The Utah Jazz won an overtime thriller over the Portland Trail Blazers last night. Watching the Jazz's youngsters pull out the win was exciting, particularly from how dominant Kyle Filipowski was. Unfortunately, there was a problem.
The Jazz beating the Trail Blazers, combined with the Washington Wizards losing to the Philadelphia 76ers the same night, ties the two teams for the worst record in the NBA.
Odds are, it will stay that way. The Jazz's two remaining games are against the Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder. Odds are, those will probably end in defeat. The Wizards will face the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat, two lesser teams that will probably give it their all this late into the season.
If that's how things turn out, then whoever gets the best overall lottery odds - both would still tie for the best odds for the No. 1 pick - would be decided by a coin flip. If the Jazz lose the coin flip, they'd get the second-best odds, which would mean they would have odds of getting the sixth overall pick.
Going to No. 2 isn't that much worse
Whoever finished with the best overall odds gets the No. 5 pick as the worst-case scenario. That's preferable to potentially having odds at the No. 6 pick, but the bottom line is that neither of these is a good scenario. Just because one is slightly worse does not discount that ending with the No. 5 pick or no. 6 pick would be tough to swallow.
Plus, it does nothing to change the fact that both the Jazz and the Wizards will have the same odds at getting the No. 1 pick regardless. Since both want Cooper Flagg, they already accomplished their goals for this season by finishing with a bottom-three record, and there's nothing either team could have done to improve those odds specifically.
The Wizards actually helped the Jazz's tank a lot before the last night
As nerve-wracking as things are that the Jazz are now tied for the worst record, the Wizards helped them get into their current position. Washington was busy at the trade deadline, acquiring winners like Khris Middleton and Marcus Smart, and that has led to them winning eight games since then.
In that same timeframe, the Jazz have won five games, including last night's victory over the Trail Blazers. If the Wizards had won as many games as the Jazz did over the last two months, this wouldn't even be a discussion right now, and everyone would be happy to see Utah finish with a bottom-two record.
Utah may prefer to have the best odds, but they have Washington to thank for how they even have a shot to begin with.
Winning meaningless games can help the Jazz's youngster's long-term
This Jazz roster was constructed to lose from the start. Optimistically, it was built to compete in games but win a lot of them. The Jazz haven't had many chances to win games when the opportunity has presented itself, so it's fun to watch them pull it off even when it won't mean anything in the present.
It really isn't good for young players when teams bend over backwards to ensure they don't win. If Filipowski's dominance last night doesn't translate into anything, and the Jazz make it clear that's what they wanted, that hurts Filipowski's mindset as a player because it could hurt his motivation to play at his hardest.
The season is already over, and the Jazz have pretty high odds of getting a potential game-changer nonetheless. There's nothing wrong with building some confidence for tomorrow's Jazz, even if progress goes at a snail's pace.
Most importantly, this can all be for naught if the Jazz A. still wind up with the No. 1 odds anyway, and/or B. get the No. 1 pick in the draft. Everything that the fans are worried about is on hypotheticals. Nothing concrete.
Jazz fans wanting the best odds possible makes it understandable that they're unhappy about what happened last night, but it's not the end of the world. Not yet, at least.