No no no! You get back here!!

The only moral tank is my team’s tank.

We’re all trying to find the guy who did this

you guys randomly beat pistons for no reason but jazz seems to lose most of their games to anyone and everyone

Lowkey I wonder if removing pick protections would actually mitigate some of the tanking. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we both have the same 1-8 protections while tanking this egregiously; the theoretical anti-tanking benefit of the flattened odds is basically eliminated when you have certain protections and instead only widens the range at which teams feel they need to tank down to.

We will be joining you guys as well

The NBA already proved that you don’t need to define anything. You just assert your will and authority on the team.

There’s a reason why Silver’s answer  was “we need to figure out ways to address what tanking is”

This is a dangerously rational take, be careful.

It’s always the issue and why tanking is hard to legislate. DNP-CDs, resting vets, being cautious with injury, coaches rotations/decisions etc all have perfectly legitimate non-tanking uses.

If the league starts fining for anything that tankers can use, the league office is essentially just managing and coaching every team, which they will never do.

It’s why the Player Participation Policy is so vague with only a few hard and fast rules. Because without a specific verifiable rule to break, you can’t do anything.

Im not sure it’s as difficult as you say, they managed to define it for the sixers when silver forced out the GM and gave them a new one.

yeah teams will always try to game the system. what are they gonna do? say that a guy make x amount of money and under 30 years old has to play in the 4th? it’s gotten to a point where it’s almost impossible to regulate

That can make sense for a single game. But sitting your best player for multiple fourth quarters is enough evidence imo

You can’t be this egregious about it. It’s an illegitimate game at this point.

Must be nice being a fan of a team that jumps up 10 spots in the draft so you don’t need to tank.

Last year Lauri would have been sitting these games out with “DNP - sore pinky”, so this is technically an improvement

Like “tank out the the play in to improve their draft pick to draft lively” fine worthy? 

Its so much worse than what the Mavs got fined for. Mavs sat some guys (who had been playing through injuries too) for the last two games of a season where they wouldn’t have even ended up making the play in if they won.

These guys do shit ALL SEASON.

I mean Wizards tickets are like $14, you can usually get in the lower bowl on a weeknight for under 40. Its genuinely one of the cheapest things to do in DC.

Yeah but then how do you deal with the Thunder game earlier this week where literally every starter was out? The Thunder aren’t tanking. Can only good teams have a ton of injuries?

and i don’t see mainstream nba fans rioting over “Dude i can’t watch this game no more! I tried watching a Jazz Vs Orlando game!”

People love to hate on the big market dominance and fake stand up for smaller markets until those teams actually try and do what they can to build winners.

If the Jazz were trying to win they’d be clowned and they get clowned if they try to lose.

I should be the most mad out of anyone that my teams trying to lose on purpose but I understand, there will always be bad teams so why does it matter if they’re fighting tooth and nail to get to 20 wins or coasting to them, they suck ass anyway. It has been like this and will always be like this unless NBA fans want premier league style of parity.

Thank you! Is it shameless? Yes but we also had the worst record in the NBA last year and fell to pick #5. The Jazz will try to be good next season, but do people really want them to give their pick to OKC?

This entire sub said the process was a stain on the league now it’s ok because it’s Utah and no one cares

I think Utah fans are so salty from last year’s draft we could care the fuck less if we’re “ruining” the league. FYI, the Jazz are not ruining the league. This is our second and final tanking season.  

Ppl who think that draft was rigged don’t know how the lottery process works

The same Mavs that made it to the second round of the play-in tournament. That’s the blatant rigging you’re talking about?

He started on a finals winning team and balled out literally next season that was blatant tanking cmon lmaoo

It was that rest that allowed him to recover from his nagging injuries and reset for the next season and look way better.

Yeah I bet Collier who averages about ²⁰⁄₁₅ over the last few games is gambling 🤦‍♂️

With Silver at the top the quality of the NBA has gone downhill so bad. But no team owner cares since they keep raking in money.

We got a flaming thread about it earlier. It comes with the territory.

