After Sunday's ____ against the Golden State Warriors, the Jazz take their ___ game losing streak into the final frame of the 2023-2024 NBA season. As the season concludes, the Jazz will play four games - at home against Denver on Tuesday, Rockets at the Delta Center on Thursday, a quick trip to Los Angeles for a game with the Clippers on Friday, and then back home on Sunday with a rematch with Golden State.

Over the weekend, John Hollinger of The Athletic wrote an article about the bottom teams in the NBA standings being historically bad throughout March. The Jazz, of course, were part of the group. They won two games total in March, but extending their record a bit further, the Jazz had lost 21 of its last 24.  With regards to the bottom eight, including the Jazz, check out some of these bullet point stats:

• None of the bottom eight teams have won more than a third of their games since the All-Star break. Specifically, they are losing 26.6 percent of their games this season, a 60-loss pace on average.
• Seven of the eight teams get outscored by an average of seven points per game.
• Three teams had double-digit losing streaks up until last week.
• When they don't play each other, the numbers get even worse. Utah, for example, beat Washington and San Antonio (two of the bottom eight), which means their record against the Top 22 teams in the league is 1-16.

There might not be a logistical solution to fix bad March basketball or more enforcement to prevent tanking, but Hollinger thinks the teams should be careful and the NBA should take notice. One drastic solution he proposes is to "bring back the Delete Eight," and only create matchups among the post-season caliber teams once this part of the season begins. "The league could tell teams like the Jazz, 'look, since you're only interested in playing the first 50 games of the season each year anyway, have we got a deal for you," he writes. Harsh, but maybe appropriate! "I wonder if there's a way to relegate them to their own little playpen where they only face each other the final month of the season and don't have to infect the nightly schedule with their awfulness," he added.

Just looking back at the last few games, I tend to agree with this proposed solution. The Jazz had lost by 29 to the Clippers, 19 to the Kings, and 28 to the Rockets. Most nights, the game is over by the first quarter and then unwatchable for the next 36 minutes; against the Clippers it was 41-16 after one quarter, against Cleveland the game before it was 40-25.  

Understandably, the Jazz are out of play-in or playoff position. They have a draft pick to protect. They have young guys to develop. They have deep cuts to figure out if they warrant a roster spot. They have stars nursing injuries with no rush on a timetable. I get it. But on the other hand, the product has been bad basketball. For a fan, that's just not fun.