This is Planet Money from NPR.
Every year, as winter starts to turn to spring, this very weird thing starts to happen in the NBA.
Diehard fans begin rooting against their favorite teams.
This is the only time in recorded human history where I'm not even the slightest bit mad that we're losing to the Brooklyn Nets.
You can bet every loss means so much more for these teams and they're not hiding it at all.
That's right, it is tanking season.
Somebody gonna see this score and wonder if we even tried.
No good sir, no we did not.
Right now,
some of the greatest athletes in the history of the world are being paid millions of dollars to lose.
So the Utah Jazz are not even trying to hide the fact that they're tanking.
They were up by as much as 17 points last night against the Magic.
Will Hardy, then in the fourth quarter,
pulls the entire rotation out and throws in a bunch of G League dudes to completely give that game away back to the Magic.
Now this is so normal in the NBA that if you're a sports fan,
you're like, yeah, of course they're losing games on purpose.
The league gives the teams with the worst records the best chance of getting one of the top picks in the next NBA draft.
So teams have this real incentive to be as bad as possible.
So yeah, tanking is rational.
But if you are a fan of one of these tanking teams, It can be rough.