New Frontiers in Tanking

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — One of the Trail Blazers’ best moments of the season was Matisse Thybulle’s game-sealing block as time expired in Sunday’s 105-102 win over the Toronto Raptors. After missing the first 67 games of the year with an ankle injury, Thybulle capped off his season debut by swatting Orlando Robinson’s attempt at a game-tying three-pointer out of the air.

A great welcome back for a fan favorite in Thybulle, yes, and a nice win for the Blazers to snap a five-game losing streak. But it also capped off one of the most shameless tank jobs I’ve seen in years by the Raptors—and I cover a team that’s proven elite at that over the past four seasons.

Robinson, whose shot Thybulle blocked to wrap up the victory, is an undrafted third-year player who has played 100 games for three teams in his NBA career and had a plus-minus of -27 in 30 minutes on Sunday in a game the Raptors lost by three points. He played the final five minutes and 22 seconds of the game after subbing in for Jakob Poeltl. Poeltl had been the Raptors’ best player all night, putting up 19 points on 9-of-13 shooting with eight rebounds, three assists and two steals. The Raptors led by six when head coach Darko Rajakovic took Poeltl out of the game for good. Three minutes earlier, with the Raptors also leading by six, All-Star forward Scottie Barnes was subbed out for rookie Jamison Battle. Barnes didn’t return for the rest of the game.

The play before Thybulle’s game-ending block, the Blazers had the ball up by one point with 15 seconds left. The Raptors let 10 seconds run off the clock before they finally fouled Deni Avdija.

Only Rajakovic and Masai Ujiri know what the Raptors’ true intentions were on Sunday, but it was certainly some interesting strategic decision-making down the stretch of a close game.

The Raptors came into that game having won six of their last seven, but not for lack of trying. Over the last two weeks, they’ve been slowly ramping up these types of rotational shenanigans, without the results to show for it. It’s tough when you run into the tanking buzzsaw that is the Utah Jazz.

Just over 24 hours later, on Monday evening, the Blazers hosted the red-hot Washington Wizards, winners of two straight and six of their last 10, including a Saturday thriller against the Denver Nuggets.

The Wizards’ two veteran starters, Khris Middleton and Jordan Poole, each played 10 minutes in the first half as the Blazers took a 59-49 lead into halftime.

Neither played a minute in the second half and the Blazers handled business against the Wizards.

Alex Sarr, this year’s No. 2 overall pick, didn’t last much longer than Middleton and Poole. He subbed out with 4:17 remaining in the third quarter, sitting the final 16 minutes of game time after putting up 20 points in 22 minutes. The Blazers led by 20 when Sarr came out, but he didn’t come back in at all in the fourth quarter as the Wizards mounted a comeback to cut the deficit to 11 in the closing minutes.

Much like the night before, I’m not privy to the Wizards’ internal decision-making process when it comes to these things, but there were certainly some choices made there. And the Blazers, who are still just close enough to striking distance of the play-in not to pull the plug yet, picked up back-to-back wins just by virtue of not doing…whatever it is that the Wizards and Raptors are doing.

Just in the last week, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $100,000 for violating the Player Participation Policy by sitting Lauri Markkanen in a game he could have played. The Jazz responded by playing Markkanen in the next game, but sitting him for the second half in a game where they also sat starting center Walker Kessler, which technically isn’t against the rules because the NBA’s relatively new Player Participation Policy only applies to All-Stars.

There’s about a month left in the season, and teams are only going to get more creative with this stuff as they look to gain separation in the race to land Cooper Flagg. If there are basketball gods, they will not look favorably on any of these teams. At least the Blazers of the past three years had the decency to keep up appearances by listing believable injuries on the report, even though everyone knew what was going on. Imagine if Chauncey Billups pulled Avdija for the fourth quarter of the win over the Raptors, with no explanation. Maybe that extra loss would have led to an extra half a percent chance of winning the Flagg lottery, but would it have made anybody feel good?

This had better work for the Wizards. They’d better not fall all the way back to fifth when the draft order is determined in May, like the Pistons did each of the last two years. If you’re going to be this shameless, you’d better at least get the payoff at the end. Otherwise it could be a long time before you’re out of this cycle.