We’re neck-deep in a particularly egregious tank off. Shame is out. Humiliation is in. May the worst team win. Nearly a third of the NBA does not want to compete, but the show must go on. There are eight purposeful losers, and each one still has about 15 games left on its schedule. So, with the vibe of a defense attorney who’s trying to keep his client out of jail after they showed up to court with the murder weapon in hand, here’s my case for watching each lottery hopeful tank their way down the stretch. Apologies ahead of time.
Dallas Mavericks: Take a Wild Guess …
We could go a few directions here: Naji Marshall, who owns basketball’s most potent floater this side of Nikola Jokic; Marvin Bagley III’s whisper-quiet competence; Khris Middleton’s admirable fight against Father Time; or Ryan Nembhard, whom Jason Kidd should let us see more. All are interesting in their own way, but let’s not overthink this. Cooper Flagg might be putting up the greatest season any 19-year-old has ever had. Better than Kobe Bryant and LeBron James at that age. Flagg shrugs off some of the sport’s most complex, physically arduous obstacles like someone who’s already made five All-Star teams.
I don’t think Flagg deserves to win Rookie of the Year—there are 128 players who’ve taken at least 250 jump shots this season, and Flagg is the least efficient one—but I still would not trade him for anyone in the league except (probably) Victor Wembanyama.
He had a four-game stretch about six weeks ago that yielded incomprehensible averages: 37.8 points, 9.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists with a 60.0 effective field goal percentage. The numbers were great, and somehow less impressive than watching how comfortable he looked in one-on-one situations and when getting into the paint, finding his spot, and creating space for himself.
Moves like the one above have already become somewhat of a signature. Flagg drives left, spins middle, and hits a little push shot or fadeaway. The fact that defenses around the league can’t really stop it is disturbing. Flagg is huge. Flagg is strong. Flagg possesses an unruffled poise that shouldn’t exist in someone this young. You can’t make him go faster than he wants to.
On defense, he makes the standard off-ball mistakes that are typical of rookies, but you can tell just by watching him move around the court that it’s only a matter of time before he lands on his first All-Defensive team. Flagg just kinda glides wherever he wants to go before suddenly exploding at the exact right moment to make a play:
The Mavericks stink, but their best player is a borderline unprecedented prodigy. His natural timing and feel are impeccable; he couldn’t fall out of sync with the game’s rhythm if he tried. We’re on the ground floor of a career that has no visible limitations. Watch Cooper Flagg whenever you can.
Washington Wizards: Where Dreams Come True (for Everyone Else)
Trae Young can be exciting. Anthony Davis may return at some point. Alex Sarr has a moment or two in every game that makes you think there’s an All-Star in there, somewhere. All are semi-suitable reasons to catch a Wizards game, but none sniff the most obvious one: From this point forward, every time Washington takes the court, there’s a decent chance you will witness history.
This is a generationally despicable defense that reset the definition of “bad” when it helped Bam Adebayo enjoy the single most ridiculous individual performance of all time. Here are the point totals the Wizards have allowed in their past 11 games (all losses): 129, 119, 126, 134, 123, 126, 122, 138, 150, 136, and 111. Washington is mostly playing lineups that are meant to be roadkill, but there’s still some weird kind of thrill seeing them botch rotations with such impunity.
Watch the play below. Kyle Filipowski isn’t Dirk Nowitzki, but he’s also someone who shouldn’t be left this open for this long. Extra credit goes to Leaky Black for stunting toward the shooter from about 12 feet away, which might be a new NBA record:
How many NBA players watched Adebayo drop 83 on Washington’s head and wondered why it couldn’t be them? Over the next couple of weeks, Cade Cunningham (twice), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Brunson, and Luka Doncic will get a chance to try.
Utah Jazz: The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business
Welcome to sicko mode. Elijah Harkless might be the worst shooter in the NBA, but he might also be the peskiest defender alive. Now in his second season, with a grand total of 423 minutes on his résumé—he won Most Improved Player in the G League last season—this dude is superb at getting over screens to stay in front of his man and loves drawing enough contact to force a whistle. He’s a physical ball of energy who understands why he’s on the court whenever he gets to play.
Harkless has appeared in only 18 games this season, but the 2.1 offensive fouls he draws per 100 possessions lead the league. This side of Lu Dort, he might low-key be the no. 1 defender who makes big men wince as they prepare to set a ball screen.
When you defend like your body is immune to pain, with Spider-Man’s instincts and a bone-deep desire to ensure everyone on the other team hates you with every fiber of their being, bravo. Anyone who can get under Jose Alvarado’s skin is in the running for most annoying basketball player on the planet (complimentary):
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone, let alone someone on a two-way contract, come this close to single-handedly breaking up a Jamal Murray–Nikola Jokic two-man game:
Harkless earns his paycheck in ways that don’t altogether align with Utah’s current mission statement. He plays too hard. He cares too much. If he doesn’t stay with the Jazz, I hope he finds a role somewhere else next season.
Brooklyn Nets: The Nic Claxton–Michael Porter Jr. Connection
Let’s start here: Will either of these two be on the Nets next season? I’d wager the answer is yes, based on the fact that Brooklyn can’t access its own pick in next year’s draft and, in some form or another, wants to follow the footsteps Utah and Washington made at February’s trade deadline. The Nets want to be good, and keeping their two best players helps them do that.
Anyway, did you know that Claxton has assisted 95 of Porter’s baskets this season? That’s the sixth-highest mark among all duos in the entire league. (It’s tied with Stephon Castle and Victor Wembanyama.) For most of this season, Nets head coach Jordi Fernández has tethered Clax’s minutes to Porter’s, a smart call that has unlocked his starting center’s ability to direct traffic from the perimeter. Right now, Claxton is averaging 10 more potential assists per 100 passes than he did last season, which is the largest improvement in the league, per BBall Index.
