Five Prodigies Aim to Defy Expectations at Hall of Fame Gala!

In lieu of our regularly scheduled bi-weekly NBA power rankings, and in honor of March Madness, we give to you, dear reader, our second annual tanking rankings. It has been more than a month since the league fined the Utah Jazz ($500,000) and Indiana Pacers ($100,000) for blatant tanking efforts. Nobody has been penalized since, though as much as a third of the entire NBA has been tanking for some time.

[ Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K ] The race for the best odds to land BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, Kansas’ Darryn Peterson and Duke’s Cameron Boozer, among other projected top-tier picks, is heating up ahead of the draft lottery on May 10, and we are here to serve you up a taste of the most likely candidates to land them — complete with a breakdown of their best tanking efforts. Sure, one of the four teams to be ousted from the play-in tournament could still land a top-four pick, as the Dallas Mavericks did last season, securing Cooper Flagg atop the draft, despite holding just a 1. 8% chance of acquiring that No.

1 overall selection. (Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports Illustration) But, for now, it appears the teams still in the play-in hunt will be trying to climb those standings until regular season’s end. They are spared from our 2026 tanking rankings.

The 10th-place Charlotte Hornets own a six-win lead over the 11th-place Milwaukee Bucks in the East, and the 10th-place Portland Trail Blazers have a 10-win lead over the Memphis Grizzlies in the West, leaving these 10 teams as the cream of the crop in our tanking rankings, even if the first of them isn’t even really trying to tank at all … 10. New Orleans Pelicans (23-46) Most recent starters: Trey Murphy III • Herb Jones • Saddiq Bey • Zion Williamson • Yves Missi (+16 in 57 minutes) Since the All-Star break: 8-5 record • 117. 2 offensive rating (11th) • 114.