Welcome to a new weekly series that you can expect to read about every Wednesday morning for the remainder of the regular season: Sixers tank watch, where we will monitor the team's standing in the draft lottery rankings, with details on the teams in their vicinity in hopes of evaluating how it all impacts the Sixers' odds of holding onto their top-six protected first-round pick.
You used to root for them to win, now you might end up rooting just as passionately for them to lose. Let's get started, shall we?
Teams to follow
For the foreseeable future, there are two other teams Sixers fans should be keeping their eyes on, with a third one filed away just in case. While a further slide could make the Chicago Bulls worth paying attention to, the two main teams Sixers fans need to be checking scores for every morning are the Brooklyn Nets and Toronto Raptors.
Despite Brooklyn's clear intentions to maximize their odds of selecting near the top of the draft, a collection of young players has made a terrific effort on the defensive end of the floor for a prolonged stretch, and as the Sixers enter Wednesday's game losers of eight consecutive games, they have dropped below Brooklyn in the playoff standings, which means they have soared "ahead" in the draft lottery standings.
But even still, the Sixers only have a one-game "lead" over the Nets for the No. 6 slot in the lottery. Brooklyn is closer to the Sixers than any other team, and as we will establish shortly, the Sixers' chance of holding onto their own pick would go down drastically if Brooklyn ends the season with a worse record than them.
For much of the last few weeks, leapfrogging Brooklyn and settling into the No. 6 slot seemed like the extent of the Sixers' tanking upside. But they have reached unforeseen levels of futility, now going more than three weeks without winning a game, and perhaps a push for the No. 5 slot is in play.
That is where the Raptors factor into the equation. Toronto currently holds the No. 5 slot in the lottery standings, and just by virtue of not having been the Sixers over the last few weeks, they are now at risk of being lapped by the Sixers. They are particularly vulnerable to harm their chances of earning a top pick because of a wildly easy remaining schedule. Only four of the Raptors' remaining 24 opponents are currently above .500 and a significant portion of their remaining contests come against the worst teams in the NBA (including three matches with the NBA-worst Washington Wizards and two games against each of Brooklyn, Utah, Charlotte and the Sixers).
The Sixers are currently 2.5 games "behind" Toronto, but given the Sixers' impending tank, the Raptors having far and away the easiest remaining schedule in the NBA and the teams playing each other twice more before the end of the season, the Sixers have a fighter's chance here if they take the tank seriously.
MORE: What does the 2025 NBA Draft class look like?
Lottery standings entering today
The current standings in reverse order, provided by the marvelous resource known as Tankathon:
With all due respect to any potential Chicago tank, the Sixers' range of most conceivably lottery outcomes really spans from the No. 5 slot to the No. 7 slot. How much does that matter? Well, the answer is a lot. The Sixers' chances of their pick landing in the top six, therefore not conveying to the Oklahoma City Thunder, more than double from No. 7 to No. 5. They have about a 1-in-3 chance of keeping the pick at No. 7, close to a 2-in-3 chance of keeping the pick at No. 5, and a chance a bit less favorable than a coin flip at No. 6:
| Lottery position | Chance of keeping pick |
| 1 | 100.0% |
| 2 | 100.0% |
| 3 | 93.0% |
| 4 | 81.1% |
| 5 | 64.0% |
| 6 | 45.8% |
| 7 | 31.9% |
| 8 | 26.3% |
| 9 | 20.2% |
| 10 | 13.9% |
| 11 | 9.4% |
| 12 | 7.1% |
| 13 | 4.7% |
| 14 | 2.4% |
Translation: if the Sixers lose their ground in a tank battle with Brooklyn and fall back down to the No. 7 slot, they will need to jump into the top four to keep their pick. If they stay in the No. 6 slot, they need none of the teams behind them to jump into the top four. At No. 5, they could withstand a team behind them making a leap.
The week ahead
Moving forward, this will be the key component of Sixers tank watch: an update on the quality of opponents and other circumstances facing the Sixers and their lottery competitors in the seven days to come.
Sixers: Wednesday @ New York Knicks (37-20), Saturday vs. Golden State Warriors (31-27), Monday vs. Portland Trail Blazers (25-33), Tuesday @ Minnesota Timberwolves (32-27)
With four games on the docket this week, the Sixers are in real danger of seeing their losing streak extend to a dozen games (though many would not describe that as danger given the nature of this very story).
On Wednesday night they will face a Knicks team that is experiencing a bit of an identity crisis after repeated blowout losses to championship contenders. Still, the Knicks are very good and as of this writing are significant favorites on their home floor. Golden State has been red-hot since acquiring Jimmy Butler, suddenly looking like a team that can be a dangerous threat in the Western Conference. Portland looks like the weak link on this slate, but the Blazers are actually playing better than .500 basketball since the start of 2025. Minnesota has failed to reach the heights they did during the regular season last year, but Tuesday's game will be a major challenge for the Sixers. Not only will they be a clearly superior team on the road, but the Sixers will be on the second leg of a home-road back-to-back while the Wolves have much fresher legs.
Nets: Wednesday vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (46-11), Friday vs. Portland Trail Blazers (25-33), Saturday @ Detroit Pistons (32-26), Tuesday @ San Antonio Spurs (24-32)
With the way the Nets have been playing defense for the last several weeks, any below-average team is beatable for Brooklyn, and they see two of them on their schedule this week in the aforementioned Blazers and a Spurs team which was struggling mightily even before superstar Victor Wembanyama was suddenly ruled out for the remainder of the season. Like most teams, Brooklyn is expected to be defeated handily by the juggernaut Thunder, and also face a surging Pistons team which is currently riding a seven-game winning streak.
Raptors: Wednesday @ Indiana Pacers (32-24), Friday @ Chicago Bulls (23-35), Sunday @ Orlando Magic (29-31), Tuesday @ Orlando Magic (29-31)
The Raptors are heavy underdogs to beat the Pacers on the road, but have three games that could be toss-ups afterwards, between Friday's matchup with the Bulls in Chicago and a pair of road games against an Orlando Magic team which has looked inept for many weeks after a strong start to the season. The Bulls have been playing horrid basketball for weeks, are not even as good as their poor record would indicate, and their offense has been brutal since trading Zach LaVine (this made it more jarring that the Bulls held a 50-plus-point lead over the Sixers at one point on Monday night). Orlando's offense is an abomination right now, to such a degree that any team can conceivably outpace them over 48 minutes with just a lucky night of three-point shooting. The Raptors are near the bottom of the league in three-point makes per game, with only the Magic below them.
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