The only teams I see that will be worse than the Kings are the Hawks and Maybe the Cavs
Atlanta is easy in the bottom 3. I've also got Brooklyn, Orlando, and Dallas as possible competitors for the lucky loser race.
If every team played every other team the same number of times, I would likely have Sacramento at 4 or 5. Given where they are, however, they very well could end up with a 14% shot at #1,2 or 3.
Mike
I don’t see Dallas tanking again. The acquisitions of DeAndre Jordan and Doncic really take them up a tier.
Oops, you're correct. I forgot about Jordan.
Mike
Also, for whatever reason, a few people on here really didn't realize how hard Dallas was tanking last year. They have some veteran talent and good coaching. Here is from an article on espn (link crashed)
"The brutally honest and painfully obvious -- not to mention extremely pricey -- way to put it is that the Mavs have at least tinkered with tanking.
Just look at the lineup that Carlisle put on the floor for the final 5:19 of that tight game against the Lakers.
The veterans who kept the Mavs in the game took a seat down the stretch despite Nowitzki, Barnes, Matthews, guard J.J. Barea and center Dwight Powell combining for 85 points on 66 percent shooting from the floor that night. Small forward Doug McDermott, making his Mavs debut after arriving in a trade deadline deal, joined 20-year-old rookie point guard Dennis Smith Jr. and a trio of undrafted players on minimum contracts (Kleber, guard Yogi Ferrell and center Salah Mejri).
That foursome played a total of 12 minutes together in the first three and a half months but has recently become the Mavs' closing lineup of choice. It's a group that had blown a 10-point lead in the final 4:42 of a loss to the LA Clippers a couple of games earlier and was minus-38 in 24 February minutes before managing to close out the Lakers.
"Hopefully the new draft lottery rules will change the approach to player development," Cuban wrote in a recent email reply to ESPN, although he expressed his doubts on the issue after abstaining from the vote in October."
Dallas was up among the hardest tankers in all of the league last year. No way to spin it any other way. They would win 5-7 more games easily just from not doing those hardcore shenanigans.
So do you think Dallas was tanking all last season or just the 2nd half of last season?
That foursome played a total of 12 minutes together in the first three and a half months but has recently become the Mavs' closing lineup of choice.
That sentence makes it sound like a 2nd half thing, but I'm not really sure, but I do know the Mavs were bad pretty much all of last year. They had a good stretch in Dec (with all 8 wins coming against teams with playoff aspirations) but that was about it.
Oct: 1-7, 13% win % = 10 win pace
Nov: 4-10, 29% win % = 23 win pace
Dec: 8-8, 50% win % = 41 win pace
Jan: 3-11, 21% win % = 18 win pace
Feb: 3-7, 30% win % = 25 win pace
Mar: 4-10, 29% win % = 23 win pace
Apr: 1-5, 17% win % = 14 win pace
So if you think they were tanking all last year that's fine, but if you think it was just a 2nd half thing where they pulled their vets and experimented with lineups, I would disagree.
Personally I don't know what to think of the Mavs. My heart says a couple of solid players in Barnes and Jordan, a few scrappy rotation players with Powell, Ferrell, Barea, interesting young players in Smith and Doncic, OG Dirk, with a top coach in Carlisle. That's a team that can win around 35, and if everything breaks right maybe even hit .500.
But my brain says Barnes is a very slightly better Jeff Green, Jordan is out of style in the current NBA, Dirk's been cooked, and everybody else looks better than they are putting up empty numbers on a poorly constructed team that was "tanking." And whose to say they won't try to tank again this upcoming season because their draft pick next year is Top-5 protected?
I can see them winning 25, I can see them winning 35. I don't really know on this one.