By beating the Washington Wizards, the Utah Jazz made it harder for themselves to catch their fellow tanker in the standings. However, the New Orleans Pelicans undid some of the damage in their win over the Sacramento Kings tonight, as their win keeps the Jazz as the fifth-worst team in the NBA.
After the Jazz win and before the Pelicans win, the two teams were tied at No. 5. In all honesty, since it was the Kings, one of those teams winning helped the Jazz no matter what, but the Pelicans losing is more important for the Jazz because they would prefer New Orleans move up as high as possible so there's one less threat to them potentially losing their pick to OKC.
The Pelicans already did the Jazz a massive favor by beating them in two consecutive games, which helped the Jazz overtake them in the tanking race. New Orleans has no incentive to be worse than Utah, so they're more than happy to let them be ahead in the tanking game.
Utah will gladly take any help they can get, so New Orleans doing their best not to tank does just that.
Jazz & Pelicans have one more key matchup coming up
Per Tankathon, the Jazz have the 10th-hardest schedule from here on out. It goes without saying that this is a good thing for them, as the harder the schedule, the more losses Utah will likely suffer from now until the season's end.
Among their technically "easy games" left is their last one against the Pelicans, which happens on April 7. Yeah, that is a month away, and there's no telling where each team will be by then. Even if the Pelicans have vaulted up, the Jazz will still want to keep themselves as down as possible.
Then again, it's also very possible the tanking game will already be wrapped up by then, as not many games will be remaining by the time these two match up again.
Even so, look for the Pelicans to do more favors for the Jazz for the next month and a half. New Orleans is giving up their pick to Atlanta anyway, but appears to be extra motivated not to look too stupid for giving up what they did for Derik Queen. As long as Utah keeps their distance from them, that would also go a lot of good for what the Pelicans want to do.
The Jazz would like to eradicate any hope of giving OKC their pick, but being the fifth-worst NBA team gives them an over 99% chance of keeping their pick. Those are pretty fantastic odds no matter what.