The Utah Jazz definitely gave the New York Knicks some good punches tonight - it helped that Jalen Brunson didn't play - but the Knicks kept them at arm's length. Adding another loss isn't fun, but nights like this have a lot more upside.
With the loss, the Jazz are now 7-25. That's par for the course, but fellow tanker Toronto Raptors won their game over the Brooklyn Nets, putting them at 8-26. Factoring those games, the Jazz are now tied with the Charlotte Hornets for third-highest lottery odds (the Hornets own the tiebreaker), while the Raptors now rank fifth.
The Jazz's odds of having a top-four pick are 50%, while their odds of getting the number one pick in the 2025 NBA Draft are 13.2%. At the same time, NBA lottery odds are a little more spread out than in previous years. Nonetheless, raising their odds counts, even if said odds rose only a smidgen.
Getting Cooper Flagg was on the Jazz's Christmas list, so nights like these help them in that regard. Time will tell if it will stay this way, but at least nights like this could pay major dividends down the line. The Jazz won't know if this truly will help them until May, but hey, at least it doesn't hurt.
The one downside to tonight
While the Raptors winning on a night the Jazz lose helps the latter's tanking odds, nights like tonight confirm that the Jazz have another tanking competitor in their midst - the Nets. This already seemed like the case once they traded Dennis Schroder, and then the Dorian Finney-Smith trade only strengthened that notion.
The Nets will only likely get worse from here on out. Not just because of how much worse they've become, but because they have ample opportunity to weaken their team further in trading season. Cameron Johnson is one of the hottest names that is constantly mentioned in trade rumors.
His trade may be as much of an "if" as much as it is a "when." For that reason, the Jazz also have to strengthen their tanking odds. Luckily, they have the exact same means to make themselves worse to make sure the Nets can't catch them.
Like the Nets, the Jazz also have some players they'll likely trade in the coming months or at least try to. Since more trade dominoes are falling, the Jazz will likely try to join in soon enough.
This could all be for naught in the end if the lottery balls go against Utah, but that's a bridge they'll cross when they come to it. As the season progresses, every loss will count more and more for them, but more than that, every win their tanking competitor should also prove valuable.