Jazz out-tank Sixers in epic battle for ping-pong balls

The Jazz went on a 16-0 run in the fourth quarter, facing a lineup of Sixers reserves, but it wasn't enough to get past the Sixers, who ended up with a 126-122 win. It was a win the 76ers may have preferred not to get.

After Joel Embiid was shut down for the season, the 76ers have shifted their focus from competing for the playoff to protecting their 2025 first-round pick. Unless the Sixers' pick is among the first six in the draft, it goes to the Oklahoma City Thunder, as part of a trade that dumped Al Horford's contract in December 2020. With
Sunday's win, Philly is 22-41, the seventh-worst record in the NBA.

That may have been a factor in Sixers coach Nick Nurse resting his starters, playing Guerschon Yabusele 12 minutes and Kelly Oubre, Jr. only 20 minutes. Officially, Nurse is "monitoring" the minutes of his starters, but the main priority seems to be avoiding wins 

Still, the Sixers' minutes limitations weren't as extreme as the Jazz's injury report, where the team listed a staggering nine players as out for Sunday's contest.

That's three players out, not with injuries, but simply "injury management," while Walker Kessler was ruled out for "rest," for what would have been his third game in seven days. The Jazz ended up playing rookie Kyle Filipowski 31 minutes, rookie Isaiah Collier 30 minutes and rookie Cody Williams 16 minutes. Two-way player Micah Potter got 16 minutes.

Sitting four starters and five of the team's six players was a tanking gambit that even the 76ers couldn't counter, and Utah got the crucial loss, dropping to 15-49, the NBA's second-worst record. The worst three records all get the same lottery odds — 14 percent — so the Jazz's main priority is staying behind the 17-48 New Orleans Pelicans, the NBA's fourth-worst team.

However, this is a bad sign for the remaining five weeks of the NBA season. If the league's seventh-worst team is tanking this hard with over a month of the season remaining, the NBA may see historic levels of tanking by April.