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2025-2026 Tank Race Prediction Contest and Current Results Thread

SoberasHotRod said:
Our record against bottom 10 teams this year is 3-3, last year our tank strength was our record against bottom teams. Basically any record improvement this year vs last year can be explained by not sitting Lauri against other tanking teams.
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I think there’s a bit more to it than that. We have some improved players, but also lost guys like Sexton, Collins, and Kessler. But to your point, I don’t think this team is that much better than last season without the tank shenanigans.

It doesn’t feel like we’re a team that’s “too good” for a top 8 pick. It feels more like the bottom of the league really sucks rn.
 
KqWIN said:
I think there’s a bit more to it than that. We have some improved players, but also lost guys like Sexton, Collins, and Kessler. But to your point, I don’t think this team is that much better than last season without the tank shenanigans.

It doesn’t feel like we’re a team that’s “too good” for a top 8 pick. It feels more like the bottom of the league really sucks rn.
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The main thing is that it looks like we have 4 starting caliber long term players on this team (Keyonte, Kessler, Ace, Lauri), which is a much better place than last year. We have a much better foundation to build off of. We have more hope, even if the team isn't better.

I'm pretty confident that 23 wins will land us a bottom 6 record, which should allow us to keep our pick. I went through this in a previous post and having more than 6 teams with below 23 wins has only happened once in 25 years. If you go back and look at this similar thread from last year you'll see that things looked unprecedentedly bad last year as well. Teams will get healthier, young teams will start figuring out how to win games, and bad teams will start winning more games against each other.
 
Going back to the 23 wins idea, I don't think that Brooklyn and Washington are capable of winning 23 games, and I don't know if NOP is either. That means our best case scenario at 23 wins is probably 4th. I'm pretty sure LAC will win more than 23 games this year, which means we are looking at Indiana, Dallas, Sacramento, and Charlotte as teams that are capable of winning 23+ games, but could try to win less than that with shenanigans. We likely need to out shenanigan these teams.

I think Indiana, Dallas, Sacramento, and Charlotte are the teams we really need to be keeping an eye on right now. We likely need to finish below all 4 to guarantee our pick is safe, but at least need to finish below two of them to feel pretty good about keeping our pick.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
Going back to the 23 wins idea, I don't think that Brooklyn and Washington are capable of winning 23 games, and I don't know if NOP is either. That means our best case scenario at 23 wins is probably 4th. I'm pretty sure LAC will win more than 23 games this year, which means we are looking at Indiana, Dallas, Sacramento, and Charlotte as teams that are capable of winning 23+ games, but could try to win less than that with shenanigans. We likely need to out shenanigan these teams.

I think Indiana, Dallas, Sacramento, and Charlotte are the teams we really need to be keeping an eye on right now. We likely need to finish below all 4 to guarantee our pick is safe, but at least need to finish below two of them to feel pretty good about keeping our pick.
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I think this is correct. NOP can make hay in like Feb/Mar when they play a lot of tanking teams that won't be trying and they have no reason to not try. Clips too. Charlotte is improved and I do think they are semi-competent and play hard. Sacramento is a dumpster fire. We should have been disgustingly tanky that game to help boost their confidence. Sacramento/Dallas/Indiana are the teams I most worry about. Indy can justify a one year gap and I think Carlisle is okay with it. They have had so many injuries.

Our casual approach in the first quarter is likely to hurt us. Move Svi now. Start managing loads as you need to. Its time to pull the plug.
 
LogGrad98 said:
The NBA cup is almost as dumb as the ******** they've done to the all-star game. Yes let's add to the players work load when we know this is causing injuries. But hey, anything that adds a buck.
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So does NBA Cup add games to the schedule Do teams now play more than 82 reg season games
 
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