The Tank Thread

[KB21]

19 minutes ago, AHF said:

Every MVP since 1970 has been drafted in the first 15 picks.  Every MVP but Steve Nash has been drafted in the lottery. 

Since 1986, the following MVPs won it for the team that drafted them (draft here includes trading for the player in the draft where the player never suits up for another team ala Nique to Atlanta):  

Larry Bird (3x but two before this cutoff)

Magic Johnson 3x

Michael Jordan 6x

Hakeem Olajuwon

David Robinson

Karl Malone

Allen Iverson

Tim Duncan 2x

Kevin Garnett

Dirk Nowitzki

Kobe Bryant 

LeBron James 2x

Derrick Rose

Kevin Durant

Stephen Curry

Russell Westbrook 

 

Since 1986, the following MVPs won it for a team that did not draft them (same definition):

Charles Barkley

Shaquille O'Neal

Steve Nash 2x

LeBron James

Seems like drafting is the obvious path.

Hmm.  So we are going back 40 years on draft picks.  So 40 years x 15 draft picks = 600 players.  16 MVPs out of 600 players = a 2.7% chance of getting an MVP.

Hmm.  I don't like those odds.  

 

[Lurker]

2 hours ago, KB21 said:

43-39 doesn't suck.

And this is where you differ from 95% of this board. Sorry, but 43-39 with a negative point differential thanks to a lot of sorry, miserable blowouts is a team that sucks. It's where I said there is, indeed, an in between between good and bad. And that is mediocre. Last year was mediocrity. 

[Lurker]

I don't care if you're for or against tanking or are my dead grandfather, if you enjoyed last year's team, you missed about 85% of the season. For most of the season that team looked BAD.

[DBac]

The Hawks were 43-39 with a negative point differential and one of the three weakest SOS in the league. All that with one of the 5 oldest rosters in the NBA. And their reward was being eliminated in the first round. Definition of mediocre.

 

Total waste of a season, they strapped themselves to two toxic assets in Baze and Dwight Howard, leading to the Hawks not having a choice on if hey wanted to keep the young player that they developed (THJ, which regardless of how you feel about him it’s a bad look to trade a first round pick for a 2 year rental on a 23 year old)

 

Actually it wasn’t a total waste, it did result in power being stripped from BudCox, but unfortunately they’ve set the team back further than tanking would.

Edited November 15, 2017 by DBac

[KB21]

20 minutes ago, DBac said:

The Hawks were 43-39 with a negative point differential and one of the three weakest SOS in the league. All that with one of the 5 oldest rosters in the NBA. And their reward was being eliminated in the first round. Definition of mediocre.

 

Total waste of a season, they strapped themselves to two toxic assets in Baze and Dwight Howard, leading to the Hawks not having a choice on if hey wanted to keep the young player that they developed (THJ, which regardless of how you feel about him it’s a bad look to trade a first round pick for a 2 year rental on a 23 year old)

 

Actually it wasn’t a total waste, it did result in power being stripped from BudCox, but unfortunately they’ve set the team back further than tanking would.

Nothing sets a team back further than tanking.  Because of this decision to tank, this team will not even sniff the playoffs for at least 5 years at best.

[AHF]

45 minutes ago, KB21 said:

Hmm.  So we are going back 40 years on draft picks.  So 40 years x 15 draft picks = 600 players.  16 MVPs out of 600 players = a 2.7% chance of getting an MVP.

Hmm.  I don't like those odds.  

 

You know what I don't like the odds of?  Winning a championship without an MVP.  You have the 2003-04 Pistons that won without an MVP.  Every other champion during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s all were led by an MVP.  Every one.

So the last several decades tells us if you want to win a ring choosing to do it without an MVP is worse odds than 2.7%!

[KB21]

13 minutes ago, AHF said:

You know what I don't like the odds of?  Winning a championship without an MVP.  You have the 2003-04 Pistons that won without an MVP.  Every other champion during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s all were led by an MVP.  Every one.