A bunch of his assists to MPJ are dribble-handoff 3s. Sometimes he’ll dime the former Nugget up after he fades off a flare screen. But nearly twice as many of Claxton’s assists are for 2-point baskets, nifty finds that leverage the fear defenses have for those outside shots. The deception on these back-cuts is so satisfying:
The Nets are the youngest team in the league. Their viewing experience can be rough, particularly with Egor Demin now out for the season. But I could watch this team’s two resident vets link up all day.
Memphis Grizzlies: Ty Jerome
It’s past time we grapple with the dawning possibility that Jerome might be a less athletic iteration of Michael Jordan. To summarize how he’s looked since returning from a calf strain to make his Grizzlies debut on January 31: What planet is this? Yes, Jerome was a sensational Sixth Man of the Year finalist last year in Cleveland. Scoring was never a problem. But this? Come on.
In limited minutes, Jerome has essentially been the most lethal scorer in the NBA. Among players who’ve appeared in at least nine games over the past five-ish weeks, only Kawhi Leonard is averaging more points per 100 possessions. Only Leonard and Luka Doncic have a higher usage rate. Only seven players are averaging more assists. Only three are attempting more 3s (of which Jerome has drilled 40.4 percent).
He ranks sixth in estimated plus-minus, which is a sentence that was originally conceptualized in a Zach Kleiman fever dream. Jerome is consistently effective at keeping his defender off-balance. He’s sustained by hesitation dribbles, quick starts, and subtle gear shifts that often precede a floater that goes up a split second before the defender expects it to.
The movie Jerome is putting on might play only in a small-sample-size theater, but it still deserves to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Chicago Bulls: Free Tre Jones
Woof. Brutal. Yikes. The Bulls barely resemble a basketball team right now. They have no cohesion and have adopted a style of play that can best be described as the moment before someone grabs the steering wheel and jerks the car toward a guardrail. The lineups are strange, teetering between being too small and one-dimensional and too big and clunky. If I had a dollar for every time I heard Bulls broadcaster Stacey King mourn a nonsensical offensive possession by saying, “Those are the shots you can get anytime,” I could probably buy the team.
But let’s lighten the mood by talking about Jones. I kinda still can’t believe he wasn’t scooped up at the trade deadline by a playoff team. As far as backup point guards go, this is an efficient playmaker who defends his ass off and makes good stuff happen whenever he drives a closeout and gets into the paint. Sometimes that’s a layup or floater, and sometimes it’s a pass off two feet that keeps the possession flowing or directly results in an open 3.
Jones’s own outside shot needs some work—his 3-point rate is very low, and he’s shot 31.5 percent behind the arc in his career—but that shouldn’t mar his value. As a society, we need to stop stamping scarlet letters on useful, smart, high-energy guards who don’t shoot like Klay Thompson. Jones is a smart ball handler who averages 2.5 deflections per game and is able to apply extremely annoying full-court pressure when asked to do so. According to BBall Index, Jones spends 26.6 percent of his time on the floor guarding whoever has the ball—the fourth-highest mark in the league.
Aside from Josh Giddey, Jones may be the only Bull good enough to crack a playoff team’s rotation right now. He’s also the only player on this team I actually enjoy watching. Right now, he’s languishing in tiny, cramped lineups that make no sense. But for the $16 million he’s owed over the next couple of seasons, I’d try to snag him this summer.
Indiana Pacers: Ethical Basketball
This may be undermined by the occasional and somewhat awkward Ivica Zubac sighting—successfully integrating a completely different kind of big man into their system won’t happen in a dozen meaningless games alongside players who aren’t likely to be in Rick Carlisle’s rotation next season!—but the most appealing thing about these Pacers, to me, is the (extremely) faint nostalgia they summon by applying a style of play that isn’t much different from the one that helped carry them to last year’s NBA Finals.
Their methodical ball and man movement pretty much still exists, even if it isn’t catalyzed by Tyrese Haliburton’s contagious devotion to making everyone feel involved as quickly as he possibly can. Indy is making about a dozen fewer passes per game than it was last season, but it’s still good for the second-highest average in the league. (The Pacers rank 29th in the rate of possessions that feature zero or one pass, per Sportradar. Last year, at least three passes were made in 37.3 percent of their possessions. This year, that number is down only 3 percentage points and ranks near the top of the league.)
They’ve dropped from second to third in touches per game and from third to fifth in hockey assists. The ball still moves! T.J. McConnell is still here! The biggest difference is that, um, the shots that are generated by all those intentionally random cuts, screens, and passes don’t usually go in. When they do, though, [closes eyes, smiles, shakes head, kisses fingertips]:
If you have any Pacers fans in your life, I don’t recommend watching the lottery with them.
Sacramento Kings: Um …
Bonus: The NBA’s All-Undrafted Team
While we’re talking about tanking and looking forward to the lottery, let’s flip the script and highlight some good basketball players who weren’t drafted at all. As a special bonus portion of this column, I want to quickly build a hypothetical team of players who were initially slept on by every franchise in the league.
NBA teams chasing sustained success today better invest a whole lot in scouting and player development. It’s a nonnegotiable. Just look at the names below. Pretty much all of them are providing meaningful contributions to a very good team. Assembled together, they could probably make the playoffs.
Starters
Austin Reaves
Lu Dort
Derrick Jones Jr.
Sam Hauser
Luke Kornet
Bench
Naz Reid
Collin Gillespie
Alex Caruso
Duncan Robinson
Naji Marshall
Julian Champagnie
Dean Wade
Daniss Jenkins
Keon Ellis
Dominick Barlow
