If the Utah Jazz were fined $500,000 for suspected tanking in a game that they won, Adam Silver had better be aligning the crosshairs of his catastrophic death laser (every NBA commissioner has had one since Larry O’Brien had his commissioned back in ‘83) directly at the Memphis Grizzlies. If Utah’s tanking was worth half a million dollars, there’s no rationalizing that what the Grizzlies displayed in Salt Lake City Friday night isn’t worthy of capital punishment.
I mean, come on. Memphis played just six players in the Delta Center this fateful evening, none of whom would be recognizable to your father, who has watched every Jazz game since 1992. They wouldn’t be recognizable to the freakiest of basketball freaks, save for maybe Dariq Whitehead, who played at Duke a few seasons ago, but more recently played a team-low 24 minutes before an SLC crowd.
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One could argue that Utah’s response of playing just seven deep on the depth chart is practically just as egregious as their visitors’ transgression, but that argument collapses like a paper cup on its fifth refill when you take into account the point differential; Utah by 46. A 147-101 final in the Delta Center’s season finale.
In what many called the “Tanking Super Bowl” in the hours leading up to tip-off, this end-of-season matchup between the Utah Jazz (22-59, 15th in West) and the Memphis Grizzlies (25-56, 12th in West) should have been entirely irrelevant — and in a lot of ways, it was — but Utah entered this meeting still holding to the hope of snatching the third-best NBA Draft lottery odds away from the Brooklyn Nets. The Grizzlies are fighting for every inch and praying to secure the sixth-worst odds from Dallas, while Utah is in a tug-of-war with the league’s most destitute franchise, hilariously dubbed the Kings. Thank heaven Sacramento messed around and beat Golden State tonight, or else there’d be some real panic in Utah’s front office.
But after the Nets nobly fell upon their swords against Milwaukee, the Jazz remained out of reach of a top-3 selection, even if they didn’t dismantle the unrecognizable Memphis Grizzlies (That’s right: the NBA’s poster boy for the tanking epidemic isn’t even in the top three of the practice’s worst offenders, so log that away).
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And when I call the Grizzlies unrecognizable, I mean that in complete sincerity. With 15 — count ‘em — fifteen Grizzlies listed on the injury report, not even former Jazzmen Walter Clayton Jr or Taylor Hendricks were available for Memphis’ visit to Salt Lake City. Apologies to those hoping to see our brothers in action.
No, Utah didn’t want to win this basketball game; they’ve got a gawk-worthy receipt to prove their dedication. Unfortunately, it takes two to tank, and Utah’s reserves proved far more formidable than their visitors. Two franchises working in opposite directions, the Jazz hope to compete in the Western Conference Play-Offs around this time next season. Memphis expects to float in deliberate obscurity for the foreseeable future.
These directional differences could not have been more apparent in Utah’s win Friday night. From the tip, Utah crushed the Grizzlies in what was anticipated to be one of the late season’s great tank-offs. But Utah proved to exist in an entirely different realm, scoring 110 points and leading by 26 at the end of the third quarter.
The scoring differential nearly doubled by the end of the fourth.
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Yeesh.
Utah won in every quarter of this game, and never scored fewer than 33 points in a 12-minute frame. It’s almost no wonder that this team made NBA history tonight with perhaps two of the three least meaningful triple-doubles since the stat began being tracked. Add John Konchar (former Grizzly) and recent multi-year signee Bez Mbeng (former Ivy Leaguer) to the all-time list of NBA triple-doubles, as both players posted their remarkable stat lines from Will Hardy’s bench.
Memphis had a triple-double man of their own, Jahmai Mashack. If you bet any amount of money on that man to post such a stat line before tip-off, you may never have to work another day in your life.
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So the Jazz won (or lost?) the Tanking Super Bowl. Big whoop. At the moment, they’re a coin flip away from the fifth-best odds to get the number-one overall pick, but need I remind you all that the NBA Draft Lottery’s flattened odds are not and have never been friendly to the worst record. Since the initial change in 2019, the worst record in the NBA has never walked away from the lottery with the winning ticket. Dallas jumped 10 spots last year. Atlanta jumped 9 in the year before.
Before you panic about winning tank-offs, remember that all the Jazz can do is put themselves in contention. It’s all random, and Adam Silver was never going to let Utah have the first pick, anyway.
Calvin Barrett is a writer, editor, and prolific Mario Kart racer located in Tokyo, Japan. He has covered the NBA and College Sports since 2024.
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