The Utah Jazz are one of the worst teams in the NBA, and that's been by design. They are only just starting to embrace their youth movement, and the veterans they have have been sidelined often. Utah's even gotten fined for holding out Lauri Markkanen.
It's not fun to watch Utah intentionally lose, but everyone understand why it is this way. Tanking is the easiest but not easy route to getting a franchise changer. Even though the NBA has tried to limit it because of how damaging it can be to its revenues, teams do it anyway because their end game is getting a potential all-timer.
The proof is in the pudding, too. ESPN's Tim Bontemps and Kevin Pelton listed data showing that getting a high pick has been the key to extended success.
They pointed out that of the 40 of the last 45 teams that won the title featured a player who had won or would win the league's MVP.
"The following 14 players was a member of at least one of them: Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo or Nikola Jokic."
It gets better, as they also added that most of those players were selected very highly and only a few of them were not picked highly.
"Five of those 14 players -- Johnson, Olajuwon, O'Neal, Duncan and James -- were taken first overall. And only four -- Bryant, Nowitzki, Antetokounmpo and Jokic -- were picked outside the top seven spots."
If that's not enough, they added that very few players
"Over the past 45 years, five NBA champions were led by a player taken outside the top seven spots in the draft."
To be fair, Antetokounmpo and Jokic came out of nowhere and have brought their respective franchises to new heights, either never seen before or not seen in decades. However, their individual success and their team's success can be attributed to luck.
The Jazz can try to depend on getting steals in the draft, but those are some big risks to take. Utah very clearly did not want to roll that dice because there's a franchise player coming in from this draft, and there could possibly be more. Because the model of getting a franchise player via high lottery picks has proven the most effective, the Jazz's season going this way is the best route.
Even though all of this data points to the Jazz making the right decision to tank, there's some irony to this with their history.
The Jazz have hardly ever opted for tanking
The Jazz have had some of the best players to ever grace the NBA, like Karl Malone and John Stockton, but neither were high lottery picks, as Stockton was the No. 16 pick in the 1984 Draft while Malone was the No. 13 pick in the 1985 Draft.
The only top-five picks they've ever had are Darrell Griffith (his number is retired), Dominique Wilkins (who they traded), Deron Williams (top-10 Jazzman ever), Enes Freedom (considered an NBA dinosaur), and Dante Exum (injuries ruined a promising career). It's actually pretty amazing what they've achieved despite that.
It is impressive that the Jazz have the success that they do as a franchise, but the fact remains that they don't have any titles. They have come close, but they haven't been so in almost three decades. It's not fun to watch them lose a lot of games right now, but the thought of them winning a championship would be well worth it.