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Houston Rockets' Jalen Green (4) celebrates after dunking the ball against the Atlanta Hawks during the second half of an NBA basketball game Tuesday, March 25, 2025, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) | David J. Phillip
In 1983, the Houston Rockets brass wasn’t happy with how the team’s season was playing out so they decided to bench starters, play their young guys and aim for the top draft pick in 1984.
It was, at the time, the most blatantly a team had tanked.
Back then, the top pick was decided by a coin toss between the two worst teams, which really incentivized being one of those two teams.
The Rockets won and took eventual hall of famer Hakeem Olajuwon.
The Rockets tank job through the 1983-84 season most closely resembles what we think of today when we talk about tanking. Over the years, as the NBA draft, draft lottery, odds and the league have changed, so too have tanking tactics, but the general idea is the same.
A bad team’s best chance at getting better is to bring in top-end talent, and the surest way to secure top-end talent is through the draft with a high pick.
The Utah Jazz are one of the latest teams to employ tanking as a strategy. As the Jazz have gone through the last three years of tanking, many have tried to compare the team’s efforts to other teams that have also tanked in order to find success.
Often, people will point to The Process Sixers. Led by then general manager Sam Hinkie, players with little-to-no hope of staying in the NBA were brought together for the sole intention of being worse than all other NBA teams so the Philadelphia 76ers could select the best available player in the draft, no matter the fit.
Others will point to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who tanked for high draft picks in 2021 and 2022, or the San Antonio Spurs, who recently secured Victor Wembanyama through tanking efforts.
But the team that provides the closest blueprint to what the Jazz have done and are doing is the Houston Rockets. No, not the 1983-84 Rockets — rather, the current Rockets team.
Time, identity, accountability, balance
Every tanking situation in the NBA is different and no path is exactly replicable. The Sixers weren’t slowly trying to develop young players that they hoped could be a part of their core while they were tanking and they weren’t picking players based on how they would play together, so it’s not like the Jazz are on the same path that Philadelphia was on in 2014 or the surrounding years.
The Jazz did not start their tanking years by trading for a future MVP-level player as the Thunder did when it acquired Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and neither did the current iteration of the Rockets.
Back in 2020 when James Harden forced his way out of Houston, the Rockets decided to lean hard into rebuilding. Through three tanking seasons they finished with the worst overall record twice and the second worst record in 2023.
They ended up with the No. 2 pick in 2021, the No. 3 pick in 2022 and the No. 4 overall pick in 2023, selecting Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr. and Amen Thompson, respectively.
Throughout those years, the Rockets were abysmal and general consensus around the league was that they seemed rudderless with young players who weren’t meeting expectations.
Numerous executives, coaches and players who were in control of or playing for other rebuilding teams looked at the Rockets and hoped that they wouldn’t become what that team had become.
Now, five years since they began their tanking efforts, the Rockets are the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, are playoff bound and have earned the respect of many around the league for their patience and their approach.
What changed?
There are four keys to how the Rockets have rounded into a Western Conference success story — time, identity, accountability and balance.
The key young players the Rockets drafted were not players that were going to take the NBA by storm right out of the gate. There were many who would have even called Green and Smith busts after being selected so high, but with the long-game in mind, the Rockets have continued to pour into the young players with opportunity and time and now those players are becoming trusted and necessary pieces in Houston’s puzzle.
That is likely where the Jazz stand with their current group of youngsters, though they are planning to have higher-end talent added through the 2025 and 2026 drafts.
Houston’s rebuild started with Stephen Silas as the head coach, and although he is regarded as a good coach, he was not the right person for the job that was ahead.
The rag-tag group of young misfits that made up the Rockets roster needed identity and needed to be held accountable. That’s where Ime Udoka comes in.
Udoka is incredibly clear on what type of basketball he wants his team to play. Defense, rebounding, physicality. His clear and earnest vision for the players and what the team would need moving forward has been a huge part of how the Rockets have operated over the last two years with him at the helm.
Additionally, Udoka is not interested in names, contracts or expected minutes. He holds players accountable and has created an environment where all players are on equal ground.
He will bench Dillon Brooks just as quickly as he’ll bench Green.
And speaking of Brooks, the Rockets eventually needed to balance out their roster of young players with veterans who would fit the identity of the team.
Thats where Brooks, Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams come in.
For the Jazz, head coach Will Hardy is, in many respects, a lot like Udoka, a person he worked with for many years. Hardy demands accountability and he is trying to create an identity for the Jazz — competitive, hard play with quickness and constant movement.
No guarantees
The Jazz aren’t ready to start winning and they probably won’t be for a couple of years, but if they end up anything like the Rockets, they could be ready to start making some noise somewhere around 2027 or 2028.
But even if they do end up with top-end talent, brought in through the draft, as a result of tanking, there are no guarantees. There never are in sports.
The Houston Rockets in 1984, got Olajuwon, but they didn’t win a title until 1994. The Sixers’ efforts landed them some of the most highly touted draft picks for years, but only Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey (the 21st pick in 2020) have panned out as franchise changing players and even that has not been enough to take them to a title.
Two of their No. 1 picks, Markelle Fultz and Ben Simmons, were disappointing and are no longer on the team. The Sixers have not been to the Eastern Conference finals since 2001.
The Thunder look poised to make their best postseason run to date, but nothing is guaranteed for them and they will have to make it through the gauntlet that is the Western Conference before they even think about being ready to win a title.
Also, there are no guarantees when it comes to the draft lottery. Every year the NBA evaluates how the lottery system works and look at whether or not tanking is too incentivized.
After the Sixers’ obvious efforts, the lottery odds were flattened and changed as they had been many times before. Now, the three teams with the worst record in the league each have a 14% shot at the No. 1 overall pick.
Thats why even though the Rockets tanked with the hopes at the No. 1 pick for three years, the best they got was the No. 2 pick.
Tanking and winning both take a lot of planning but a lot of luck, and there are no two situations that are exactly the same, but if the Jazz are looking for a recent blueprint to follow, the Rockets seem to have found a formula that works and are at least experiencing a level of success that has their fanbase energized about the future.
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