The Shame Rankings: How hard Jazz, Kings, Pacers, and other bad teams are pushing their tanking techniques
Around the league, the bottom of the standings has become its own competitive arena, a place where losing on the court can feel like winning in the long run. Nowhere is that more evident than with teams like the Jazz, Kings, Pacers, and a handful of similarly stuck franchises quietly refining the art of the tank.
Tanking is no longer the cartoonish version of years past, when rosters were gutted overnight and lineups looked barely NBA-caliber. Today’s “shame rankings” are more nuanced. Utah, Sacramento, and Indiana are prime examples of organizations walking the tightrope between development and defeat, trying to preserve future flexibility while still selling hope to their fan bases.
The Jazz lean into extended looks for young players and experimental lineups that prioritize growth over immediate results. The Kings, perennially hovering around the play-in conversation, face a different dilemma: push for marginal postseason experience or subtly pivot when the season starts to slip. The Pacers, stuck in the middle for years, are emblematic of a franchise that must decide whether chasing the eighth seed is worth sacrificing lottery odds and long-term ceiling.
League rules have tried to curb the most blatant forms of losing. Flattened lottery odds and play-in incentives were designed to keep more teams competitive deeper into the season. Yet the incentives to bottom out remain powerful. One transformative draft pick can reset a timeline, reshape a cap sheet, and change a franchise’s identity in a way that chasing 40 wins rarely can.
The shame, then, isn’t just in losing. It lies in the gray area: resting healthy veterans for “maintenance,” shutting down borderline stars late in the year, or leaning heavily on unproven prospects in crunch time. These are defensible basketball decisions, but together they form a pattern.
Until the NBA fully realigns incentives, the race to the bottom will remain a shadow competition. The Jazz, Kings, Pacers, and their peers aren’t merely bad; they are strategic, calculating, and acutely aware that in today’s NBA, sometimes the ugliest short-term product is the most rational long-term play.
Tanking is no longer the cartoonish version of years past, when rosters were gutted overnight and lineups looked barely NBA-caliber. Today’s “shame rankings” are more nuanced. Utah, Sacramento, and Indiana are prime examples of organizations walking the tightrope between development and defeat, trying to preserve future flexibility while still selling hope to their fan bases.
The Jazz lean into extended looks for young players and experimental lineups that prioritize growth over immediate results. The Kings, perennially hovering around the play-in conversation, face a different dilemma: push for marginal postseason experience or subtly pivot when the season starts to slip. The Pacers, stuck in the middle for years, are emblematic of a franchise that must decide whether chasing the eighth seed is worth sacrificing lottery odds and long-term ceiling.
League rules have tried to curb the most blatant forms of losing. Flattened lottery odds and play-in incentives were designed to keep more teams competitive deeper into the season. Yet the incentives to bottom out remain powerful. One transformative draft pick can reset a timeline, reshape a cap sheet, and change a franchise’s identity in a way that chasing 40 wins rarely can.
The shame, then, isn’t just in losing. It lies in the gray area: resting healthy veterans for “maintenance,” shutting down borderline stars late in the year, or leaning heavily on unproven prospects in crunch time. These are defensible basketball decisions, but together they form a pattern.
Until the NBA fully realigns incentives, the race to the bottom will remain a shadow competition. The Jazz, Kings, Pacers, and their peers aren’t merely bad; they are strategic, calculating, and acutely aware that in today’s NBA, sometimes the ugliest short-term product is the most rational long-term play.
