We have reached the point of the season where some NBA teams aren’t trying to win games, and are instead angling for increased odds in the draft lottery.
Of course, team officials will never admit that they prefer better positioning in the NBA draft over winning meaningless games in the doldrums of March basketball. Otherwise, the franchise risks getting fined.
However, there are some ways to frame this strategy to make it look like a legitimate coincidence. It is called tanking and basketball writers including Yaron Weitzman and Jake Fischer have even written books about the subject matter.
When two of those tanking teams end up facing off against one another towards the end of the season, like the Portland Trail Blazers and Oklahoma City Thunder will this evening, neither tend to have their best foot forward. It’s essentially a “tankathon” for these two teams, both lobbying for the pole position in the NBA draft.
The Trail Blazers and Thunder are both on the outside of the playoff picture, and the Blazers actually lose their draft pick if they make the postseason.
Check out this injury list for the game:
This Thunder-Blazers injury report is a long read, but worth your time. pic.twitter.com/tDJztrGgAY
— Joe Mussatto (@joe_mussatto) March 28, 2022
In the curious case of the Blazers and the Thunder, both teams have submitted injury reports long enough to make even the pre-Joel Embiid Philadelphia 76ers blush.
Combined, the two teams have an absolutely absurd number of names on their injury reports. Written out, the list looks longer than anything you’d ever even see on a CVS receipt.
Of the five players who actually did make it into the most recent starting lineup for Portland, none were older than 25 years old and only one player bragged more than two years of NBA experience.
Meanwhile, for Oklahoma City, none were older than 24 years old and only two have logged more than two years in the league.
For the sake of competitiveness, in an ideal world, both teams use the losses to get a great pick in the 2022 NBA draft. In the meanwhile, hopefully all the players get well soon.
