2025-2026 Tank Race Prediction Contest and Current Results Thread

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

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.

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.

 

[homeytennis]

Pacers with the W tonight over the Hornets. This gives the Jazz some tank hopes.

 

[KqWIN]

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.

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.

 

[SoberasHotRod]

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?