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.

It's the ole ferry smokescreen. You never hear about what he will do and I'm 77% sure he leaks false info on purpose

Yes! This! Talk me down from the ledge.

Miss me with that advance stat mess. Sight test are still a better evaluation. Milsap has a better nerd WARP than smith. Milsap has a better geek PER than smith. What I see tells me we'll really suck if milsap is the biggest addition we make this offseason.

"Nerd WARP" is fantastic! Hahaha!

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

Tweet Added - Refresh Page to see it live!

If you don't see the Tweet here AFTER REFRESHING PAGE, then it wasn't entered correctly. Please edit and try again.

Important: If the Tweet doesn't load, please refresh the page before editing the Tweet as it may need to refresh to parse properly

Nice, some fire in here!Never said that team should get credit for tanking. My comment had absolutely zero element of tanking.But you're right, I guess we should totally credit the Celtics for drafting Bebe this year. He's gonna be awesome for them.And I can't wait to see Nerlens in N'awlins (damn that was fun to swype).Divorce your thought process from the tanking crap & use your brain.P.S. Vick was awesome in San Diego until he ruined the franchise with his selfishness. Really glad they drafted him!

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.

Just spent WAY too much time reading this crazy thread:1) If a player gets drafted then immediately traded, the team to which he gets traded should count as the drafting team for the purposes of this discussion. If you can't grasp that, you're an idiot.

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.

What..............

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

Too true. Once you push $6m a year annually you start to get me saying "oh well" but at this value? f***. I think I like Z too much to just french it away but I guess thats why drz is the real doctor around here. Too cool for me on this issue.

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.

And I think I've beat this drum loud enough now.

I'm off the merry-go-round. This feels too familiar to 2003 to me... I really hope you guys are right, because I wouldn't have wasted a whole day writing about a bunch of millionaires that don't know I exist if I wasn't a fan. I'll be watching, but the Danny Ferry honeymoon is over for me.

You guys an't sell me on this, you'll just have to stuff the crow down my throat.

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.

You keep saying tanking, but if you're following the "win without losing" strategy, then you're not getting "Timmy."

...and you cite Parker and ignore the odds of finding that kind of talent outside of the lottery...while you condemn lottery odds.

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." :)

This year is a great year to tank because there isn't just one or two potential franchise building blocks. This draft stands out for its depth at the top. Why do you think Celtics, etc. are dismantling to build through the lottery? This isn't a Wiggins or bust year, although he is the big draw coming into the year. Lebron was the big draw but Melo, Wade, Bosh, etc. offered depth at the top.

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.'

We're talking about the same guy that took Darko ahead of Melo,Wade, Bosh, etc.... Btw, how in the heck does this dude still have a job? Are you kidding me?

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

Finals MVP who were drafted by their team were Timmy (3), Wade (1), Parker (1), and Pierce (1). That is 6 out of 15 (40%).

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.