The Utah Jazz have embraced the tank since mid-November. After starting out the season surprisingly decent, the team has more or less continued the same strategy they did last season. There has been one recent alteration: playing their main guys the first three quarters, only to throw in the reserves for the last one.
They did this in their game against the Atlanta Hawks a few nights back (Thanks for the assist, Jock Landale!) and then did it again against the Orlando Magic. Both of these games featured the Jazz controlling much of the game until benching Lauri Markkanen and co, allowing their opponents to take the game back.
It's a new way to tank that basically lets the Jazz to not get in trouble with the NBA by having their best players active, which still allows them to lose games anyway, in the hopes of both keeping their pick and getting the best one possible.
And yet all the Jazz are getting from this is backlash. Everyone hates how obvious Utah's plans. Their strategy is shameless because they want to lose these games despite the fact that having JJJ on the team would pretty much vault them into play-in contention if that's what they wanted to do.
But why? This is just the way of the world. Teams may execute their strategies differently, but it's still tanking. There is honorable way to throw the season away. Every NBA team knows this and the league itself has tried to crack down on it, and even if they've tried mitigating the problem, it will never go away.
People who says that what Utah is doing is disgusting aren't wrong, but the takeaway from it is that there's nothing they can do about it. The only consolation they have is that the Jazz will stop doing this once the season ends.
Will more teams follow the Jazz's blueprint?
So the Jazz are no longer keeping players like Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. out of games becuase of injuries they conjured up. Instead, they'll play them, but only enough to satisfy to league before its tanking time.
Gross? Yes. Brilliant? Also yes. And because of that, don't be surprised if other teams in the same ballpark do the same. If there's a loophole to avoid punishment from the league for tanking, other teams will take it, and Utah basically found it.
They had incentive to because they were fined for it last year. Even if it was only a slap on the wrist (if anything, it was more like a tickle), Utah didn't want to go through that again so they're doing what they're doing now.
More and more teams are approaching a new era, like Memphis and Dallas, so don't be surprised if, until the NBA does something about it, they're going to execute this particular tanking strategy.