knicks1248 wrote:The season of tanking has begun in the NBA.

One NBA general manager says his team plans to tank all season in order to secure one of the top prospects expected to declare for the NBA Draft next season.

In an article written for ESPN the Magazine, the GM justifies his logic by saying “the last place you want to be is in the middle.”

“ Our team isn’t good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes — and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games. This draft is loaded. There are potential All-Stars at the top, maybe even franchise changers. Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.
We’re not alone. Look at the 76ers. Since the draft in June, I don’t think they’ve signed a player or made a trade to add a legitimate player. A bunch of us realize that our teams aren’t good enough talentwise to do anything. You’re going to be bad. There’s no way around it. And even if you finish 0-82, there’s still a 75 percent chance you don’t get the No. 1 pick. We’re just going to take our lumps and hope our number gets called.”

I always think that if you play hard all season long, you let the chips fall where they may. To deliberately go out and lose games and pray you hit the lottery is absolutely the worst decision you can make...Do you gamble your paycheck or blow it on some BS and pray you hit the lottery.

What kind of thinking is this, is there some perfect track record that shows this really works...smh

It doesn't always work but it's a better plan that scratching and clawing your way to an 8th seed like Milwaukee's been doing forever.

VCoug wrote:

djsunyc wrote:they need to change draft lottery rules.

like if you draft #1 this year, you can not get a top 5 pick in the next draft.
or if you spend over $10 mil on a FA, then you can not get a top 3 draft pick.

etc.

There's a simpler way to fix tanking. Abolish the lottery so that picks are based on record but reverse the order so the team that finishes in 16th picks first and the team that finished last picks 14.

I agree with this, it help the teams trying to get to the playoffs but just miss it.

the teams that miss the playoffs, put them all in a hat and pick draft order randomly out of them!

knicks1248 wrote:

VCoug wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:The season of tanking has begun in the NBA.

One NBA general manager says his team plans to tank all season in order to secure one of the top prospects expected to declare for the NBA Draft next season.

In an article written for ESPN the Magazine, the GM justifies his logic by saying “the last place you want to be is in the middle.”

“ Our team isn’t good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes — and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games. This draft is loaded. There are potential All-Stars at the top, maybe even franchise changers. Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.
We’re not alone. Look at the 76ers. Since the draft in June, I don’t think they’ve signed a player or made a trade to add a legitimate player. A bunch of us realize that our teams aren’t good enough talentwise to do anything. You’re going to be bad. There’s no way around it. And even if you finish 0-82, there’s still a 75 percent chance you don’t get the No. 1 pick. We’re just going to take our lumps and hope our number gets called.”

I always think that if you play hard all season long, you let the chips fall where they may. To deliberately go out and lose games and pray you hit the lottery is absolutely the worst decision you can make...Do you gamble your paycheck or blow it on some BS and pray you hit the lottery.

What kind of thinking is this, is there some perfect track record that shows this really works...smh

It doesn't always work but it's a better plan that scratching and clawing your way to an 8th seed like Milwaukee's been doing forever.

And look what happen, jennings left, and Ellis would not dream of resigning with them. The only players that don't mind playing for a losing team are young players, rookies, 2nd and 3rd yr players.

The lakers were a middle of the pack team when they got kobe. While some people learn from loses, others learn from being around winners.

Jennings was a restricted free agent, Milwaukee didn't want him anymore. And you're just proving my point, not yours. Milwaukee has been trying to win for awhile now, to no avail, and it's gotten them nowhere.

knicks1248 wrote:The season of tanking has begun in the NBA.

One NBA general manager says his team plans to tank all season in order to secure one of the top prospects expected to declare for the NBA Draft next season.

In an article written for ESPN the Magazine, the GM justifies his logic by saying “the last place you want to be is in the middle.”

“ Our team isn’t good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes — and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games. This draft is loaded. There are potential All-Stars at the top, maybe even franchise changers. Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.
We’re not alone. Look at the 76ers. Since the draft in June, I don’t think they’ve signed a player or made a trade to add a legitimate player. A bunch of us realize that our teams aren’t good enough talentwise to do anything. You’re going to be bad. There’s no way around it. And even if you finish 0-82, there’s still a 75 percent chance you don’t get the No. 1 pick. We’re just going to take our lumps and hope our number gets called.”

