Fringe 2024 NBA Playoff Teams That Would Be Better Off Tanking
We're now heading toward the fifth draft since the NBA flattened its lottery odds, a change that has combined with the more recent advent of the play-in round to disincentivize tanking.
Despite those tweaks, it's still a bad idea for teams to linger in the dreaded middle of the competitive spectrum—at least if those squads ever want to win anything of consequence.
Even if it's easier to make the postseason than ever, and even if deliberately losing no longer comes with the certainty of a top pick, it's still generally bad business to hang around the 35-45 win range. Operate with that lack of ambition long enough, and fans will eventually get sick of rooting for a team that can't contend in the present and doesn't have the young cornerstones necessary to do so in the future.
Here, we're advising a handful of teams to shelve their vets, give youth a long leash and play with an eye toward development. Even in today's leveled-out environment, those extra ping pong balls don't hurt either.
The Low-Payoff Tankers
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The Houston Rockets and Brooklyn Nets are both in the exact position where you'd normally advise them to steer into the skid. Multiple games outside the play-in, tapering off after solid starts and featuring young players who need minutes (especially in Houston's case), these would typically be ideal tankers.
Both, however, owe their 2024 first-round picks to other teams. Houston's is ticketed for the Oklahoma City Thunder (top-four-protected), while Brooklyn's, ironically, will belong to the Rockets (unprotected).
There's a debate to be had about how much a team should concern itself with the quality of the pick it's sending out. It certainly feels worse to surrender a selection that lands in the top three, or even first overall, but the pick is gone either way.
At the very least, owing an unprotected pick to another team makes the most shameless losing less worthwhile. Issues like ticket sales, TV viewership and internal development still factor into how teams like Brooklyn and Houston conduct themselves down the stretch, but it just doesn't make sense to completely shut things down when the payoff of a high pick isn't in play.
Obviously, the Rockets should be cheering every Brooklyn loss. But neither team should be all-in on a race to the bottom of the standings.
Chicago Bulls
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With only a few changes, we could recycle the same arguments we've been making about the middling Chicago Bulls for the last several years. Winners of an average of 34 games per season from 2015-16 to 2022-23, the Bulls are on pace to land in the upper 30s and possibly secure a play-in position.
In a best-case scenario, they'll somehow escape that preliminary round and get smashed to bits against a top seed. If they win a single playoff game this spring, it'll double their total (one) since 2017.
Incredibly, that seems to be the goal. Chicago didn't trade 34-year-old free-agent-to-be DeMar DeRozan or sought-after vet Alex Caruso at the deadline, instead opting to keep the band together to...compete?
"Since I came here to Chicago, I wanted to have a competitive team," president Arturas Karnisovas told reporters after the trade deadline. "We came up with a formula in 2021. We had somewhat of a success. We took obviously a step back with some injuries. But my objective doesn't change: I would like to compete with the best teams."
Respectfully, the Bulls' "formula" doesn't work.
It started with the catastrophic trade that brought Nikola Vucević aboard for two first-rounders and Wendell Carter Jr. (a younger, objectively better player at the same position), continued with the decisions to max out Zach LaVine and re-sign Vucević this past summer and will now endure through another go-nowhere season.
So here's the current reality: The Bulls don't compete with the best teams. Their few encouraging signs, Coby White's emergence chief among them, also don't come close to offsetting the bleakness of the franchise's broader future. Patrick Williams, the No. 4 pick in 2020, is out for the year.
No team is in greater need of a reality check and a whole bunch of losses that precede a full teardown.
Utah Jazz
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Much like 2022-23, this season's Utah Jazz landed on the correct approach a little later than was ideal. Last year, Utah's surprisingly competitive roster stayed in the postseason mix longer than anyone expected. The success caught everyone off guard (internally and otherwise), and it seemed as if the Jazz found it difficult to throttle back in what was supposed to be a bottoming-out phase of their rebuild.
It may have cost them Victor Wembanyama.
