Friday’s Jazz game against the Grizzlies was almost like a campy cult film — one of those people tune in to watch to laugh at more than take the plot seriously.

ESPN NBA reporter Brian Windhorst called it the “Tanking Super Bowl.”

At stake were 10% of top-4 draft odds in the Jazz’s column, 7% for the Grizzlies. The Grizzlies sat out a whopping 14 players, the Jazz 11.

The action was goofy, too. There were missed dunks, turnovers, airballed free-throws. Two Jazz players, John Konchar and Bez Mbeng, got triple doubles. The fans chanted for Kevin Love to enter the game — and it seemed they almost got what they wanted, as he stripped off his warmups and feigned entering before Will Hardy gave a dramatic thumbs down.

Final score: Jazz 147, Grizzlies 101. Do you call that a win or a loss?

The good thing about this being the Tanking Super Bowl, though, is simple: just like the real Super Bowl, this game means the season is at its end. (Sure, the Jazz head to L.A. for one more game against the Lakers on Sunday, but does it matter? Not to Utah.) And with it? The end of this era of Jazz basketball.

It was an era that lasted longer than the Jazz expected. When the team traded Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert away for picks and pieces in the summer of 2022, the thinking was the team would be bad for a year or two and draft a generational prospect.

The no-doubter All-Star draftee never really happened — though rookie Ace Bailey looks quite promising. They still have one more draft in which to acquire that player coming up this June. And they still have excellent odds (11.5% for the first pick, 45% for a top-4) for those top positions, despite the win-loss (a “woss”? a “lin”?) Friday.

As the Jazz struggled to find that player, they overhauled their front office. Yes, Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik are still around, but make no mistake: This is Austin Ainge’s team now, with significant upheaval in the cohort of scouts and analysts around him.

The leader the Jazz have stuck with, though, is head coach Will Hardy. He, as much as anyone, has felt the trials of the 221 losses Utah has suffered through. “I think being an NBA head coach is first and foremost, a tremendous honor,” Hardy said. “But it’s hard and it’s isolating ... I have so much respect for everybody that has been a head coach in this league, because they’ve all made it look way easier than I feel.”

Those hours have gone toward maintaining the Jazz’s culture, despite the losing.

“The culture is the people. People make a place. Culture is not a spreadsheet. It’s not a PowerPoint presentation, it’s not bullet points, it’s not core values. It’s not that. It’s being lived out by the people every day,” Hardy said.

“Rebuilds are hard. That’s not a secret,” he continued. “But I think when a group of people that go through hard things together and come out the other side, there is some real strength in that. ... I think the culture here is alive and well.”

Maybe Oscar Tshiebwe, perhaps the team’s positivity czar, puts it simplest.

“Life is not always about being up. Life is sometimes up and down,” he said. “This season, we had an amazing season. Losing is not failing.”

In part because of that — but maybe mostly because of the on-court talent the younger Ainge has assembled — there’s a gigantic sense of optimism around this team.

Zach Lowe, perhaps the preeminent NBA analyst, said, “Color me as very excited for the Jazz next season” on a recent episode of the Zach Lowe Show. It’s easy to understand why: Returning are two young offensive dynamos in Keyonte George and Ace Bailey, one of the league’s most efficient offensive snipers in Lauri Markkanen, and two defensive studs to back it all up in Jaren Jackson Jr. and Walker Kessler.

“The thing I’m most excited about is that I think there’s a lot of possibilities,” Hardy said. “When I look at it now, it doesn’t feel very constricting. Like every team has strengths and weaknesses, but I see a tremendous amount of opportunity on both sides of the ball.”

“I know the NBA will have trouble,” Tshiebwe said. “The NBA better get ready.”