There has never been a professional sports team quite like the 2014-15 Philadelphia 76ers, a roster of basketball castoffs and drifters that could be the least capable assemblage of players ever to suit up for an N.B.A. game. The franchise — widely believed by those who follow pro basketball to be deliberately in “tank mode,” in order to lose games and get a top pick in this summer’s N.B.A. draft — has offended sensibilities, provoked curiosity, inspired bizarre mathematical theorems. How low could they go? After they lost 17 games to open the current season, the FiveThirtyEight website published a “dark simulation” that projected their losing streak could reach 54 games. Deadspin declared the Sixers a “godless abomination,” while Slam Magazine, the hip-hop basketball bible, described them as a “flesh-eating bacteria of sorts on the N.B.A.’s collective self-respect.”

The Sixers’ current circumstances can be traced back four years, to 2011, when the franchise was bought by a consortium of New York financiers. The team was not, in fact, awful at that point. It was stuck somewhere in the middle of the N.B.A., which, even more than in most professional leagues, can be a hard place to escape. The new owners brought in a general manager, Sam Hinkie, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford and worked for Bain & Company early in his career. He put the Sixers on a different course by methodically unloading existing basketball assets — that is, competent N.B.A. players — in return for a grab bag of fringe prospects and a bundle of future draft picks. He stockpiled yet more picks in exchange for relieving other teams of their highly paid veterans, then cut those players right after he traded for them. This group of idlers, with millions of dollars left on their guaranteed contracts, grew so large that more than 40 percent of the Sixers’ payroll this season was going to players not playing for the team. If the team couldn’t be good right away, then Hinkie would make it really, really bad.

The Sixers denied allegations of tanking, but sometimes it seemed the word itself was what bothered them; the reality was difficult to deny. Team management clearly did not set out to win many games this season, and it may not do so next year either. In the process, the team and its strategy has turned upside down much of what we presume about athletic competition. It’s a cardinal sin to throw a game, but what about an entire season? Sure, N.B.A. coaches sometimes rest star players in given games, reducing the chances of victory, so they’ll be strong for the playoffs. Baseball managers will not overuse a pitcher just to win a single game in a long season. The Sixers’ willingness to lose, however, is different by orders of magnitude. One question is whether it’s right, in an almost moral sense: What if many teams pursued the same strategy and some chunk of the league engaged in a season-long race to the bottom? Another question is if it will even work.

A Philadelphian, by birth and temperament, I followed the Sixers off and on for months this season, trying to understand how the team’s quixotic plan was progressing. Oddly, the basketball team the Sixers put on the court was not uninteresting. On their better nights, they were not unwatchable. At all times, they were illuminating. I felt as if I were looking in on a strange social-science experiment: Throw together a group of marginal, overmatched professional athletes and give them a shot at their lifelong dream. The results were both inspiring and heartbreaking. The Sixers dove headlong for loose balls. They habitually fell far behind at the start of games — 15 points, 20 points, more — but kept fighting long after most veteran teams would have quit. They went on long scoring runs, then fell just short of winning. They are one of the youngest teams in the history of the league, almost all of them in their early 20s. When management scheduled family events around the holidays, few of the players brought their wives, girlfriends or children. They brought their mothers.