CBAreject

Another way of saying this, @KB21, is if losing for multiple seasons is “not acceptable” to you, then maybe you’re not in a position to objectively evaluate whether or not tanking “works”, since it requires exactly that—losing for multiple seasons. This actually makes a lot more sense out of why you were being so obtuse. It’s an emotional issue for you, and people don’t tend to be the most rational when they’re emotional.

Ok, but we’re just back to a difference of opinions, which is what I keep saying to you. You’re welcome to enjoy one 43-win season after another—you had 25 good years of that to enjoy. Now we’re trying something that I’ve been wanting for decades—to get a bona fide superstar in the draft and maybe be a championship contender. Different goals for the team, see?

This is the thing that all this boils down to—surplus value. You can only win a championship with lots of surplus value. That’s why it’s hard to do with a collection of mid-tier free agents. Players that offer surplus value are assets. Those that offer little value or negative value but are expensive are liabilities. Dwight Howard was a liability. That’s why he could only be traded for other liabilities. Kent Bazemore is a liability. Millsap was an asset who was bound to become a liability before his next contract was up. Schröder is a marginal asset. THJ was an asset until he became expensive, at which time he became a liability. Good on us for letting the Knicks absorb him. Speaking of which, the Knicks have been so bad for so long because they repeatedly built a team out of liabilities. All the discussions about our “alternatives” fail miserably to consider that we simply had virtually no assets, and we had a roster jammed full with expensive liabilities, I.e., no surplus value, with no cap room. The question of how to increase our surplus value then was limited to the draft. And so, drafting in the late teens, we would’ve had to find amazing steals repeatedly to improve significantly. That’s a bad bet. A much better bet was to cut loose some of the liabilities and move our draft position and odds higher. It was a no-brainer. Understanding surplus value makes this very straightforward.

Good, we need to lose for a few years to keep drafting high and accrue some assets.

This thread is full of straw men, mostly due to KB. Here are a couple. 1) Prove to me that “tanking is the best strategy!!!” -Tanking is clearly not the best way to build a contender, and nobody has argued that. The problem is, it may be the only feasible option to the Hawks as their roster stood in 2017. Citing examples of the Lakers signing hall of famers is useless because we will never be able to attract FA like the Lakers. 2) You think you can dip down into the lottery and be back in contention in two years! -I still haven’t seen where anybody said this, at least not any of the people KB keeps indignantly accusing. Maybe someone did, but it surely isn’t a widespread view. Tanking doesn’t work out for most teams that try it. Neither does spending big dollars in free agency. Most teams don’t become contenders no matter what they do, but nearly all contenders have drafted one of their best two players in the lottery and/or traded top-10 picks to acquire stars.

Right, saying it is a “sad rebuild” is “glorification” of tanking.

He misspoke and got it backwards. 2 out of the last 20 were NOT drafted in the lottery (kawhi Leonard and tony Parker). Of course, there’s a lot to quibble about both ways (being finals mvp doesn’t mean you’re the team’s best player, some of these players were not drafted by the teams they played for), but it makes the point.

Yes, you can propose all the trades you want, but the fact is, we have not built trade capital over the the last decade, we have squandered it. https://www.si.com/nba/2017/11/03/nba-tanking-teams-bulls-hawks-suns-knicks-kings WHICH REBUILD IS THE SADDEST? Atlanta Hawks. The poor Hawks spent a decade loitering in the middle of the Eastern Conference just to have one empty 60-win season (they were swept by the Cavs in the playoffs) and then watch their good-but-never-great core fall apart. Now, the Hawks are comprised of career backups, a lead guard who elicits enmity as much as excitement, and a couple recent mid-first round draft picks who might only be OK. Finally, a roster worthy of Atlanta’s notoriously insipid home crowds. By my calculations, the Hawks are the only NBA team without a prospective star (sorry, Dennis Schröder), and they don’t sport a single top-10 selection on the squad. Kent Bazemore, who would make a great eighth man, is their highest-paid player. Sure, they’ll have cap space next summer, but marquee free agents seem allergic to the ATL. The only good thing about Atlanta’s situation is that the Hawks might actually be awful enough to snag the top spot in the draft. Oh, and John Collins dunks, at least they have those. — Ben Teitelbaum

You’re being obtuse and argumentative. We obviously have different definitions of “work”. You create an impossibly high standard of success for tanking (championship contender within 2 years) and a laughably low standard for success for other strategies (first round playoff exits in perpetuity) and use them as your “proofs” that your favored strategy succeeds more frequently.

