One remaining game before the All-Star Break against awful New Orleans merely underscores this stretch’s ease and the weight-of-the-free-world challenge facing the Miami Heat.

The NBA is a toxic mess of teams tanking by design or, like New Orleans, as tangible evidence of a previous tank’s failure.

This also underlines how the admirably, anti-tank Heat are being asked to save civilization, protect The Republic, maintain a sense of morality in an immoral world and protect our children’s tomorrow from an accelerated descent into nihilism.

There’s no middle ground here: You’re either for the tank in sports or not. You’re either for a contagion infecting our games or the natural world order of competition. You’re either, by full definition, a preordained loser or a hopeful winner.

The only problem is the Heat are a commendable but unsteady evangelist for trying to win every night out. They’re not good enough. They whipped a prostrate Washington on the road Sunday, 132-101. They then lost at home Monday 115-101, to Utah team that tried mightily to gift wrap the game to them.

Utah sat its best players midway through the third quarter. That’s the tell of a tank, wouldn’t you say? It wants to lose and thereby keep its lottery-protected draft pick. It purposely blew a 17-point lead at Orlando on Saturday to show what depths it will dredge. And the Heat lost?

“Look, I mean, I know how it looks,’’ Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

It looks like they sent the tankers a righteous message: We won’t let you win — I mean, lose.

Somehow, the shameless concept of tanking has become an acceptably mainstream idea like destination weddings and the Paleo diet. It’s a tankapalooza in the NBA right now. Eight teams are tanking (not counting New Orleans) in hopes of moving up in a draft where the top three players look like franchise-changers.

You know, just like it did for the Philadelphia “Trust the Process” 76ers. Or the Cleveland Browns. Or any of 20 teams in baseball. That’s the thing: Unless you can guarantee getting lucky to win one of the top picks in the right year and make the right decision, it’s all a bunch of kick-the-can-down-the-road hooey.

Do you want to relive how the Miami Dolphins tried to trick the system by tanking?

Me, neither.

It’s the siren call of losing organizations. For every Houston Astros team that won by tanking, a dozen teams simply wasted fans’ time and money. Just look at the Heat’s coming opponent, New Orleans. It successfully tanked and got No. 1 pick Zion Williamson. Now it’s back losing again.

Smart organizations don’t tank, and, if you’re not smart, don’t try. That’s been my line since the Dolphins’ silly attempt in 2019. It’s why the Heat way, painful as it looks right now, is the best way to go. Build a winning organization around, you now, trying to win. Is that so hard to understand?

There’s an asterisk to the never-tank concept. It’s midway through a season when injuries and losses mount and there’s no way out. The Heat did it and drafted Dwyane Wade. It tried again and got Michael Beasley. See how hit-and-miss it is even for a championship organization?

“That season is miserable,’’ Heat president Pat Riley once said of tanking. “And the teams that do it three or four years in a row to get lottery picks? I’d be in an insane asylum. The fans would be, too. Who wants that?”

Detroit suffered for five empty seasons to get a team that can contend for the Eastern Conference title. Anyone signing up for that won’t be watching those five years.

Look at the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. They showed how it’s done. They had the fifth pick in 2022 and ninth pick in 2023 that they smartly used on cornerback Devin Witherspoon and tackle Charles Cross. But those picks came in the shrewd trade of quarterback Russell Wilson to Denver.

The highest pick Seattle used of its own was 16th in 2024 (defensive tackle Byron Murphy). See how championship organizations do it?

Oklahoma City is used by NBA tank-ophiles to sell their argument. And it’s true, Oklahoma City got five first-round draft picks from the Los Angeles Clippers in a trade for veteran Paul George. But the gem of the trade was a guard barely mentioned when the trade was made: Shane Gilgeous-Alexander, now the league’s top player.

That’s not blind tanking. That’s great management. It’s what the Heat needs to do again to get out of another sideways season, too. They didn’t get Giannis Antetokounmpo at the trade deadline but will get another swing this summer. They’ll have more draft picks freed up to trade, too, as NBA rules work.

But don’t muddle their season up by questioning their organizational philosophy. You’re either for truth, justice and the American Way of trying to win every night like the Heat, or you’re buying into a Ponzi scheme of despair that defines tankers by how they define themselves:

Losers.