Meet the NBA's Zone of Shame

The worst three teams in the NBA will suffer the indignity of lottery disadvantage. With free agency mostly settled, who are the contenders?

Good morning. It's July 22 and LeBron James is still a free agent. It's also Free Newsletter Wednesday. Let's basketball.

In May the NBA adopted its latest batch of draft lottery reforms. It's a broad shift in how the best picks in a draft are decided and could have broad impacts on strategic team-building over time. One element is the lottery penalty the three worst teams will face. Media has been referring to this as "the relegation zone," but it's not relegation. That has a meaning in sports, and this ain't it. I propose we call it the "Zone of Shame." You know, like the plastic cone dogs have to wear after surgery so they don't lick their wounds, getting them infected and disgusting. As the "Zone of Shame" is an anti-tanking measure, and tanking is an abomination, it seems appropriate.

With offseason business mostly wrapped up, it's worth considering which teams might be in contention for the Zone of Shame in 2026-27, and what other considerations factor in.

Let's get to it.

Grizzlies
Memphis tanked hard last season after a mediocre start, going 3-21 down the stretch. Ja Morant didn't play much after the Jaren Jackson Jr. trade, and he's gone now in a trade that netted Jerami Grant. The young core is quite solid: Cam Boozer looks like a Day 1 positive starter, even as a young rookie, and Cedric Coward, Jaylen Wells, Ty Jerome, and Zach Edey are NBA players if they can stay on the court. Isaiah Stewart is here too, at least for a few months.

All that said, Boozer is a young rookie. Even elite rookies as their teams' best player in recent years have racked up losses. The 2023-24 Spurs, for example, went 22-60 with Victor Wembanyama playing 71 games and finishing second in Defensive Player of the Year voting. Is rookie Boozer going to be better than rookie Wembanyama? Is this supporting cast actually good now or just promising?

The Grizzlies do have their own pick, plus the Lakers pick and the best of the Wolves, Jazz and Cavaliers picks. Whether Memphis is flirting with the Zone of Shame or closer to the 6-7-8 range in the reverse standings could come down to how much Edey is able to play. He played 1,400 minutes as a rookie but just 284 minutes over 11 games last year.

Nets
Brooklyn has a pretty awful base and mostly struck out in the offseason, picking up Julius Randle and Keon Ellis and losing Nic Claxton. Randle can be a minutes-eater and floor-raiser, and Ellis remains a league favorite that no coach seems to want to put on the floor, and Michael Porter Jr. is still here, and Jordi Fernandez is still eager to see the green light to win games. But until Egor Demin proves something against NBA opponents, the lack of shot creation here is still a problem, and a forward line-up of Randle and MPJ with low stakes in place doesn't instill you with confidence in the team's defense.

The wrinkle here is that the Nets don't control their own pick in 2027: the Rockets have a swap option. That's a double-edged sword in Zone of Shame projection: since Brooklyn doesn't control its own pick, there's no incentive to tank to make the pick more valuable. But because the Zone of Shame now exists, there's no disincentive for a bad team without its pick to avoid it. So if we get to February and March and the Nets are in the mud with a few teams who do control their own picks, those other teams will be fighting to avoid the Zone of Shame and the Nets ... simply might not care, and could focus on developing players regardless of whether they lose 10 straight. I can't wait to see Rockets fans watching Brooklyn box scores closely and calling out shenanigans if it ever looks like the Nets are trying to lose.

Kings
Sacramento has been quite inactive this summer, waiving DeMar DeRozan and making draft picks but nothing else. When you have a 22-win team and no near-term hope, but no one wants your veteran players, what are you supposed to do? DeRozan and Russell Westbrook ended up with a ton of minutes last season, and neither will be back. But Domantas Sabonis is likely to play a bunch, especially early in the season. He played fewer than 600 minutes last season, and is the team's best player by a decent margin. That will change the floor of this team dramatically. Darius Acuff Jr. is likely to get primary ball-handling duties from Day 1, and we know that point guards have a significant learning curve. Keegan Murray is another starter-quality player who barely saw the court last season due to injury, and there's always Zach LaVine and De'Andre Hunter, both of whom are on expiring contracts but have little market value beyond the promise of cap space.

What will Sacramento do? Keep Sabonis and Murray (who might be harder to trade than anyone given his contract) for now and let the LaVine and Hunter deals expire next summer to infuse a deep rebuild with some flexibility? Try to flip LaVine and/or Hunter for a longer-term piece? Trade Sabonis? (I have to imagine the trade Brooklyn took for Randle could have worked with Sabonis in his place; that it didn't happen might mean that the Kings didn't want to simply salary dump him.) The Kings control their picks until 2031, so another tank job could definitely be on the table, even though the 2027 draft is said to be lackluster. How they handle the roster could determine if they have the ability to avoid the Zone of Shame down the stretch.

(When is it too early for my first newsletter focused on Doug Christie's inevitable replacement in April/May 2027? I'm sorry but you know I'm right.)

