Monday’s NBA draft lottery provided another reminder of how inexact the science of “tanking” is for organizations.
Utah was committed to losing from the very outset of the season. Lauri Markkanen, the Jazz’s best player, notched more than 36 minutes in a non-overtime contest just three times this season as Utah rarely played optimal lineups. Their reward was the NBA’s worst record (17-65), but that only granted the Jazz a 14% chance of winning the lottery and the chance to draft Cooper Flagg.
Fortune did not favor their failure.
Utah will select fifth in next month’s NBA draft, its lowest possible post-lottery position. The three teams with the four worst records — Utah, Charlotte, New Orleans and Washington — will all draft outside of the top three. The only true tanker rewarded for its “effort” was Philadelphia, which nabbed the No. 3 pick after dropping 29 of its final 33 games with a G-League level roster.
Dallas won the draft lottery after being one play-in victory away from the playoffs. San Antonio will pick second.
This week’s results were described as cruel and perhaps unfair by some. How else are small markets like Charlotte and Utah supposed to improve if not by striking it rich in the draft? But there are only so many blue chip prospects out there, and the odds of landing them are so small that you have to wonder if it’s worth the pain of the “chase.”
The Timberwolves have had lottery luck on their side twice in the past decade. They certainly tanked for glory in 2015 and were paid off with Karl-Anthony Towns. Getting the chance to grab Anthony Edwards in 2020 was more a product of bad roster construction, Towns’ wrist injury that ensured a series of losses before the NBA was shut down by COVID, and some lottery luck.
The Wolves were incentivized to lose the following season because their pick was top-three protected. If Minnesota finished anywhere outside of that, the pick went to Golden State via the D’Angelo Russell-Andrew Wiggins trade.
Yet Minnesota didn’t attempt to lose, even late in the season. The Timberwolves played Dallas on the final day of the 2020-21 campaign, and a loss would have improved Minnesota’s odds of jumping into the top three by 4.3%. Instead, the Wolves went for the win and waxed the Mavericks.
Edwards scored 30 points that day. Jaden McDaniels had 19 and Naz Reid scored 17.
Minnesota did not jump into the top three in the lottery. Instead, it handed the No. 7 pick over to Golden State, which selected Jonathan Kuminga. Kuminga has been in and out of Golden State’s rotation, but his talent level in this Western Conference semifinal series has been on full display.
So, was that win — or any of Minnesota’s nine victories over the final 16 games of that campaign — a waste? Hardly.
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch could sense the importance of that strong finish in the moments after the Dallas win.
“Guys are excited and have great hope,” Finch said back then. “That’s all that you can ask for a lot of times, is to have hope. They’ve got hope in that they see what they can do with some more work — a lot more work, some maturity. I think guys are pretty excited for what the future holds.”
Sure enough, a playoff appearance followed the next season, and three more have come after that. The work has indeed come, as well as the maturity. What Minnesota lost in lottery balls at the end of that season, it gained in the knowledge of what could be, which has now become what is.
You may not be able to control the way a ball bounces inside of a machine, but you can control setting a culture of hard work and learning that’s required to win. You can develop your own current players rather than dreaming about ones you could acquire on draft night.
You can stiff-arm Lady Luck and choose to take the earned road to success.
Perhaps that was an easier decision for Minnesota to make with Edwards already in tow. It’s easier to concern yourself with building a foundation when actual building blocks are already in place. But in retrospect, the choice made at the end of the 2021 campaign was indeed a smart one.
And, after this week’s ball bouncing results, it’s one perhaps other organizations will make in years to come.
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