I’m not sure they’re glorifying it. They’re calling attention to the brazenness of it. This will probably lead to even more aggressive rule changes. The NBA is a joke for more reasons than just tanking. Superstars play by different in-game rules, and the new cap structure has fostered the creation of super teams. This creates a bottom heavy league that is unwatchable. In the 06/07 season, we won 30 games. We had the 4th worst record and drafted 3rd (Horford). Only 2 teams had fewer than 25 wins that year. This year, there will be 8 such teams.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22573750/how-nba-bottom-dwellers-putting-tanking-clinic-nba

He was a sign-and-trade to a 13-win team, but basically yes. Interestingly, the Joe Johnson acquisition was one that the anti-tank camp applauded. It got us into the playoffs a lot faster, but it committed us to a decade of mediocrity.

Where did I say how long it would take us to get good again? For the record, I expect to be in the lottery for at least four years. I’m ok with that. If we whiff on this year’s pick, it adds at least one more year. Multiple whiffs and this thing gets really ugly. I’m still ok with the gamble after decades of being a first-round fluffer for actual contenders.

I figured it out over the course of this thread. KB thinks we could sign a Demarre Carrroll and Paul Millsap any offseason and end up with 2 veteran all-star forwards who were perfect scheme fits. This is where we disagree. Most of us take for granted that it was impossible for us to substantially improve on our lousy, expensive first round playoff team

Might well be true. I will take the Collins pick as some evidence of competence, but who knows. I wanted to believe in Billy Knight, but he didn’t have a coherent vision for building a team.

Yes because Wilcox was not hired for his skill at being a GM but for his vapid SJW sentiments. The great irony is that the team ended up punishing him for making a virtue signaling comment about his wife and family that was misinterpreted. Management totally deserves what they got when they fired the best GM we ever lucked into. The fans, though...we didn’t deserve this crap.

Will you consider the times that “middle builds” didn’t work, or will you use one example and assume it is repeatable at will? Will you consider that a team with Horford and Teague in their primes was in a different position than a team with an aging Millsap and Howard as its best players? What would you have suggested? Sticking with a Howard-Millsap core and adding a Harrison Barnes or reupping THJ? Would that have made us a contender?

Let’s ignore for the sake of arguments that the arguable best player on that team was our own #3 pick. But if some team tanked and went to the ECF once in 50 years, would you call that a success? Of course not. You use two diametrically opposite standards to judge the two models. Tanking only works if you get a championship contender within 5 years. Not tanking works if you get a championship contender twice a century. If Philly or Minnesota goes to the ECF next year, will it prove you wrong? Does OKC going to the NBA finals with their own top-5 picks prove you wrong? What would it take to falsify your hypothesis that “tanking doesn’t work”?

We got to the conference finals once in 50 years, and we got brutally swept, so did our method “work”?

Neither did we with an aging Millsap and Howard. Gosh it’s almost like you judge things by totally different standards based on how much you want them to be true or false. There is no planet on which Jimmy Butler is a better player than Karl Anthony-Towns. Now you’re just trolling.

This is intuitive. All teams that tank will either fail or succeed in getting franchise talent. The ones that fail will tank again. The ones that succeed will become 35 win teams on the way to contention. Becoming a 35 win team means that the tank worked out early on, so the chances for contention go up. If im missing something direct me to the data so I can see if I’m oversimplifying things.

Additionally, my list wasn’t exhaustive. There are several strong teams that recently built through top-5 draft picks, like Washington, Minnesota, and recent OKC teams. The NBA has had a competitive balance issue for decades, and it threatens the league. It’s a serious problem, but the fact is that there are only a few ways to build a contender. One is to sign several of the best players in the league (generally, these players only want to play in Miami, NY, or California). So if you’re not one of those teams, you can either tank or make a series of genius trades (Boston). Here’s hoping it works out for us.

Your standard is that tanking only works when it gets you a championship caliber team within 5 years? What about all the times that not tanking doesn’t net a championship contender (teams that tried to build with middling draft picks and overpriced free agents like the Hornets and Knicks). Does that mean the alternative can be a huge failure, too? Or do you just discard data that doesn’t fit your narrative?

Of course you can prove “the strategy doesn’t work” if you cherry pick the worst examples for your proofs, but that’s not the way to study something. You should look at cases where it has worked (GS, Philly, Cleveland, SA) and also look at cases where teams didn’t tank but should have. For example, Charlotte honorably became competitive for a playoff spot in its third season of existence, winning 33 games. Since then, they have made the playoffs 3 times in 10 seasons, getting bounced in the first round each time. Most years, Charlotte tends to win just enough games to stay out of the lottery and draft a role player who will only help them stay non-competitive. Every now and again, they squeak into the playoffs and get reminded that they are totally insignificant. To me, Charlotte’s strategy is totally incoherent. I would much rather be where we are (holding the most lottery balls) than where they are (little to no hope to contend until they finally blow it up and tank).

The 8 worst teams in the NBA, all of which have 20 wins or fewer, are currently on losing streaks totaling 43 losses. The worst of these belong to the Grizz and the Suns, each of which are on a 9-game losing streak. This is a tankfest without historical precedent.