What's new
By:

2025-2026 Tank Race Prediction Contest and Current Results Thread

AlaskanAssassin said:
I really wish the NBA would adopt a 3-year average record for determining lottery draft positioning. It's too easy for some teams, even like us last year, to just try and be horrible for a year. The pacers were in the finals last year and have no business being in contention for the number one overall pick. They also need to smooth out the lottery odds. In the modern NBA, there is not much of a talent difference between the team, with the worst record, and the team with the 8th worst record.
Click to expand...
Anyone who’s seen the movie *Airplane!* will remember the running gag with Lloyd Bridges’ character in the control tower: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking… stop drinking… stop sniffing glue,” each line more absurd than the last. This NBA season feels a bit like that. Between all the teams that outright stink (Washington, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Sacramento, Charlotte, and maybe the Clippers) and those with every reason to tank (Indiana, Dallas, Memphis), it’s chaos in the lower half of the standings. Even if the Jazz end up bad and try to straddle that fine line between competing and tanking just enough to keep their draft pick, this is a brutal season to pull it off. In most years, the balance would be relatively easy. But this year? "Looks like we picked the wrong year to keep our draft pick."

I'm still confident we'll keep the pick, but man-o-man, that Favors trade is the gift that just keeps on giving.

BTW, if you haven't seen Airplane and enjoy silly gag and pun humor (think Naked Gun), I highly recommend you give it a watch.
 
Last edited:
AlaskanAssassin said:
I really wish the NBA would adopt a 3-year average record for determining lottery draft positioning. It's too easy for some teams, even like us last year, to just try and be horrible for a year. The pacers were in the finals last year and have no business being in contention for the number one overall pick. They also need to smooth out the lottery odds. In the modern NBA, there is not much of a talent difference between the team, with the worst record, and the team with the 8th worst record.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's way too easy to manipulate one season and in this scenario an L only provides 1/3 of the reward. I think less teams would force a tank. I also think a team should extinguish their ability to move up after some time. You should only be able to win so many times, or at the very least if you win your odds should drop significantly.
 
OK, so this is probably a bad idea, but here is the premise: The Jazz might already be out of the running for a bottom 3 record, but need to make sure they finish with a bottom 6 record in order to maintain our pick.

- What if the Jazz facilitate a trade in order to make our tanking competition better. For example NOP is horrible even though they don't want to be, but maybe if the Jazz stepped in and helped facilitate some trades s o that NOP is good enough that they aren't ahead of us in the tank race?
 
KqWIN said:
Yeah, it's way too easy to manipulate one season and in this scenario an L only provides 1/3 of the reward. I think less teams would force a tank. I also think a team should extinguish their ability to move up after some time. You should only be able to win so many times, or at the very least if you win your odds should drop significantly.
Click to expand...
Seems like that would be pretty easy to facilitate. At a minimum, I don't think teams should be able to have a top three pick more than once in a 3-year period.
 
It would be very hard to finish below the Wizards or the Nets: they are just legitimately that bad. If the Pacers decide to tank and shut down, say , Mathurin, there is also not much can be done to finish lower than them. And the Pelicans and Clippers will , most likely, rise above the Jazz since they have no incentives to tank.

The only three teams that can seriously compete with the Jazz in the Tanking Olympics are the Hornets, Mavs and Kings. And there are 9 days, January 8-January 17, when the Jazz play the Mavs three times and the Hornets once. If the Jazz have some unfortunate injuries during this period they can push both the Mavs and the Hornets above them for good.

Another interesting stretch is February 11-February 28, when the Jazz will play Sacramento, Portland, Memphis and New Orleans (twice), but this one is 17 days long with a week-long break in between.
 
I'm looking at 7 teams ahead of the Jazz in the lottery standings, and I'm not sure who we're going to be able to pass up.
WAS
IND
BRK
NOL
CHA
SAC
DAL

Maybe we can get to #5 or #6 if we can sneak by SAC and CHA. Dallas will get Davis back and play him for the sake of showcasing him.
 
Ferguson_Mellochill said:
I'm looking at 7 teams ahead of the Jazz in the lottery standings, and I'm not sure who we're going to be able to pass up.
WAS
IND
BRK
NOL
CHA
SAC
DAL

Maybe we can get to #5 or #6 if we can sneak by SAC and CHA. Dallas will get Davis back and play him for the sake of showcasing him.
Click to expand...
Pelicans aren't tanking, so I wouldn't at all be surprised if they started winning significantly more at some point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page
Back
Top