Which guys are the Wizs refusing to play while healthy? Anthony Day to Davis?

Actually, they aren’t. Folks around here aren’t so easily fooled as they are in Texas.

I disagree, mainly because of what was said in the quote: tanking should be done by FOs, not coaches or players.

When you excuse guys entirely due to injury, you are still technically playing by the rules. Everyone knows ahead of time which players will play, and the coach and those players will play to win.

If you start pulling guys in the 4th, you open a very slippery slope where the coach is actively trying to lose.

Especially with all the gambling stuff going on, injuries need to be disclosed and planned around- you can’t normalize just randomly pulling players who were expected to play. Letting fans see the players for a bit at least is nice, but it’s not worth the normalizing tanking and uncompetitive decisions- you need to at least pretend to want to win. Players should be in or out, not playing just to satisfy fans but not to win.

Both are trash. Utah is humiliating themselves because the leadership are shameless

Wizards hiding Justin Champagnie from playing any minutes is peak tanking. 

I can’t wait to see what you say when the Mavs tank the fuck out of next season.

The Wizards just fully punted on the season and refuse to put in guys that can play with the excuse of injury.

I’m just curious, which guys? Because Davis and Young were both injured before the Wizards traded for them. Unless you think the Mavs and the Hawks were just lying about their injuries to help the Wizards for some reason. It went viral that the Wizards were resting a ton of players against the Nets, but that was their 6th game in 10 days, on the first night of a back-to-back. I think it would be hard to find a team which wouldn’t rest some players during a 11 day stretch in which they played 7 games. Also, you say “excuse of injury”, but the NBA has independent physicians that examine these players to confirm the legitimacy of their injuries. Pretending Siakam was injured when he wasn’t is exactly what the Pacers got fined for.

Nah sorry that is wild to me. The Jazz are a legitimately good team who have to sit Nurkic every game, Lauri and whoever else just so they can lose and have a chance to keep their pick.

Jazz fans and others acting shocked about the criticism they are getting, ignoring its entirely because they aren’t a shit team. They tanked for years prior to this, now have a competitive team but the FO and coaches have mandated the tank to healthy players.

They have been pulling this shit since December, its outrageous. They don’t deserve the pick

It’s not that hard just sit the players out for soreness or rest and you are in a grey zone. Benching starters during a close game is clearly tanking.

It sucked when they did it too. 

I mean the Thunder have one top 5 pick on the roster. The Spurs have 3. Is it really the same?

Come the fuck on.. only the Thunder and Spurs are allowed? The league also didn’t give a shit about the Pistons, Rockets, and Magic tanking right alongside us (and harder and for longer). They don’t really care about most of the teams tanking right now. They didn’t care about the Wolves or Cavs or Blazers tanking for a top pick. They didn’t care when the Lakers tanked 4 straight years to accumulate the assets for the AD trade. They didn’t care when the Warriors tanked a season of peak Curry. They didn’t care when Philly tanked to keep their pick last year, or Dallas a couple years before and they didn’t care when Utah done it the past couple of seasons.

right, we all know they are the poster child of foul baiting not tanking.

I honestly have no idea why people are buying in to that report that much. I’m sure the Thunder are pissed and putting pressure on it but the way this sub thinks it’s a psyop or something is wild. I had my casual basketball friends talking about the tanking this year. You have a team going “oh shit we are up we need to lose” in FEBRUARY. Honestly though, what a home run in counter PR because it’s working

Tony Jones is well connected with the Jazz FO. As far as Jazz beat reporters go, he is the gold standard although now he covers the sixers I believe. I 100% trust that what he says is what the Jazz FO is thinking.

Presti is well liked and connected with all the media. I don’t necessarily think he is personally calling them up and telling them to call out the Jazz. But once a story picks up steam all the guys are going to talk about it. Perhaps the Thunder asked ESPN to cover it or were the ones posting nightly threads here about the Jazz. I don’t find it hard to believe. I’ve heard Bill and Zach talk about their discussions with various GMs such as Daryl Morey plenty of times.

I mean they did get chet

Don’t forget their coach actively trying to throw games even without the subs. Not advancing the ball late in one score games, not using timeouts to halt runs, etc.

