All season, we’ve tracked the rather strange lack of tanking ahead of a draft class that features arguably the best prospect of the past 20 years. As of this writing, only the Rockets are on pace to win fewer than 20 games, and a number of teams we expected to lose aggressively like the Jazz, Pacers and Magic have all been significantly better than expected for at least meaningful stretches of the season. Teams obviously want Victor Wembanyama, but they aren’t exactly going out of their way to get him.
That philosophy seemingly extended into the trade deadline. Almost every year, at least one team uses the deadline to intentionally fling itself down the standings. A year ago, the Portland Trail Blazers gave away CJ McCollum, Larry Nance Jr., Robert Covington and Norman Powell so they could finish the season on a 6-27 run that landed them Shaedon Sharpe. A year earlier, it was Orlando that took the tumble after it dealt Nikola Vucevic, Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier to jump into the top five.
No team took such a drastic step this season. We expected Toronto to fill that void, but the Raptors turned into surprising buyers. Portland gave away Josh Hart and Gary Payton II, but those were largely luxury-tax decisions. Brooklyn is way too high in the standings to tank now, and even if the Nets could tank their way to the top of the draft, their roster right now is too strong to allow it. The same, to a lesser extent, is true of Utah.
Instead, this deadline gave us a series of smaller moves. The five worst teams jockeyed for position a bit, but this deadline was otherwise notable for the moves that the worst teams didn’t make. So after our check-in across the pond, we’ll use this week’s Wemby Watch to consider how the 2023 lottery will be shaped by the deadline.
Mets 92, Wemby snap two-game skid
A two-game losing streak vs. Roanne then Blois pushed Mets 92 down the LNB Pro A standings two games back of Monaco, but Wembanyama willed him and his team’s way back into the win column this week. Facing a Dijon team that limited him to 16…
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