The Tank Thread

[DBac]

Hate to rain on that 60 win team’s parade but it’s the truth. If Wall doesn’t get hurt I’m not sure they beat Washington that year.

 

Fun season though. That game vs Golden State is one of my favorite games ever 

[KB21]

10 minutes ago, DBac said:

Hate to rain on that 60 win team’s parade but it’s the truth. If Wall doesn’t get hurt I’m not sure they beat Washington that year.

 

Fun season though. That game vs Golden State is one of my favorite games ever 

Whatever you need to do to convince yourself that bottoming the roster out and accepting 5 years of losing is what this team needs.

[Lurker]

19 hours ago, Diesel said:

Yeah, Lebron sends his hinchmen in to finish off the already injured team. 

Tell me where the Bulls 2010-2011 NBA finals appearance is then if regular season really matters against LeBron.

Lol. Try harder. Regular season doesn't mean jack when you're talking about LeBron James.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Lurker

[Lurker]

This actually doesn't have anything to do with tanking, but flashing back to 14/15, that was a good but unsustainable season no matter what. 50 win team that played above it's talent level because of two things, the 2nd year jump you almost always see with coaches, and the us against the world mentality that happened because of the Danny Ferry situation.

Now, would I prefer around that over being bad and chasing a rabbit to possibly become better in the future? Honestly yes, but this is where I again say, the mistakes that caused this are not all on Travis Schlenk. Sorry, but that's just true. Last season gets ran back outside of letting Hardaway Jr walk, and I'm not sure that's a playoff team. 

Ultimately, if I had the choice between 39-45 wins but despite a good talent level, laziness, bad attitudes, etc etc causing miserable games and blowouts and a 20-24 win team...my answer would be neither but I'd rather have no hope than false hope. Lurker has been emotionally battered enough by other pro and college teams in this state and would rather take a step aside for a few years in a sport than continually have bruising and battering.

[Royjr9]

35 minutes ago, KB21 said:

Whatever you need to do to convince yourself that bottoming the roster out and accepting 5 years of losing is what this team needs.

Lol. So paying a mediocre core and prolly the tax just to fight to make the playoffs or a 1st round exit.  Yeah no.  The hawks are on the right path at the moment. And I doubt it takes five years to. Get back to the playoffs. 

[Diesel]

14 minutes ago, Lurker said:

This actually doesn't have anything to do with tanking, but flashing back to 14/15, that was a good but unsustainable season no matter what. 50 win team that played above it's talent level because of two things, the 2nd year jump you almost always see with coaches, and the us against the world mentality that happened because of the Danny Ferry situation.

Now, would I prefer around that over being bad and chasing a rabbit to possibly become better in the future? Honestly yes, but this is where I again say, the mistakes that caused this are not all on Travis Schlenk. Sorry, but that's just true. Last season gets ran back outside of letting Hardaway Jr walk, and I'm not sure that's a playoff team. 

Ultimately, if I had the choice between 39-45 wins but despite a good talent level, laziness, bad attitudes, etc etc causing miserable games and blowouts and a 20-24 win team...my answer would be neither but I'd rather have no hope than false hope. Lurker has been emotionally battered enough by other pro and college teams in this state and would rather take a step aside for a few years in a sport than continually have bruising and battering.

I think you and others miss the truth here.   The team had good chemistry both offensively and defensively.   Defensively especially.   Now, let's talk about what was lost.

Thabo, DMC, and Korver.   Those players were our offensive and defensive engines.   You don't come back from losing those cogs.  

[KB21]

6 minutes ago, Royjr9 said:

Lol. So paying a mediocre core and prolly the tax just to fight to make the playoffs or a 1st round exit.  Yeah no.  The hawks are on the right path at the moment. And I doubt it takes five years to. Get back to the playoffs. 

It's pretty much guaranteed that it will take 5 years to get back to the playoffs.  Hell, the guy Atlanta drafts this year won't even be able to play winning basketball till his 3rd or 4th year in the league.  That's how underdeveloped these overhyped 19 year olds are.