So the last several decades tells us if you want to win a ring choosing to do it without an MVP is worse odds than 2.7%!

Sine 1980, there have been 11 organizations win the championship.  So, if that Detroit club is the only team to do it without a MVP,   So, 1 out of 11 is roughly a 9% chance, which is greater than 2.7%.  

[AHF]

46 minutes ago, KB21 said:

Sine 1980, there have been 11 organizations win the championship.  So, if that Detroit club is the only team to do it without a MVP,   So, 1 out of 11 is roughly a 9% chance, which is greater than 2.7%.  

That makes no sense at all.  1 team out of roughly 40 wins and you think that makes 9%?  Every year is a separate chance to win a ring and every year the teams without MVPs lose.

If the odds were 9% you would see 4 champions meeting that profile.  

The logic is just so far gone.  How does LA winning with Magic and winning with Kobe count as one entry?  Detroit won 2 with Isiah and 1 with no MVP but they are your single franchise entry as a non-MVP franchise despite being 2/3 MVP 1/3 non-MVP on their rings?  What???  Even the only team to win one without an MVP in modern times has won more with an MVP.  It just hurts my head.

[Lurker]

There's bad, and then there's screwing yourself because of horrific mismanagement. The Kings are the latter. They may finally be doing it right, but it came after years of mismanagement...including trading for veterans to try to make the playoffs.

There's only one way to do it if you're going to tank, and it's being patient. Trying to make it to the playoffs is more likely to make it worse than better. Band aids never work.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

1 minute ago, Lurker said:

There's bad, and then there's screwing yourself because of horrific mismanagement. The Kings are the latter. They may finally be doing it right, but it came after years of mismanagement...including trading for veterans to try to make the playoffs.

There's only one way to do it if you're going to tank, and it's being patient. Trying to make it to the playoffs is more likely to make it worse than better. Band aids never work.

12 years.  They'll take a near miss at the playoffs and be ecstatic. 

[Lurker]

Just now, TheNorthCydeRises said:

12 years.  They'll take a near miss at the playoffs and be ecstatic. 

And make a not good situation worse through aiming for it.

[NBASupes]

The Kings and Mavs tank is something spectacular. 

[DBac]

3 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

The Kings and Mavs tank is something spectacular. 

Eh despite tonight's efforts we're still ahead of them in the tankathon. The Mavs though, we're just gonna have to hope we win the lottery. They'll happily ride out Dirk's farewell tour to the #1 odds... that team is horrible.

[lethalweapon3]

32 minutes ago, Lurker said:

There's bad, and then there's screwing yourself because of horrific mismanagement. The Kings are the latter. They may finally be doing it right, but it came after years of mismanagement...including trading for veterans to try to make the playoffs.

There's only one way to do it if you're going to tank, and it's being patient. Trying to make it to the playoffs is more likely to make it worse than better. Band aids never work.

(in before the tank thread shift), BUT I had to note, how Hawkward is it that Shareef Abdur-Rahim's one and only playoff appearance... came in Sacramento's last playoff appearance (2005-06)?

~lwmandoeyef33lold

[bleachkit]

21 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

The Kings and Mavs tank is something spectacular. 

Too bad the new rules didn't go into effect this year where the worst three teams all have the same odds.

[Guard]

The Sixers are going to be really scary with a better power forward and Fultz healthy. Their upside as a team is crazy high. 

[DBac]

Think Philly fans regret tanking right about now? Sheesh 46 17 7 and 7 for Embiid, near triple double for Simmons.

 

*cue comments about how the game was close

[MaceCase]

8 hours ago, KB21 said:

Nothing sets a team back further than tanking.  Because of this decision to tank, this team will not even sniff the playoffs for at least 5 years at best.

