Race to the basement: Ranking this season's most shameless tanking jobs

Last call for pingpong balls.

This year's race to the bottom arguably features some of the most shameless self-sabotage in the history of tanking as the NBA prepares to implement anti-tanking measures before the 2019 draft. Lottery odds will be flattened, and with that loophole soon to close, a quarter of the league is hoping to ride the fast track to success one last time.

At least seven franchises appear to be actively trying to lose games, which has exaggerated both the success and the failure of teams across the league. While contenders like the Houston Rockets, Toronto Raptors, New Orleans Pelicans, and Portland Trail Blazers each put together euphoric double-digit win streaks, the NBA's bottom-feeders have happily contributed to those impressive records with their own runs of total futility.

Here's how eight of the league's worst teams have sunk their seasons, from the most shameless tankers to the nearly respectable and the potentially accidental.

Memphis Grizzlies

The Grizzlies, far and away the most shameless of the bunch, put on the most shameful performance of the year in their 61-point loss to the Charlotte Hornets. They're really pulling out all the stops.

Memphis was a mess from the jump. Mike Conley's injury threw everything out of whack, Chandler Parsons is on the worst contract in the league, well-liked head coach David Fizdale got axed after 19 games, Marc Gasol's name popped up in trade rumors while it was unclear who called the shots for the franchise, and Tyreke Evans was sent home to wait for a trade that never happened.

Last week, the Grizzlies benched Gasol for the entire fourth quarter of a competitive loss to the Utah Jazz after their star center started hot with 28 points on 11-of-12 shooting. Gasol wasn't in foul trouble, yet he didn't see the floor down the stretch and finished with just 23 minutes played.

Instead of relying on their franchise player, the Grizzlies turned to a string of G League call-ups and temporary 10-day contracts. They're putting Jarell Martin - a bruising power forward in the mold of Tristan Thompson - at small forward to have him try his hand at pull-up jumpers. They're feeding Kobi Simmons clutch shots as if he were Kobe Bryant. They've recalled the likes of Marquis Teague and MarShon Brooks from Israel and China to fill vital positions.

These tactics yielded a 19-game losing streak that spanned seven weeks and the entire month of February, and that embarrassing slide helped them earn the second-best lottery odds in the league.

Chicago Bulls

The Bulls are fairly competitive as far as tanking teams go, and that problem required a cynical solution: resting everyone who could reliably contribute to wins.

Robin Lopez was straight-up sent home despite a clean bill of health, and wasn't reinstated until the league stepped in with a cautionary memo. After that, the Bulls played Lopez for the first quarter of their next four games, then rested him for the remainder of each contest.

When a disastrous 5-5 stretch pushed them out of the basement, Chicago took its resting initiative one step further by shutting down both Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine - two of the three main pieces returned in the Jimmy Butler trade - due to minor injuries. The old excuse for tanking is giving more minutes to younger players in the interest of development, but the Bulls are trying something new.

Phoenix Suns

Credit the Suns for nearly upsetting the Houston Rockets last week, but they're still on a 15-game losing streak that's led them to the NBA's worst record.

Here, at least, we have an example of the classic style of tanking. Phoenix gave the keys to its young players and accepted the inevitable losses that would follow. Three starters in the Suns' most recent game - Dragan Bender, Josh Jackson, and Marquese Chriss - were recent top-eight picks and starting guard Tyler Ulis was selected 34th overall in 2016. Losing while making an apparent effort to develop players usually escapes criticism.

Except Phoenix has also benched nearly half the team. Veteran forwards Tyson Chandler and Jared Dudley are running out the clock on their lavish contracts, while franchise cornerstones Devin Booker and T.J. Warren have been told to sit over minor injuries. Even Elfrid Payton, acquired as a rental on an expiring contract at the trade deadline, has missed time.

This is the third straight season of tanking for the Suns, so everyone knows the deal by now. They just need the lottery balls to finally bounce in their favor after being one pick away from Jamal Murray and Jayson Tatum.

Dallas Mavericks

The Mavericks have taken to a strategy of competing hard for three quarters, then losing miserably in the fourth.

Dallas has dropped a league-leading 36 games this season in which the score was within five points in the last five minutes, and most of that was apparently by design. Like clockwork, the Mavs bench productive players like Dirk Nowitzki, and their lesser counterparts kick the game away.

Part of that suggests a concession from team owner Mark Cuban to head coach Rick Carlisle. Cuban already told his staff that he intends to tank (and publicly admitting such earned him a $600,000 fine), but Carlisle is too accomplished and too competitive to throw entire games away.

Carlisle gets to drill and improve his players as much as he can to start - as long as he can still find some way to lose.

Atlanta Hawks

Here's a quiz for the most die-hard fans out there. Name the made-up player from this list who isn't actually on the Hawks' roster: Tyler Dorsey, Isaiah Taylor, Andrew White, Damion Lee, Tony Antonio, Jaylen Morris, Tyler Cavanaugh, Josh Magette, and Antonius Cleveland.

The correct answer is Tony Antonio, although you could hardly be faulted for picking Magette, a two-way player who looks like he could be head coach Mike Budenholzer's son.

Here's Magette:

And this is his father coach:

Orlando Magic

The only logical conclusion to be drawn from this awful sequence of basketball is that the Magic are doing everything they can to eventually whiff on a lottery pick for the sixth straight season.

New York Knicks

The Knicks folded after Kristaps Porzingis suffered an ACL injury, and have since essentially transformed into their G League team.

Trey Burke, Damyean Dotson, Isaiah Hicks, Ron Baker, and Luke Kornet are all Westchester Knicks graduates that have seen time in New York's rotation. Though there's some promise there, and a few could become NBA-level players, their presence in such numbers makes it tough to argue that the Knicks aren't tanking.

Westchester, unlike New York, actually made the playoffs, which meant a recall of a fifth of the Knicks' roster. That left the big-league team so understaffed that a 61-year-old coach was called upon to participate in a scrimmage.

Sacramento Kings

The Kings aren't actually tanking - they're just the Kings.

Their veterans (Vince Carter and Zach Randolph) are getting respectable minutes, and their developing players (De'Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, Bogdan Bogdanovic) are receiving opportunities. That's how it's supposed to be.

The only hint of outright and intentional tanking is that Sacramento traded for living internet meme Bruno Caboclo and gave him meaningful minutes in close games. As always, the Brazilian Kevin Durant remains two years away from being two years away.

(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)