Nobody is a huge fan of the 2024 draft class, so the stakes aren't as high this season. But Utah owes its first-rounder to the Oklahoma City Thunder if it falls outside the top 10. Even in a suspect draft, having a lottery pick is better than losing it outright.
The Jazz hit the All-Star break at 26-30, not so far from their 29-31 mark at the same time in 2022-23. By dealing Mike Conley just over a year ago, the Jazz instituted some needed self-sabotage. Maybe the removal of Kelly Olynyk and Simone Fontecchio from the rotation, which upset a roster that still clearly wants to compete, will have the same effect.
Utah is flush with picks, so standings slippage is less about improving lottery position than for other teams. The priorities still need to shift toward more minutes for rookie Keyonte George (who's been starting for a while and might already be too good to profile as a Tank Commander), Taylor Hendricks, Walker Kessler and even Brice Sensabaugh.
There's certainly value in allowing those same young players the chance to play games with real stakes down the stretch. Lauri Markkanen would probably like to make the playoffs at some point in his career. But this is still a team with a long runway toward contention, and scrapping to sneak into the play-in round won't be worth it if it comes at the expense of minutes for younger players or that protected pick.
Toronto Raptors
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The Toronto Raptors owe a top-six-protected first-round pick to the San Antonio Spurs from last year's Jakob Poeltl trade. Currently in possession of the seventh-worst record in the league, the Raps have a 31.9 percent chance of landing (and keeping) a top-four selection.
There's a case to be made that the Raptors should just get it over with, play out the season and let the chips/picks fall where they may. It's a purportedly weak draft, after all, and the Raptors would still owe a top-six-protected pick to the Spurs next year if this one doesn't convey. Then again, Toronto has considerable young talent on the roster now, most of which should improve next year.
If Scottie Barnes takes another leap, Immanuel Quickley settles in as a lead guard and RJ Barrett continues his growth, the Raptors could find themselves much more firmly in the 2025 playoff mix. That'd mean giving up a far less valuable pick than the one likely to head San Antonio's way this summer.
Some teams prefer to get their obligations over with. If Toronto conveys its pick in the 2024 draft, benefits would include the removal of all the annoying Stepien rule-related encumbrances on trading future selections. The Raptors don't owe any other future firsts and could simplify their situation by moving this one.
It still might make more sense to let the youth play, experiment a little, take on a few extra losses and up the odds of landing a top-four pick. Assuming the Raptors will be significantly better next year—which seems to be the plan given the front office's prioritization of actual players over picks in the OG Anunoby deal—whatever selection goes to San Antonio in 2025 might not even be in the lottery.
Atlanta Hawks
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Who's ready for the Kobe Bufkin era?
The Atlanta Hawks won't fully hand the keys to the rookie over the final six weeks of the season with Dejounte Murray still around, but Trae Young's finger injury changes the entire dynamic of the stretch run.
Young's absence following surgery will last at least four weeks, and it wouldn't be a shock if his return date rolled around and the Hawks were too far out of the mix to justify bringing him back at all.
The Hawks will essentially cede control of their first-round picks to the San Antonio Spurs from 2025 through 2027, which makes this upcoming 2024 first-rounder all the more valuable to them. Even if the Hawks aren't viewing this incoming pick as the first step in a teardown (which wouldn't really be feasible given the salaries and personnel on the roster anyway), it could be a sweetener they use to move a contract attached to De'Andre Hunter or Clint Capela.
The tricky part for Atlanta is the uncertain payoff of even a soft tank. We've already counseled the Raptors to pump the brakes, and while the Nets aren't motivated by draft concerns, they may just be bad enough to stay below the Hawks in the standings. If Atlanta decides to call it a year with Young out, there's still no guarantee it'll slip out of the play-in.
Still, the Hawks' season fundamentally changed with Young going down. The best way to adapt is to focus more on Jalen Johnson, Bufkin and anyone else who needs developmental reps over these final few weeks.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate entering games Feb. 26. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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