I always think that if you play hard all season long, you let the chips fall where they may. To deliberately go out and lose games and pray you hit the lottery is absolutely the worst decision you can make...Do you gamble your paycheck or blow it on some BS and pray you hit the lottery.

What kind of thinking is this, is there some perfect track record that shows this really works...smh

The reason the nba has a draft lottery is precisely to keep this crap from happening, so teams aren't competing to see who can be the biggest losers. However it appears a 25% chance is large enough to some of these GM's that they're willing to make fools out of themselves and their organizations by intentionally losing. Perhaps the worst team's chances of landing the #1 pick need to be lowered even further to around 15% just so these guys get the picture. In addition to worrying about their draft spot these teams should be making sure they have the best scouts possible and know what to look for when evaluating players. Teams like the Bobcats often have great draft spots and make horrible choices while teams like the Spurs have lower spots but make better decisions and reap the rewards. A GM advocating tanking is the equivalent of pushing the "easy button", closing your eyes, making a wish, and blowing out the candles. It's not a reliable strategy. Clearly this GM lacks the skills to make his team competitive so he needs to rely on pure luck to gift him a star player, assuming he doesn't screw the pooch and further self-sabotage with a bad selection.

I can understand tanking with 1 or 2 games left in the season. However going into the first game of the season with such a mindset is poisonous to all the parties involved and just shows a lack of integrity in my opinion.

Dagger wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:The season of tanking has begun in the NBA.

One NBA general manager says his team plans to tank all season in order to secure one of the top prospects expected to declare for the NBA Draft next season.

In an article written for ESPN the Magazine, the GM justifies his logic by saying “the last place you want to be is in the middle.”

“ Our team isn’t good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes — and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games. This draft is loaded. There are potential All-Stars at the top, maybe even franchise changers. Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.
We’re not alone. Look at the 76ers. Since the draft in June, I don’t think they’ve signed a player or made a trade to add a legitimate player. A bunch of us realize that our teams aren’t good enough talentwise to do anything. You’re going to be bad. There’s no way around it. And even if you finish 0-82, there’s still a 75 percent chance you don’t get the No. 1 pick. We’re just going to take our lumps and hope our number gets called.”

I always think that if you play hard all season long, you let the chips fall where they may. To deliberately go out and lose games and pray you hit the lottery is absolutely the worst decision you can make...Do you gamble your paycheck or blow it on some BS and pray you hit the lottery.

What kind of thinking is this, is there some perfect track record that shows this really works...smh

The reason the nba has a draft lottery is precisely to keep this crap from happening, so teams aren't competing to see who can be the biggest losers. However it appears a 25% chance is large enough to some of these GM's that they're willing to make fools out of themselves and their organizations by intentionally losing. Perhaps the worst team's chances of landing the #1 pick need to be lowered even further to around 15% just so these guys get the picture. In addition to worrying about their draft spot these teams should be making sure they have the best scouts possible and know what to look for when evaluating players. Teams like the Bobcats often have great draft spots and make horrible choices while teams like the Spurs have lower spots but make better decisions and reap the rewards. A GM advocating tanking is the equivalent of pushing the "easy button", closing your eyes, making a wish, and blowing out the candles. It's not a reliable strategy. Clearly this GM lacks the skills to make his team competitive so he needs to rely on pure luck to gift him a star player, assuming he doesn't screw the pooch and further self-sabotage with a bad selection.

I can understand tanking with 1 or 2 games left in the season. However going into the first game of the season with such a mindset is poisonous to all the parties involved and just shows a lack of integrity in my opinion.

I have a strong hunch it's Boston gm,

and in a rich draft class, you stand to gain the good stuff even if you do not win #1 overall,

i dig everything you are saying and only want to adjust it for rich draft classes, because in a rich draft you still win even without #1 overall

And yes, you have a 75% chance of NOT getting the top pick!

But comes a time when you clean house to reboot. Remember boston got Garnett and Ray with the young assets they got thru the draft. It also gets you cap space to make deals. Miami got theirs from cleaning house as well. They had wade and had a bust in drafting Beas but still got the space to create "Superfriends". We did too. Perhaps last year was our year if Stat was all-star Stat and Tyson got no bugs.

Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda always easy in hindsight.