All of it should be eliminated

Black mark on a league being held back by its incompetence

The Raptors did it every game the last two months of last season lol. It was the most egregious shit of all time the way they were actively trying to give away games and nobody made a peep about it

The lineup the pacers played against us this week was silly. I mean so was ours, but at least we had just traded a bunch of dudes and had an excuse. The only healthy player we sat was Nurkic, and one could argue that playing him is more of a tanking move than benching him. They straight rested Siakam and Mathurin, and used fake “injury” DNPs for McConnell, Nembhard, and Nesmith.

there is literally a thread with five thousand upvotes at the top of r/nba bashing the wizards lol

There were posts about it earlier

There was a thread about us with literally a thousand comments

Miami blew a 20 point lead against the Celtics

We see like 3 20 point leads blown weekly at this point. It just isn’t the same with how variable the 3 is these days and how much faster play is

Yeah imagine blowing leads, what a loser

he works for them, do fans not know this

WILL RILEY PLAYED WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?!

I mean this is true.

If the Jazz played the entire season with intent to win each game, they’d probably finish ⁹⁄₁₀. They have too much talent to full on be awful. But not enough to actually compete.

But ending in the play in would be the actual worst outcome possible. They lose their first round pick to OKC and they wont make the actual playoffs.

They fully threw this game, against a pretty good team. Losing is better toward their goal, but it sucks watching teams lose on purpose.

Right. Also, their pick is top-8 protected. So it’s beyond just lottery odds - protection compounded the incentive to lose so they keep their pick. If they couldn’t protect it, they’d be incentivized to play well.

I’m fine with teams being bad, but there are at least three tanking teams I can think of that have traded protected picks this year.

I’d argue it’s because they’re acting as farm teams

I don’t even think the problem is the lottery as much as teams (in this case Jazz in particular) trading away top-X protected picks. The odds of hitting on top 4 are distributed out well enough that being the 3rd worst team vs being the 8th worst isn’t that huge a rise in chance to where you’re pulling out the stops doing blatant tanking like this. But the difference between getting a 90% chance at getting a top 8 pick and 10% chance of getting no 1st vs 50% chance of getting a top 8 pick and 50% chance of getting no 1st is such a huge difference that they feel compelled to do so. If their pick were not an outgoing protected pick(either unprotected traded away or they still own their 1st pick) I think the Jazz would be fine with being less blatant and winning a few games here and there.

And this sucks for this Jazz team in particular because post-JJJ trade they legitimately are a play-in level team in terms of fit and current healthy talent (well, before Keyonte George injury at least) so they basically have to throw 4th quarters with blatantly crappy lineups with excuse of trying to get youth experience for 2 games in a row. Out of the bottom 6 teams that are light years ahead in tankathon, somehow 3 of them have traded next year’s pick with New Orleans being particularly egregious in being unprotected but at least you can’t complain they are tanking. Pacers pick protections are so wonky it’s honestly really really hard to say whether they benefit from trying to tank. Jazz are the one with the clearest benefit to tanking from protection standpoint and they also coincidentally have the best roster right now with overall health considered.

Yeah I’m sure the plan was to be slightly less egregious, but turned out even against 3rd string guys the magic just could not generate offense.

I haven’t really watched them play this year and was honestly shocked how much they struggled in that end against backups. 

I doubt it tbh. To fine YS the league has to point to where we’ve broken the Player Participation Policy and that’s hard to prove.

We are clearly tanking but unless clear rules are broken, I can’t see the league really intervening mid-season. 

It’s crazy that the jazz tried to ethically tank the first two years but ended with the 10th and 9th pick. They have never moved up in the lottery the entire time theyve been in the league. Can you blame them.

That’s not the punishment. The Jazz aren’t tanking to get the #1 overall pick, the odds are just too flat. If the Jazz end up #7, they will be happy. They need to be Top 8 in order to keep their pick, otherwise it conveys to OKC for absolutely nothing. That’s why they are tanking so egregiously.

that collier “attempt” to end the game LMFAO

Don’t gaslight people lmfao

The kings backups played better than their starters yesterday tbf

Difference is that the kings starters are genuinely trash

Well with the Kings, they are worse when they play their starters/vets. They are -28 when Derozan, Sabonis, and Lavine share the floor. I’m torn between wanting them to lose games and letting the young guys get reps and possibly winning.

Nets have not done this. Benching your starters to close out games is completely egregious and should result in a severe punishment from the league. There needs to be a reform fast, or else teams will keep getting away with this unethical cancer and tanking teams that are genuinely bad and playing normal lineups every night get punished with worse odds at draft night.

The nets have never done this. Jordi plays mpj 30+ mins every chance he gets

The wizard have pulled all young guys for gleague vets same with jazz. Nice try