With the trade deadline and All-Star break in the rearview mirror and NBA action resuming Thursday night, the stretch run is upon us. Every team has between 26 and 29 games remaining, and of course, there is a wide disparity in the difficult of those remaining schedules.
This will certainly factor, perhaps heavily, into the various postseason races and ultimately the final picture. Just as an example, if the Thunder are going to hold off the charging Spurs for the West’s top seed, they’ll have to do so while navigating the league’s second-toughest remaining slate.
The Cavs, meanwhile, are within striking distance of the East’s No. 2 seed and have the league’s fifth-easiest stretch-run schedule, while Boston, currently two games up on Cleveland, is saddled with the fifth-toughest.
A big part of all this is of course the tanking issue that everyone is talking about right now. If you’re a team fighting for playoff positioning, the more games you have left against teams actively trying to lose the better.
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So first, let’s identify the teams that are, no matter what method of deception they choose to hopefully avoid punishment, in the unmitigated business of tanking for the best lottery odds possible the rest of the way.
- Washington Wizards
- Indiana Pacers
- Brooklyn Nets
- Sacramento Kings
- Utah Jazz
- Dallas Mavericks
Those six are unquestioned. They have absolutely no incentive to win a single game the rest of the way. Add to that the Grizzlies and Bucks, the latter of whom should be, and probably will be, an increasingly egregious tanker moving forward (their only valuable asset moving forward, either as a building block for a post-Giannis future or as part of a trade package to try to keep Giannis), and take out the Pelicans who don’t own their ’26 pick, and you have eight tanking teams.
So, which contenders/postseason hopefuls have the most remaining games against these teams? Here’s a look at the Eastern Conference.
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76ers
|
9
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Hawks
|
9
|
|
Hornets
|
9
|
|
Cavaliers
|
9
|
|
Knicks
|
8
|
|
Magic
|
8
|
|
Raptors
|
8
|
|
Heat
|
7
|
|
Pistons
|
7
|
|
Celtics
|
4
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You can see how much this could end up impacting the playoff picture. Take the Celtics, for instance. They enter their final 28 games with a one-game lead over the No. 3 Knicks and a two-game lead over the No. 4 Cavs (in the loss column), but while Boston has just four games left against tanking teams the Knicks have eight and the Cavs have nine.
Now let’s look at the West.
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Trail Blazers
|
10
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Warriors
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9
|
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Clippers
|
8
|
|
Lakers
|
8
|
|
Rockets
|
7
|
|
Spurs
|
7
|
|
Thunder
|
7
|
|
Suns
|
7
|
|
Nuggets
|
6
|
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Timberwolves
|
5
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Again, you can see the potential impact here. The Timberwolves are only one game back of the Lakers, but the Lakers have three more tank opponents left than Minnesota. The Suns are only two losses back of the Wolves for the final playoff spot and they have two more tank games left than Minnesota.
In theory, these should be pretty much guaranteed wins and having more of them is a big deal and one of the real downstream effects of nearly a third of the league being incentivized to lose the rest of the way.
If Adam Silver wants this to stop, he’s going to have to drastically alter the draft system, if not scrap it totally and treat incoming rookies just like every other free agent, though that idea comes with a lot of unintended pitfalls of its own.
There’s no great answer here, but know this: Until someone figures one out, it is always going to be the smart play for these lower-class teams to drop in the standings and rise in the lottery, and we’re going to be seeing a lot of this over these six weeks.
Think about it: If you’re one of these eight teams with either no shot to even make the play-in or battling for a No. 10 seed, the simple truth of the matter is that every win over these next six weeks is, in fact, a loss. The benefit of possibly landing a superstar rookie who could completely reshape your franchise’s trajectory over the next decade plus is just too great in comparison to winning a few more games and possibly making the play-in tournament.
Just look at the Mavericks last year. They were one win from making the playoffs. Had they beaten Memphis, they wouldn’t have had any lottery balls in the hopper. But they lost that game, giving them a 1.8% chance to land the top overall pick, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen. Now they have Cooper Flagg.
The Sixers lost 29 of their final 33 games last year and it yielded them VJ Edgecombe. It’s a no-brainer. Lose now to win later. All these teams are going to do it, and it’s not just going to effect the ultimate lottery order. It’s likely going to impact the playoff picture in a meaningful way.
