Ah, tank-related puns. I’ve missed you. Nobody was worth a rhyme last season. Victor Wembanyama certainly was before that, but his name isn’t easily punnable (though we should give a shoutout the Reddit commenter who coined “Wembanyamarama”). But this season? We get an easy one. Actually, we get several. There’s the obvious “sag for Flagg” in honor of Duke forward Cooper Flagg, but “drag for Flagg” and “waive the white Flagg” also work (once again, thank you Reddit).

This is what a race to the bottom should look like: plenty of fun puns, even more bad teams living by them. There are at least four teams actively fighting to reach the bottom in the Eastern Conference in the 2024-25 season. Nobody is working quite so hard out West, but they won’t need to. There are a couple of teams that will be bad organically, but the rest of the conference will be so good that those teams will get pounded into submission, and one or two injury cases will join them. When the dust settles, there should be a fairly identifiable caste of seven or eight teams eagerly steering toward Duke’s elite freshman.

So naturally, we’re going to rank them. While there will certainly be a surprise or two when the tanking really heats up in March and April, these are the eight teams best-positioned to lose as it stands today.

Hey umm… what’s going on with Kawhi Leonard? He was on the cusp of coming back before the playoffs, and then proceeded to play just twice against the Dallas Mavericks. He was picked for Team USA and then left before the Olympics started. It’s training camp and he’s not practicing yet. With Paul George gone and James Harden’s scoring prowess significantly diminished from its peak, a healthy Leonard is going to be essential if the Clippers hope to even contend for a Play-In Tournament spot. If these knee issues persist, and with Leonard they tend to, there’s a lot of disaster potential. Of course, the entire league is rooting for Leonard’s health. The Oklahoma City Thunder control the next three Clippers’ first-round picks, and the last thing 29 other teams want to see is Flagg in a Thunder uniform. The George trade has already gotten the Thunder Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jaylen Williams, and there’s still more value left to be mined from it.

Brandon Miller had a promising rookie season. Charles Lee is a promising rookie coach. Generally speaking, winning teams don’t have the word “rookie” attached to multiple key pieces, but that’s where the Hornets are. They’re inching their way back in the right direction with a new coach, front office and franchise player, but these things tend to take time. Where the veterans are concerned, health is the bigger issue. LaMelo Ball has played 58 total games over the past two seasons, and rising young rim-protector Mark Williams played only 19 a year ago. Seth Curry and Taj Gibson are the only players on the roster today with more than five years of experience. Having an extra lottery pick never hurts. In a few years, the Hornets have a chance to be good. 

The Jazz have more or less played .500 basketball through the end of January in each of the last two seasons. From Feb. 1 on in those seasons, they have a combined record of 18-45. Danny Ainge has assembled too much talent to tank properly for 82 games, but that hasn’t stopped him from kneecapping his team at the past two deadlines. That’s going to be a bit harder this time around. He’s running out of veterans to trade, though if there are worthwhile offers for Collin Sexton, Walker Kessler and Jordan Clarkson, they all seem available. Lauri Markkanen pushes the floor up too high for Utah to land in the bottom five, but so long as Utah owes Oklahoma City its protected first-round pick (top-10 this season, top-eight next season), you can rely on Ainge to do everything in his power to keep Utah a safe distance away from the Play-In Tournament. That this year’s roster is significantly younger and more raw than the previous two only helps the effort. Players like Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams and Isaiah Collier all have NBA futures, but their presents leave plenty to be desired.

The Bulls have taken an intentional step back. Their defensive anchor (and only consistent positive) from last season now plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Their offensive engine is a Sacramento King. Getting Zach LaVine back might offset some of what was lost with DeMar DeRozan. The Bulls have no answer whatsoever for the loss of Alex Caruso, and their defense is going to be miserable as a result. The offense is more of a question. There’s talent here, but the fit is iffy. Josh Giddey will be the starting point guard. How often will he have the ball with LaVine, Coby White, Nikola Vucevic and others demanding touches? Is there enough shooting here to support the non-shooting Giddey? Ultimately talent keeps the Bulls out of the absolute bottom, but when a team tells you it’s rebuilding, it’s wise to believe them. The Bulls made that declaration by trading Caruso and DeRozan.

The defense has a path to being, well, not good, but at least professional. Ausar Thompson is great. Jalen Duren has excellent tools. Cade Cunningham should be solid defensively as primary ball-handlers go. But the offense is a problem. A major one, because there’s just no shooting here. Their last two lottery picks, Thompson and Ron Holland, are, to this point, absolute non-shooters. Cunningham and Jaden Ivey have thus far been a shade below average. Tobias Harris and Tim Hardaway Jr. were brought in to provide spacing for the youngsters, but they much prefer creating their own looks than setting up others. Hardaway made just 35.2% of his catch-and-shoot 3’s last season. Harris was at 36.5%. Neither will have MVP candidates creating looks for them anymore. There is a chance the Pistons have the NBA’s worst offense this season, and that alone gets Detroit into the mix. 

Portland has far more NBA talent than your typical bottom-three team. Jerami Grant, Deandre Ayton, Deni Avdija and Anfernee Simons would all be viable starters on good teams, to say nothing of the recent draft picks that could potentially blossom. But remember, somebody has to finish last in the Western Conference. It’s not Portland’s fault there are 14 good teams ahead of them. Portland really should have traded off a veteran or two by now, but part of their excuse for not tanking more aggressively is likely that they don’t need to. The schedule will take care of that for them. The fact that their offense will at least partially run through a second-year point guard coming off of a disappointing rookie campaign in Scoot Henderson only makes things harder. This season is about development, not winning.

Remember what we talked about with Chicago? When a team tells you it wants to tank, believe them. The Nets didn’t just trade away their best player in Mikal Bridges. They looped in the Rockets to trade for their own first-round pick back in the process. Your own draft picks are the only assets in all of basketball whose value you can control. You can’t force a player to get better. You can’t make a team whose pick you own lose. But you can certainly set yourself up to lose as many of your own games as possible. That’s the only reason to go out of your way to trade for your own pick back. It’s not worth doing if you think that pick is going to be No. 9. You do it because you can control it, and can therefore ensure that when the lottery arrives, you have as many ping pong balls as humanly possible. The Nets still have work to do. Cam Johnson needs to go. So does Dorian Finney-Smith. Ben Simmons will probably take care of himself, but on the off-chance he’s healthy and anything like his old self, he’s an obvious buyout candidate. But the Nets understand the assignment. The goal is to lose, and when that’s as clear as it is here, it’s not especially hard to do.

Hey, speaking of teams that understood the assignment, let’s give it up for the Wizards. This is a tanker. Tyus Jones was really the only traditional playmaker on last year’s roster. He is now a Sun, and replacement Malcolm Brogdon will miss the beginning of the year due to a torn ligament in his thumb. Deni Avdija was the best two-way player on the team. He is now a Trail Blazer. No. 2 overall pick Alex Sarr has so much work to do on offense that he shot 0 for 15 in a Summer League game. You can question the merits of rebuilding this way. It probably makes some sense to have a bit more veteran know-how in the building just so the youngsters have older players to learn from. But as far as losing games goes, the Wizards are nailing it. The Wizards finished last season on a 6-30 stretch. That’s just under a 14-win pace. They’ll probably do slightly better than that across 82 games on shooting variance and schedule quirks alone, but the roster is worse. If the lottery didn’t exist I’d advise Flagg to look into real estate along the Potomac.