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Maybe we can go on a long winning streak to finish 6th and then get the first pick. ;) If nothing else, it would be quite entertaining to see all the see all the switching emotions in the fanbase.

Sorry I misinterpreted your intentions. I took your post as a counter to my OP, as @The Midnight apparently did too. I should have been less defensive in my response and more careful in trying to discern your point. Yes, I totally agree with your key point that teams typically experience down...

True enough

Yeah, of all of the teams that coulda/shoulda gotten to the top, they're probably #1

Great article. Thanks for the post. Andy Larsen seems to suggest that it's in line with what he's hearing behind the scenes as well. It seems that the Jazz are heading toward a (somewhat deliberate, slow) total teardown in order to try to finish bottom-3 at least two years in a row. I'm...

He had some impressive moments against the Jazz in preseason. But he didn't strike me as a real tanking prize. But, as you say, he's 17. I'm really bad at judging what high NBA potential either looks like or doesn't look like at that age.

Andy was one of the first and hardest on the tank bandwagon. I think his "conversion" is more of a philosophical conversion (that it's bad for the league), than a practical one (I would guess he still largely agrees with what the Jazz have done).

If Malone had had to play today's rotating defense out to the three point line, he might have sung a different tune. I think we underestimate how much toll the changing defensive rules/landscape places on players' bodies.

For those in the know on the '26 draft, how deep is it said to be? I know of AJ, Cam, Peterson being mentioned as potentially very high-level. Where does it go after that -- say 4-8?

I think they got a few guys back (or at least back in the groove) that they really need defensively since we saw them. Most important may be DFS (think he missed against us). Just uber smart and uber versatile defensively, and not a bad shooter, to boot.

Yep. But even the Spurs are beginning to show the difference between getting lucky when you still have a good /great team and getting lucky when you've mostly emptied the cupboard. With Duncan it was full speed ahead. With Wemby there have been (and may possibly yet be) more speedbumps along...

I don't know how many times I have to say it. I'm not anti-tanking. I'm anti-overrating tanking. (OK, I am anti-tanking as a matter of principle. I think it's bad for the league. I think we need to change the system that rewards tanking. But I'm not against the Jazz tanking under the league...

I don't doubt that he does. But I suspect he'd be the first to tell you need a lot of luck for something like this to happen again. With the Celtics, he placed a short-bet on the Nets. He won that bet. He also won the subsequent drafts. Now they have a championship. With the Jazz, he seems to...

What is that model? Is it just one? Though I think that tanking can be generally called a "model," I tend not to like using the term "model" to describe how teams succeed. I think success is too varied and complex most of the time to fall under the label of "model". We need to succeed at a lot...

Not sure where to start here: You seem to be moving the goalposts. My argument was about bottom-5 league finishes (since I think that's what most people around here would argue is a proper tank). Now you're saying bottom-5 conference finish (this encompasses several of your examples -- esp...

My comment about the different model wasn't about the Jazz. It was about whether the model works in the NBA as a whole (that's 30 times more data than the Jazz's history provides in the same time period -- a much better sample size). The model (at least at its most optimistic) hasn't worked for...

I did mention about a page back that the new CBAs are part of changed (and ever-changing NBA landscapes). But whether they mean more or less need for tanking (or more correctly, based on the point of the OP, more or less success from tanking) is something that's above my paygrade to answer.

It's going to take a lot of creativity. Maybe there's no such thing as one correct path. I don't pretend to know the answer for the Jazz's case, but when the old model (finish bottom five, grab a top draft pick and then, if lucky, have that player lead you to a championship) hasn't worked for...

And we haven't even mentioned how the changed lotto odds impact the results obtained from bottom-5 finishes. Or how CBA changes have made it more difficult to consolidate power at the top. Or how having more teams in the league may impact things. I guess my point is that there's a real argument...

I think your point is correct. I think it's more than this, as well -- perhaps the way skill sets are used in the NBA, or maybe also a bigger pool of players that are competing for limited NBA spots -- that lead to this change. I have done a small study on how the value of higher picks compared...