As we come to the end of a season that featured eight teams clearly and unapologetically trying to lose, we look back at just how bad they were and rank the teams that tanked the hardest in 2018.
82 games is a long season. For some teams, the ones that have been out of contention since before the season started, it’s felt exponentially longer. For others that may have entered the season with expectations of winning, the last 25 or 30 have probably felt like 82.
Regardless of how the season started, how it fell apart or at what point it started to go off the rails, losing sucks. But in the NBA there’s no glory in respectability. There’s no reward for trying and finishing 10th rather than 15th, in fact just the opposite. Without a superstar, you can barely compete for a spot in the playoffs and the last five years have shown that it takes multiple superstars to think about competing for a championship. The only way to get one — unless you’re on a few teams that attracts free agents — is through the lottery.
As the 76ers have shown this season, teams are ultimately better off if they just embrace the tank or “trust the process” rather than trying to win as many games as possible year in and year out to just narrowly exceed mediocrity.
This season, particularly over the last two months, we’ve seen more teams than ever before accept that reality and go all in on the race to the bottom. Adam Silver and the league office have not been happy about it but other than fining Mark Cuban for brashly and publicly acknowledging the incentives towards losing, there’s nothing the league can do until future rule changes go into effect.
No one came close to Philadelphia’s NBA record 10-72 season in 2015-16, but we did see some impressively bad basketball from almost a third of the NBA down the stretch. That said, with the regular season in the books, it’s time we look back and decide who was officially the best at being worst in 2018.
The following is a ranking of the top (or bottom) eight tanking performances from the season.