[Royjr9]

3 minutes ago, KB21 said:

It's pretty much guaranteed that it will take 5 years to get back to the playoffs.  Hell, the guy Atlanta drafts this year won't even be able to play winning basketball till his 3rd or 4th year in the league.  That's how underdeveloped these overhyped 19 year olds are.

That’s not even remotely true. That’s an assumption. But like previously stated depends largely on who we take.  I won’t say we will be as bad as we are this year but we will be better. 

[Lurker]

11 minutes ago, Diesel said:

I think you and others miss the truth here.   The team had good chemistry both offensively and defensively.   Defensively especially.   Now, let's talk about what was lost.

Thabo, DMC, and Korver.   Those players were our offensive and defensive engines.   You don't come back from losing those cogs.  

DMC wasn't even remotely more important than Al/Paul. It wasn't even close. Al/Paul's passing and defense were vital.

[KB21]

1 minute ago, Royjr9 said:

That’s not even remotely true. That’s an assumption. But like previously stated depends largely on who we take.  I won’t say we will be as bad as we are this year but we will be better. 

Next year will be worse than this year.  The team will be younger, and I have little doubt that Schlenk is going to use the tank to control roster costs and will not sign any significant free agent that can help this team get better next year.

[Diesel]

Just now, Lurker said:

DMC wasn't even remotely more important than Al/Paul. It wasn't even close. Al/Paul's passing and defense were vital.

Strawman... Next.

Nobody said that DMC was more important. 

 

[KB21]

20-25 years ago, there might be more to this strategy to get you a good player.  The reason why is because players were more ready to play and compete when they came into the league 20-25 years ago.  There weren't any underdeveloped one and dones.  The ones that were coming in out of high school were taken late or showed special enough skills to be taken high.  The strangle hold AAU has on the players wasn't as strong back then as it is now.  I mean, you will not see a draft today like the 1996 draft where Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Shareef Abdur Rahim, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Peja Stojakovic, Steve Nash, and Jermaine O'Neal were drafted along with Antoine Walker before he blew up.  The drafts from back then skew the numbers for the pro tankers, because you simply do not see that or that type of early impact these days.

[davis171]

12 minutes ago, KB21 said:

Next year will be worse than this year.  The team will be younger, and I have little doubt that Schlenk is going to use the tank to control roster costs and will not sign any significant free agent that can help this team get better next year.

I think Schlenk will try and spend I'm more worried about Ressler spending on his end to sign intriguing FA. I'm thinking guys like Avery Bradley, Will Barton, Kyle Anderson that maybe could improve their value to be either valuable additions or trade bait ala Tyreke Evans and Lou Williams this year. 

[Diesel]

2 hours ago, AHF said:

We have the worst overall drafting record in NBA history.  So it is no surprise that getting one All-Star/All-NBA player from those picks is brutally bad.  Credit to Babcock who could not draft to save his life for at least for flipping the Rumeal Robinson pick for Mookie Blalock.

Al Horford is the best return. 

Then comes flipping Rumeal for Mookie. 

Then comes Mookie inspiring the name of Pearl Jam's Ten album. 

Then comes Plastic Man & JT.

After that you are firmly in bust-ville population BK/PB/SK.

Sorry.  But you can't blame these draft failures on just one man.   Especially not when it happens all over the league.   We're brutally bad and nothng we've done tells me that we are going to be better... which is what makes tanking a riskier proposition. 

[jy23]

Let’s try this again...anybody wanna tell me a team that won a championship without lottery players? Then we can keep having this discussion. If not y’all are talking in circles for the hell of it 

[AHF]

7 minutes ago, Diesel said:

Sorry.  But you can't blame these draft failures on just one man.   Especially not when it happens all over the league.   We're brutally bad and nothng we've done tells me that we are going to be better... which is what makes tanking a riskier proposition. 

We have had a series of GMs who were collectively the worst drafters in NBA history.  Regression to the mean suggests that if you hire new people to perform this function that we shouldn't expect to continue to be that terrible at drafting.  Being that great or that terrible for that long is difficult to sustain.

39 minutes ago, Diesel said:

I think you and others miss the truth here.   The team had good chemistry both offensively and defensively.   Defensively especially.   Now, let's talk about what was lost.

Thabo, DMC, and Korver.   Those players were our offensive and defensive engines.   You don't come back from losing those cogs.  

