The Tuesday TANK report
Each week, we take a look at where the Sixers rank among some of the teams competing for the top lottery picks.
TANK Power Rankings (based on chances to finish with No. 1 lottery odds)
- PHILADELPHIA (0-4)
- Orlando (0-3)
- Detroit (0-3)
- Milwaukee (1-2)
- LA Lakers (0-4)
- Utah (1-3)
- Minnesota (1-2)
Not quite tanking, but sitting in “basketball purgatory”.
- Boston (1-2)
- Indiana (1-2)
- Atlanta (1-1)
TANK observations of the week:
- Orlando has no fighting chance in these games until their sophomore stud Victor Oladipo returns from injury. Until then, they will pile up those L’s, or lottery tickets.
- Detroit isn’t necessarily an untalented roster, but man do their guys just check out at times. Remember when Brandon Jennings got himself kicked out against the Sixers in the first quarter?
- The Lakers are pathetic, no question about that. But I can’t put them ahead of an East team just yet for two reasons. One, when a West team is stacked up “mano a mano” to an East team, the West team typically wins. Two, they have the best player among any tanking team, Kobe Bryant. He’ll win them maybe eight games just by himself, after the rust shakes off.
- While Boston is still in a re-tooling phase, they are not by any stretch a terrible team. After watching them play the Dallas Mavericks very tough in the second half and rallying to nearly overcome a 30 point deficit, they are not your typical lifeless tanker.
- It will be interesting to see what Indiana looks like when David West and George Hill return. Until then, this is not team that will win very often.
- Is there a team in more “basketball purgatory” than the Atlanta Hawks? They have 0.00000001% chance of winning the NBA Finals, but also have about 2% chance to win the lottery.
TANK games to look out for this week:
- Wednesday: Orlando at Philadelphia
- Friday: Milwaukee at Detroit
- Sunday: Utah at Detroit
