reasonably comfortable. If we finish with the 8th-14th worst record, our only course is to pray to the lottery gods.
Below is the lottery math we need to consider (rounded Tankathon odds by seed). The rightmost column is the chance of finishing top-8 (i.e., keeping the pick):
Seed (Worst Record)​
Pick #1​
Pick #2​
Pick #3​
Pick #4​
Pick #5​
Pick #6​
Pick #7​
Pick #8​
Chance to Keep Pick (Top-8)​
5th10.5%10.5%10.6%10.5%2.2%19.6%26.7%8.7%99.3%
6th9.0%9.2%9.4%9.6%—8.6%29.8%20.5%96.1%
7th7.5%7.8%8.1%8.5%——19.7%34.1%85.7%
8th6.0%6.3%6.7%7.2%———34.5%61.7%
9th4.5%4.8%5.2%5.7%————20.2%
10th3.0%3.3%3.6%4.0%————13.9%
Now, a review of the current NBA landscape. Brooklyn and Washington are highly likely to finish worse than Utah; they’re the two teams you can almost certainly pencil in below us, meaning that we will finish with, at best, the third-worst record. Sacramento looks increasingly likely to join them (due to roster dysfunction, front-office noise, and increasing pressure to blow it up), while Memphis remains a wild card. If Ja Morant & the Grizzlies resolve things, they’ll likely climb in the standings. If, however, they decide to move on from Ja, something that appears increasingly likely, the odds are reasonable that they’ll finish below the Jazz.
Indiana, Dallas, and Boston have injured players and are the “could go either way” group. Once Indiana and Dallas improve their health (i.e., Davis will return for Dallas, while Irving may return, and Mathurin and Toppin will eventually return for Indiana), they will likely improve. Boston appears committed to trying to win so far, but it’s not implausible that this commitment may change. If injuries and losses continue to mount for Dallas and Indiana, and losses continue to mount for Boston, one, two, or all three may eventually decide to tank the season. In my view, the likelihood is highest for Indiana, followed by Dallas and Boston.
New Orleans and Charlotte are talent-poor, bottom-tier teams; however, both appear to be making an effort to win. Indeed, New Orleans has no draft pick in 2026 and thus no incentive to tank. However, they are a struggling team reliant on a brittle “superstar” and plagued by organizational dysfunction. I sense that Charlotte is tired of tanking/losing and is incentivized to begin turning things around this season, IF Miller and Ball can remain healthy (big ifs)/
The Clippers have looked overrated, are aging, and are dependent on an utterly unreliable, brittle superstar. However, they are largely comprised of solid, if old veteran talent. Their baseline appears higher than their current performance indicates.
Taking all of the above into account, the table below assigns each of the above teams into one of five categories related to their likelihood of finishing below the Jazz: Highly Likely, Likely, Possibly, Less Likely, Unlikely.


Likelihood of Finishing Below the Jazz ​

Category​
Teams​
Rationale​
Highly LikelyBrooklyn, WashingtonBoth teams are terrible, openly non-competitive, and structurally incapable of midseason improvement. They are virtual locks to finish with worse records than Utah.
LikelySacramento, New OrleansSacramento is a mess with poor talent, a bad start, and high blow-it-up potential. New Orleans is chronically injured, dysfunctional, and overly reliant on Zion, who rarely stays healthy. Both are strong candidates to land below Utah.
PossiblyMemphis, IndianaMemphis could rebound if Ja Morant re-engages, but their depth and chemistry issues remain severe, and a mid-season teardown is in the cards. Indiana should improve as injured players return, but their early-season hole and lack of top-tier talent keep a bottom-tier finish on the table.
Less LikelyDallas, Boston, CharlotteDallas expects to improve as key players return. Charlotte is bad but trying with some, if not overwhelming, NBA talent. All three could finish below Utah, particularly if Dallas and/or Boston decide to throw in the towel for the year, but it would require things to break wrong for them and right for the Jazz.
UnlikelyClippersOld roster, overrated, and dependent on an injury-prone star, but still too much baseline talent to realistically project as worse than Utah barring catastrophic collapse.


Taking the above into account, the Jazz appear heading for, at best, the fifth-worst record in the league, and possibly the sixth or seventh-worst record. If accurate, they will not be guaranteed their 2026 draft pick, but will still have very good odds of retaining it, as high as 99.3% and no lower than 85.7%. This entails risk, but it should not be a cause for excessive worry (though some worry is obviously warranted). What the Jazz absolutely want to avoid is falling to the eighth-worst record, in which case the odds are only moderately better than a coin flip, or below.
The question, therefore, is: What is the likelihood that seven teams finish with a worse record than the Jazz?
Frankly, I think shooting for a no better than the seventh-worst finish is very doable. If the Jazz FO begins to sweat, I fully expect it will take steps to manage the risk, notwithstanding its statements that they would not do so this year, such as sitting Markennan or other players with phantom injuries or experimenting with creative lineups. The only way I don’t see them engaging in creative tanking strategies is if the youth gel and begin balling out, in which case it may prove untenable to hold them back. That would at least offer some solace for losing the draft pick.
Although I despise tanking with a passion, we’re too far down this road to give up on it this year. I don’t see much option other than to see it through, as distasteful as it is. I fully expect, however, that after this year, and after securing yet another lottery pick, the Jazz will pivot next year to trying to compete and win, and begin pushing for the postseason sooner rather than later.
 
Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
This entails risk, but it should not be a cause for excessive worry (though some worry is obviously warranted).
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Unfortunately this ignores the Jazz Lottery Luck Curse. I don't see how we can possibly give The Curse a 15% chance to screw us, because it absolutely would. I'm honestly not comfortable with a .7% chance of the The Curse screwing us, but that is a risk I'm willing to take. I just don't see how the Front Office can accept us being any better/worse than the 5th spot.
 
tksavis said:
Unfortunately this ignores the Jazz Lottery Luck Curse. I don't see how we can possibly give The Curse a 15% chance to screw us, because it absolutely would. I'm honestly not comfortable with a .7% chance of the The Curse screwing us, but that is a risk I'm willing to take. I just don't see how the Front Office can accept us being any better/worse than the 5th spot.
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The best one can do is play the odds, curse or no curse. (And because curses aren't real, that'd be no curse.)

With so many teams this year that are worse than the Jazz and/or have an incentive to tank the season, I just don't see us finishing with one of the four worst records in the league, unless we go full tank mode again. We'll have to pray that certain teams (e.g., Memphis, Dallas, Indiana, Charlotte, Boston) don't decide to go the tank route. If all the teams that might tank, or a reasonable subset of them, end up tanking, then we're in trouble. If, however, these teams decide not to tank, we're ok.

If it turns out that up to 8 teams are all trying to lose this season (i.e., 1/4 or more of teams), I can't help but imagine that there will be lots of furrowed brows at league offices.
 
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