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Victor Wembanyama looks like a Create-a-Player, but there aren’t as many outright tanking teams for what seems like a generational draft prospect.
When Sam Hinkie resigned from the Sixers after just over two years of the boldest tanking strategy any sport had ever seen, he did so with an over 7,000-word manifesto. He went into great detail about being contrarian and how the best-laid plans are the ones made many years in advance.
While tanking is a dirty word to certain folks, it’s not as simple as letting your team suck for an extended period of time. Many teams do the latter while actively trying to win. Hinkie left the Sixers with a treasure trove of assets and a perennial MVP candidate in Joel Embiid.
Sam Presti has been deploying a similar strategy — without league interference — with the Thunder. Oklahoma City owns 15 first-round picks from 2023 to 2027 — not including the first-rounders they’ve already used. When the 2023 NBA Draft rolls around, it will be the type of moment Presti and company were waiting on.
Victor Wembanyama, an 18-year-old, 7-foot-3 French superhuman, will undoubtedly be the first player taken. Wembanyama took NBA Twitter by storm a couple weeks ago when his French club Metropolitan 92 took on the G League Ignite for a pair of games. In the first contest, he scored 37 points, hit 7 of 11 from three and blocked five shots. A couple days later, he scored 36 and grabbed 11 rebounds. The highlights of Wembanyama were equally silly and unfair.
The Thunder’s improving roster might lower the team’s lottery odds, but we’ve seen those ping pong balls dance in some funny ways (Looking at you, Cleveland).
But while Oklahoma City and a few other teams will be hoping to land a dude that looks more like a mythological being than a basketball player, the NBA appears to be as competitive as ever.
Looking around the league, there are roughly a dozen teams who — whether founded or not — believe they have a shot to win the title. That’s a pretty high number, especially considering the defending champion Warriors won their fourth championship in eight years. There are a handful of others who might not be looking for a Finals appearance, but will be mighty competitive. Then there are a few more that fit into the “kidding themselves” bucket (looking at you, Sacramento) who will lose games, but not on purpose.
There aren’t many teams though entering the season with tanking as the unspoken goal. Of course, the Spurs look primed for a truly awful season. The Jazz’s demolition is still in motion, but they appear to be in a race to the bottom. Teams like the Pacers, Magic, Rockets, and the aforementioned Thunder have intriguing young pieces, but will still likely lose lots of games.
So, realistically you’re looking at two teams that will be flat out planning to lose, four more that will be OK losing with young talent, and then maybe a team that joins the fray after a rough start. That means roughly 80 percent of the league will be actively trying to win games, at least to start the season.
Considering Wembanyama is being boasted as the best draft prospect since LeBron James, that feels like a good sign for the league. While most of us will bellyache over the Lakers getting way too many national TV appearances, the TNT and ESPN slates should be compelling more often than not.
As mentioned, 12 teams likely think they have a shot at the Finals. The latest model from FiveThirtyEight gives 11 teams at least a five percent chance to win it all. Daryl Morey once said that if you have a five percent chance, you should be going all in — the Sixers’ signing a 37-year-old P.J. Tucker to a three-year deal being an obvious example of that thinking. DraftKings has 12 teams at +2200 or better to win the whole thing.
And while hoping for a chance to draft a Dirk Nowitzki-Giannis Antetokounmpo hybrid sure seems like wishing for good luck, luck is a factor in all of this.
The Warriors, Suns, Celtics, and Nets hope their offseason turmoil is behind them. The Bucks hope a healthy Khris Middleton returns soon. The Heat hope Kyle Lowry can provide Jimmy Butler more help this season. The Mavericks and Grizzlies hope their young stars continue to elevate the casts around them. The Sixers hope that James Harden returns to at least early-Brooklyn form. The Clippers and Nuggets are hoping for good health more than any teams in the league.
A deviation from any of that, and those teams could easily find themselves out of the championship hunt.
Most of the heavy lifting on rosters has been done. It’s time to let things play out.
“The illusion of control is an opiate, though,” Hinkie wrote. “Nonetheless, it is annoyingly necessary to get comfortable with many grades of maybe. Sixers fans come up to me to say hello and many of them say the same thing (almost instinctively) as we part, ‘Good luck.’ My standard reply: ‘Thanks. We’ll need it.’”
Whether you’re chasing the Larry O’Brien Trophy or a large, skilled Frenchman, you’re going to need all the luck you can get.