Mavericks
Dallas is absolutely a swing team: the Mavericks could be in the West play-in race or they could be in the mix for the Zone of Shame. They were only one game better than Memphis last year, which feels surprising. Their offseason has also been somewhat confusing: they haven't traded out veterans including Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington or Daniel Gafford, but they did take on Santi Aldama (a plus player). They used their draft picks and took a freebie flyer on Zaccharie Risacher. They replaced their coach with a guy out of the college ranks. (To clarify recent inartful comments I made about Dallas hiring Dusty May: what I was trying to say is that it used to be that hiring a college coach meant you were focusing on player development. But the college game has changed so significantly in the NIL and transfer portal era that this is not necessarily true these days. College coaches these days are more likely to be tacticians and people managers. I do think May will be a better player developer than Jason Kidd, but the rest of the staff matters a lot, too.)

Dallas is an asterisk team, like Brooklyn, with a twist: the Mavericks' pick is top-2 protected. Otherwise, it goes to Charlotte. Because of the lottery penalty to the three teams in the Zone of Shame, if the Mavericks aren't competitive, they will desperately want to avoid the Zone of Shame to maximize their slight chance of keeping their pick. Unless the play-in is in reach, and perhaps even if it is, the Mavericks would love to be in the same range of the standings they were in last season. They are also, as of now, the league's biggest risk of tanking out of the play-in given the stakes on getting a top-2 pick vs. losing their pick entirely. (If they do get a top-2 pick, the asset owed to the Hornets becomes a second-rounder.)

Pelicans
If you think the Kings were inactive, wait until you catch up on what roster moves New Orleans has made.

There. You're caught up.

The Pels haven't done a damn thing. But hey, when you have a 26-win team with a mishmash roster filled with redundancy and poor fits, what are you supposed to do? Shake things up? They did fire their coach and then fire their interim coach, a guy who was brought in last summer as an interim coach in waiting. They replaced those coaches with a coach who was on the hot seat for 75% of last season with his own team (Jamahl Mosley).

New Orleans is probably going to be bad again, unless something unlocks here either on the court (you can build a decent rotation with these players in your daydreams) or on the trade market (there's some market out there for Zion Williamson, he played 1,800 minutes and was pretty good last season). Their pick situation is pretty weird. They have the Bucks' pick and their own, but owe the worst of those to Atlanta ... unless both are in the top four. Let's actually move on to the next team on our list to get into that.

Bucks
Milwaukee is going to be absolutely terrible. They are No. 1 with a bullet for the most likely Zone of Shame team.

This dance with the Zone, though, is going to be kind of hilarious if New Orleans is also bad. The Pelicans want the Bucks to be bad but stay out of the Zone of Shame, because New Orleans has a chance to thread the needle and keep two top-4 picks if things break right. The Pelicans, as such, will want to remain out of the Zone of Shame to maximize their chances of their own pick being top-4. And they want the Bucks to remain out of the Zone for the same reason. The Bucks don't care: they lose the pick in all circumstances. The front office probably does not care whether Atlanta or New Orleans get the pick. And unlike some of these teams, Milwaukee may not have the ability to avoid the Zone even if they wanted to.

The Pelicans will be incentivized to tank games against the Bucks to keep them afloat. The Hawks will be incentivized to smash both teams. It's a fun dance. But yeah, the Bucks are going to be absolutely terrible.

Bulls
Chicago has two hella promising prospects in Caleb Wilson and Matas Buzelis, plus the mercurial but productive and exciting Josh Giddey. They added Nic Claxton with Jalen Smith backing him up. They have Tre Jones behind Giddey. Wing depth is a problem, and putting points on the board against teams that defend against transition could be tricky. But this is a really nice base going forward.

The Bulls feel too good to be in the Zone zone, but also feel a bit outside the East play-in race unless a top-10 team from last season suffers a significant fall. (Perhaps a LaMelo-less Charlotte can't recapture the magic. But then Indiana is back, too.) Chicago is probably out of this conversation, but if Wilson's amazing Summer League disappears from memory, Giddy misses a lot of time or Buzelis can't take the next step, we could see the Bulls flirt with Shame.

The Bulls control their own 2027 pick.

Wizards
Prove you don't belong there! Trae Young and Anthony Davis alone should get the Wizards out of this conversation, but they will need to prove they are going to play for the Wizards. This team has been remarkably bad in recent years and they kept the coach that didn't prove he could put wins on the board at any time.

The Wizards control their own 2027 pick.

And now some quick-hitters on teams who could potentially find themselves down here in the muck and the mire ...

Warriors
One serious nagging injury to a 38-year-old Stephen Curry – who missed almost half of last season with nagging injuries – and this team is way down. They control their own pick.

Clippers
Another swing play-in or Zone of Shame club. Darius Garland has played 60+ games three times in seven seasons. The good news is that Brandon Ingram has played 60+ games five times ... in 10 seasons. Unless ... is Kawhi Leonard on this team? Is he suspended for any portion of the season if so?

The Clippers do not control their pick (OKC has a swap option) so there's no incentive to avoid the Zone of Shame if they stink.

Jazz
Maybe it doesn't work? Utah does not control its own pick (owed to Memphis but cannot land in the top five owing to another new anti-tanking rule).

Suns
What if last season was a mirage? The Suns do not control their own pick (it's currently in the hands of Houston).

There we go. That was long as hell. Good Morning It's Basketball will return for paid subscribers on Thursday. Be excellent to each other.