I agree with you.  We didn't have the talent to sustain losses of significant pieces.  Because our team did not have any transcendent talents, any single injury made things harder for our guys on both sides of the floor and we needed to be at absolute maximum efficiency to think about contending.  Losing those guys was too much for us to ensure we could even make it out of the early rounds of the playoffs let alone knock off LeBron or Golden State.  

 

12 hours ago, MaceCase said:

It’s a much more difficult task requiring 8-10 players to play at 100% efficiency over the course of 100 games than it is asking 2-3 players to do the same.  It’s a reason why with the exclusion of the 19 game win streak the Hawks were closer to a .500 win percentage during the span of that core.  By merit of securing the #1 seed during the 60 win season the Hawks received the most favorable matchups in the first 2 rounds of the playoffs yet still struggled to advance despite being near full health.

I've posted the same thing before as well.  The team had a fiery super nova of a streak but never was close to that level before or after.  Teams clearly changed the way they defended and attacked us and it disrupted the finely tuned machine we had going for a while.  That said, it was a high enough high for a franchise that hasn't had a lot of them that it was definitely worth continuing to chase that next offseason (bringing back Sap was the right call even though you had to choose between him and DMC, etc.).  There was no call to rebuild and there shouldn't have been.  Unfortunately, there is very little about that team that suggests that their peak play was long-term sustainable but they were close enough that if we had managed to pull off some kind of coup that maybe we could have made the jump.  Instead, we did the opposite and deteriorated our talent while salaries escalated.

[davis171]

39 minutes ago, Diesel said:

I think you and others miss the truth here.   The team had good chemistry both offensively and defensively.   Defensively especially.   Now, let's talk about what was lost.

Thabo, DMC, and Korver.   Those players were our offensive and defensive engines.   You don't come back from losing those cogs.  

Dude their 2nd best player was JR Smith. It was Lebron and NBA guys like Marion and James Jonesthat should have been retired that swept us. I'm against tanking in 99% of situations but when your president lets his 4 all stars go for Prince and a future first your ability to win games when making a GM switch suffers due to lack of cap flexibility and lack of assets. Schlink sounds like he wants to sign vets and try and turn this around fast I'm on board for now he was dealt a really tough hand.

[AHF]

Just now, jy23 said:

Let’s try this again...anybody wanna tell me a team that won a championship without lottery players? Then we can keep having this discussion. If not y’all are talking in circles for the hell of it 

Detroit is the closest to that.  They traded #3 Grant Hill for Ben Wallace, etc. but didn't use their own lottery picks or lottery picks they acquired (ignoring trading for Stack etc.).  They are the biggest exception to the overall trend for how teams were built and how they were constructed at the time they won a ring.  No significant leveraging of lottery picks beyond getting a DPOY and no MVP talent on the roster when they won.

[Royjr9]

2 minutes ago, jy23 said:

Let’s try this again...anybody wanna tell me a team that won a championship without lottery players? Then we can keep having this discussion. If not y’all are talking in circles for the hell of it 

Just Detroit.  But considering how they were built ie  grant for Ben, rip for stack and Wallace for sura. Prince should have been a lottery pick at least top five but most people whiffed on him.

[Royjr9]

34 minutes ago, KB21 said:

20-25 years ago, there might be more to this strategy to get you a good player.  The reason why is because players were more ready to play and compete when they came into the league 20-25 years ago.  There weren't any underdeveloped one and dones.  The ones that were coming in out of high school were taken late or showed special enough skills to be taken high.  The strangle hold AAU has on the players wasn't as strong back then as it is now.  I mean, you will not see a draft today like the 1996 draft where Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Shareef Abdur Rahim, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Peja Stojakovic, Steve Nash, and Jermaine O'Neal were drafted along with Antoine Walker before he blew up.  The drafts from back then skew the numbers for the pro tankers, because you simply do not see that or that type of early impact these days.

No it doesn’t. Going all in on  Davis, embid type players is vastly different from going all in on , milsap horford, korver and anybody else from that team.  Hate to break it to you but ferry was gonna tear that team apart he just didn’t get to finish what he started. Plus that 60 win team did play in a noticeable weaker east that year.