drzachary

And I disagree as to the usefulness of the discussion -- intentionally losing games to raise one's draft pick has, in my opinion, too many negative consequences. It is helpful to point out that building through the draft can be done with *other team's* picks. We could send our hypothetical Shareef away for someone's hypothetical pick that we'd use on Pau Gasol, for example.

Is ECF appearance 'contender' while 2nd round appearance is 'mediocrity'? Seems kinda arbitrary. Winning 2 games in the 2nd round is pretty close, right? :)

*backing away slowly*

I would have rather had Josh launching 3s than Monta.

Maybe the source heard wrong. Maybe Ferry is still interested in signing Not-Having-Monta, which is the Ellis you want.

He's Josh, minus the D. Yes! This! Talk me down from the ledge.

"Nerd WARP" is fantastic! Hahaha!

Trade Al, start the tank job. Not even joking. :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

Yes -- Joe Dumars is not a good GM.

You are missing the point. The earlier argument was that you need lottery picks. In the NBA, your position in the draft depends on your prior season's record -- with some variance, hence 'lottery.' Wretch's implication is that gaining lottery picks by missing the playoffs is preferable to winning meaningless playoff series. Hawksfanatic's distinction shows us that you *CAN TRADE FOR LOTTERY PICKS.* Ergo, you can gain lottery picks without missing the playoffs ("tanking," if you want.) This is actually really, really simple to understand.

Um. No. The team with the original pick got it based on their (possibly tanking) record. The team that got the player's rights did not necessarily tank to get it. (Maybe they were in the playoffs.) If you can't grasp that, well, I won't call you an idiot, because that would be mean.

Colin :( :( :( :( I'm so sorry for your loss.

Don't get me wrong --- I'm blocking out the pain right now. In about 10 minutes I'm going to be sitting on the floor of my shower, drinking a room-temp Busch beer and crying.

I think his deal was like the third bowl of porridge: juuuuuuust right. I wish we had given it to him, but c'est la vie.

move rivgambino out of hawksquawk? ;)

I think ATL could possibly get a 4 seed. Bargnani will make the Knicks worse (probably not 10 games worse though) and Rose is an unknown still.

I feel a little sadness here too. I mean, let's be honest. He was a f***up. But he was our f***up. (Edited, since I thought there was a language filter!)

I have nothing but love and respect for your fandom -- and I know that you HOPE you're not right about what you perceive to be futility.

Win without losing? Is that better or worse than 'lose by losing?' :)

I don't think it's proven that you 'need stars' to win championships. The more likely case is that once a team has shown itself to be a contender, the media decides that their best player is a "star." :)

Sort of. A lot of the top talent for the 2014 draft are currently high-schoolers. Will they even pan out? It's very possible that by the time the draft rolls around, Wiggins, Parker and/or Randle are more 'solid' than 'franchise.'

It's not like Darko wasn't universally hyped. The only way to win is to get high picks like that, you know.

Furthermore, Timmy and Parker weren't acquired by tanking, IMO. (Timmy's situation was unique, Parker of course was picked at the end of the 1st round.)

That is... WAY too much for Smoove. Dumars is drunk.