Long term favorite Thunder fan from Japan who is distraught about the Thunder is now the sole voice of the Thunder fanbase and decider of whether or not a team is tanking

So have the Jazz. Jazz have gotten Cody Williams and Ace Bailey out of tanking

Oh so only your 2nd and arguably 5th best player in your 8 man championship roster came from tanking? (Hartenstein also counts btw because tanking allowed for great young player on team friendly deals)

You’re right, the Thunder hardly benefitted at all from tanking! Jazz have only got Ace Bailey out of tanking btw unless you wanna argue Cody Williams is going to be the reason the Jazz win the chip.

The Jazz have gotten Markannen, Keyonte & JJJ though smart trades. They have only got Ace Bailey and Cody Williams through tanking. They’ve been built through smart trades and excellent drafting. What’s the problem with what they are doing this season?

You have 12 1sts in the next 6 years. I find it hard to believe our #9 or later pick really has that much impact on you that you feel the need to push to rewrite the rules.

Sure, but trading for injured players (like the Wizards did this year) or trading away all your stars (like the Grizzlies did this year) is not the same thing as “not playing guys on purpose”. And most teams at least claim that their players are injured in some way whenever those guys don’t play (and the NBA has independent physicians who examine those players’ “injuries” to make sure they’re legit, that’s how the Pacers got fined).

Hardy is also actively making decisions in games to increase their chances of losing outside of player management though.

It’s not pedantic. It is a clear line. 

Organizations may put together rosters that suck for long term benefit. You may think it’s good or bad, but it is fundamentally different than a coaching staff actively trying to lose games as they are played. 

It’s also not “unspoken.” It’s clearly spoken. 

I didn’t ignore it. It wasn’t relevant. I am glad the players are trying to win. 

He said coaching staff. It’s what’s relevant to the Jazz. That’s it. 

Although, as a Kings fan I am not fully sure Lavine or Sabonis are trying to win but I think that’s a different story and discussion…

The Jazz have been bad for 3 years (not counting 22-23 since they were surprisingly very competitive early and won 37 games).

Jazz made the playoffs literally 6 times in the last decade. Why do you bother commenting on things you clearly know nothing about?

“Almost a decade” is a bit of an exaggeration even if I get your point.

Just shout to the world about how much you dont actually watch basketball.

Jazz have only missed the playoffs 3 times this decade, with a 4th coming this year. This year is only the second time the jazz are projecting to finish with under 30 wins in more than a decade.

OKC, on the other hand, didn’t even bother playing SGA or Horford light minutes. They shut down both players and filled out the roster with a bunch of scrubs to make sure they lost. Utah at least has the courtesy to play their guys.

Yup. I’m tired of pretending that building a team full of rookies and occasionally resting a veteran is the same as benching good players so that you can throw a game that you’re winning by double digits. That’s flat out bordering on match fixing territory.

They are actually pretty fun. Really fun style of play offensively. Lots of passing and off ball movement. Not good on defense so the other team scores a lot. Makes for fun fast paced shootouts.

I don’t blame anyone for not knowing our players but when they are actually trying next season I recommend you check them out.

NFL teams absolutely sit and pull players at the end of the year to get better seeding for the draft.

Baseball is really difficult to compare because of how hard it is to make the majors and how much of a crapshoot their draft is. It definitely has the least tanking though. I would also say MLB has much larger issues when it comes to competitiveness though (that are also unique to the MLB).

In both the NFL and NBA, teams tank, but because of the differences in the sport, especially the length of the season and the number of games a season, tanking is going to look different.

It doesn’t make sense to try to compare them one to one.

Every-time you guys say “X American sports league” doesn’t do this it’s incorrect. Of course the NFL does that, it’s incredibly easy to do when every down ends with a hit

The Nets have been basically tanking since the Harden/Kyrie/KD era ended. There was a brief moment where you guys thought Mikal and Cam Johnson could be the future but that faded quickly. You traded or release pretty much every vet you have had on your roster outside of Claxton and MPJ. You have built a squad that is basically all college kids that should struggle in the NBA and land you a high pick. You are doing it because you won’t own your pick next year and majority of the picks you do have will be in the mid teens to 20s picks.

Like you guys aren’t outright blatantly tanking like the other teams. But your roster was purposely built to be super inferior this year, I just don’t think you guys expected these other teams to go to the lengths they are going to.

What I’m saying is that I never understood why it’s called the tank. It’s not a tank. It’s player development and when you’re losing games ²⁴⁄₇ no shit you’re gonna drop in the standings. It’s a product of trying to develop players in game instead of just through training. In soccer Barcelona for example went through years of bad results because they were letting players like Pedro and Yamal and Gavi develop so that they now are already amazing players.

We are always terrible

Which John Salmons era?? We traded for him like 5 times