Digging to the bottom of the West

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Does any team in the NBA’s Western Conference plan on losing games next season? This notion is less about letting one’s Cooper Flagg freakiness fly, more of a scan up and down the untouched 2024-25 NBA standings.

Who misses in this Conference? The Rockets and Grizzlies want to roar out of the lottery, San Antonio loaded up with vets, Golden State and Sacramento do not want to fall short of the postseason again. Portland will be bad but doesn’t want to be down there and Utah (which split its first 52 games in 2023-24) is good but doesn’t want to be in the middle, there.

Washington might be the NBA’s worst team in 2024-25, but won’t have the easiest road toward the title. The East remains so-so, losses will be tougher to come by against middling types like Miami and Atlanta, to say nothing of the Nets, Bulls, Raptors, Hornets, and perpetual Piston plopfest.

But the West? Everyone wants the ring in 2024-25. Only abstaining are Portland. Maybe Utah, if Danny Ainge ever decides to ask for something less than seven first-round draft picks for Lauri Markkanen. Yet the West has no severe favorite, any good team is sunk into the lottery if their best player requires season-ending surgery after separating his arm trying to retrieve a dangling sleeve of Chuckles from the inside of a Slovenian five-star hotel’s vending machine.