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2025-2026 Tank Race Prediction Contest and Current Results Thread

We suck at positioning for top draft picks. The first season after we blew it all up we should have been in contention, instead we opened the season winning most of our first 10 games. Does the FO have no idea how this works? **** me. We are back on the mediocrity treadmill with no end in sight. The odds of doing anything meaningful in my lifetime are shrinking fast.
 
Currently, the Nets, Pacers, Wizards, Kings, and Pelicans are five of the worst teams in NBA history. These five teams have point differentials that would rank in the bottom 14 in NBA history if maintained for a full season. The Pelicans will try to get better, but the Kings and Pacers may get worse while the Wizards and Nets have no interest in getting better. Now, the Kings do have Murray returning soon and Sabonis has been just horrible so they might bounce back, we'll see.

This means the Jazz probably won't get better than the 5th or 6th best odds unless they trade away Lauri for picks. The Mavs and Grizzlies are also terrible teams and the Clippers and Hornets are up in the air, but at least these four are better than the historically bad five.

The Jazz are probably headed for 30ish win season in a year where five teams are near 20 wins.

If they end up with the 7th best odds and ending up losing their pick, hard to say it's too much of a catastrophe though given how bad the 6-10 range has been recently in the draft, but it would obviously not be good.
 
HadAnEffectHere said:
Currently, the Nets, Pacers, Wizards, Kings, and Pelicans are five of the worst teams in NBA history. These five teams have point differentials that would rank in the bottom 14 in NBA history if maintained for a full season. The Pelicans will try to get better, but the Kings and Pacers may get worse while the Wizards and Nets have no interest in getting better. Now, the Kings do have Murray returning soon and Sabonis has been just horrible so they might bounce back, we'll see.

This means the Jazz probably won't get better than the 5th or 6th best odds unless they trade away Lauri for picks. The Mavs and Grizzlies are also terrible teams and the Clippers and Hornets are up in the air, but at least these four are better than the historically bad five.

The Jazz are probably headed for 30ish win season in a year where five teams are near 20 wins.

If they end up with the 7th best odds and ending up losing their pick, hard to say it's too much of a catastrophe though given how bad the 6-10 range has been recently in the draft, but it would obviously not be good.
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We're too early in to the season for this to hold. There will be a few teams that will start winning games and the Jazz will start losing more games, but in general having so many bad teams right now is a huge concern for keeping our pick.
 
I tell you, Lauri needs some random non-descript "hamstring pain" kind of injury so he can sit out for a half a season, or play just enough to be eligible for all-NBA and **** like that, and get us into the bottom 5. Look at how the Spurs do it with Wemby. They are masters of the "what injury is that again? The our-dude-just-can't-play kind?", I mean look at the ******** surrounding them getting Duncan. Then Wemby. Now they might be able to reverse and get into the lottery and snag another top 3 pick. Bingo, bammo, Spurs back on top baby, let the merchandising dollars roll in!! See we need to use plays from the same playbook. Some weird random non-specific and untestable "calf pain" injury for Lauri gets us the 5th pick. Better that than lose the pick entirely to a team that might be better than the peak Warriors, my god.
 
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.
 
I don't want to jinx it, but with Mathurin back I think Indiana starts winning some games. Mathurin let's Pascal go back to his Robin role where he thrives.

It feels like every time Siakam is asked to be the main guy it's really bad, but he's like the ultimate number 2 guy.
 
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.
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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.
 
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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.
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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?
 
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