No, nothing sets a team back further than investing assets into an older non-contending team only to soon reach the end of the road with nothing worthwhile to show for it.  I suppose your analytics suggest that the Nets are in a better position than the Sixers because they went for it but just so happen to "suck" whereas the Sixers gave up and "tanked".

[Diesel]

22 hours ago, AHF said:

GS openly admitted they tanked.  GS also rebuilt through the lottery by design for years.  Schlenk is expressly trying to replicate the environment that let they draft Curry, Klay and others.  Letting Baron Davis walk ala Sap was the start of all of that but they followed it up by getting rid of the rest of the key players from their playoff team.  Davis averaged 22, 5 and 8 for them and they dropped from a 49 win team into the 20's where they played for 3 of the next 4 seasons:  29, 26 and 23 wins.  During that time they drafted and Klay.  They then outright admit they tanked the next season by sitting healthy players for months ala the Suns to improve their draft position where they drafted Barnes and Green.  Kind of the core of their first championship team.  Bolt on a couple players via trade and FA and you have your rebuilt championship team after a few years of development.  They check all the boxes for me. 

Clevelend overtly tanked for LeBron and made the finals.  Then they overtly tanked to get the pieces to lure him back.  His big 3 partners with Wade and Bosh had gotten too old and a pair of #1 picks landed him what he thought would be his next big 3 with Irving and Love plus other picks he loved like TT.  It was an entire period of tank jobs broken up by LeBron first time with the team.

2009 - Drafted Steph. 

2011 - New Owners

2011 Draft Klay

2012 Drafted Barnes and Green

Here's the thing...  You say that they tanked for Barnes and that won the championship??    How could they have had a continuous tanking plan when ownership changed in between the years that they got most of their championship players??

Moreover,  I told you that they had a culture of a championship team...

Quote

But borrowing from his Silicon Valley experience, Lacob and his partner, Peter Guber, recruited investors who functioned like a board of directors, according to the New York Times (paywall). It created an open structure where everyone was expected to play a role in the team’s success. For example, the same math prowess John Burbank of Passport Capital used to make investments often guided the team on player acquisitions.

Joe Lacob celebrates the Warriors’ 2015 NBA championship win. (Cary Edmondson-USA Today Sports)

The Warriors also hired based on potential rather than track record, a practice much more in keeping with the VC mindset than a sports team. When they brought on Mark Jackson, a former player and commentator, as coach in 2011, he’d never held a coaching job. Neither had Steve Kerr, another former player who replaced Jackson in 2014.

Actually, Jackson’s firing was a controversial move at the time, reflecting another way of thinking that fit more with a business venture: don’t be afraid to mess with success. Under Jackson, the Warriors improved to 51-31 in the 2013-14 season. But Lacob, who according to the Times thought Kerr would be a better fit with the organization’s open structure, was willing to disrupt the progress in hopes of getting an even better result.

 

That's a culture.  

[Diesel]

13 hours ago, AHF said:

You know what I don't like the odds of?  Winning a championship without an MVP.  You have the 2003-04 Pistons that won without an MVP.  Every other champion during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s all were led by an MVP.  Every one.

So the last several decades tells us if you want to win a ring choosing to do it without an MVP is worse odds than 2.7%!

How many championship MVPs were drafted by the team that won the championship??

Steph... and who else?

Westbrook - No championship. 

Durant - No Championship in OKC.

Lebron - Wasn't drafted by the Heat. 

Rose - No championship

Lebron - No Championship with those Cavs. 

Kobe - Actually drafted by the Hornets and didn't win a championship that year. 

Dirk - Yes.

Steve Nash - No Championship. 

KG - No championship. 

Duncan - yes.

Iverson - No championship.

 

So going back 17 years...  Only 3 guys won an MVP with the same team that drafted them and won a championship.

That's not a very good stat for the tanking argument.  Not to mention, championships by top 4 lottery picks = 1 in 17 years.

Stats show that you're better off trading for a MVP or Championship leader than tanking for one... that's why culture matters.