TANK vs ANTI TANK - SUPER THREAD - The Because I Can't Keep Track Edition

[Demographic Shift]

A comparable is that would could have become like the twolves. If we can't get around lebron than perhaps our window closes. Wolves window starts to open then and they may have the most talented team in the league. Time will tell. I like our team but I love the draft and the wolves. They're fun!

So .. two minutes for another viewpoint on the notion that tanking might have led the Raps to become the Timberpups...

The Twolves are one outcome of the much debated strategy of tanking. Tanking is a viable but hugely risk laden strategy. Where there is some hope for the 10 and 21 Puppies (just not this year) there is the stark reality that you could also become the Philly Sixers... who after 4 years of total and abject self inflicted shittiness beyond anything one has seen in pro sports they have the following to show for it.

After losing almost 200 games in 4 years ...the Hinkies are again world class crappy With a robust 7 and 23 they have a worse record than the Brooklyn Nets (who haven't had the benefit of a draft pick in years) and are dead effing last in the league.

The Process has so far yielded

a) Nerlens Noel (who they want to trade for whatever they can get.. but it won't be a 6th overall pick and a player)
b) Jahil Okafor who the Sixers also would like to trade if they got anything approaching a decent offer.
c) Dario Saric who isn't a raw rook as he has played better than NCAA ball for year in Europe but hasn't shown the kind of jam that would make anyone notice other than family members.
d) Joel Embiid who looks like he is a really really good player...but if he is on his own for a while he will most likely become a frustrated one man band on a perpetually losing team... see Cousins, Boogie in Sacramento
e) Ben Simmons.. who may or may not have the impact a first overall has .. but one has to think if he played this year instead of being dead last.. maybe they would be 3rd or 4th from the bottom ?. There is the risk he is another big man who with a need for Jones fracture surgery will be suspect .. hope not and its too early to tell.. but surgery in your first year isn't what the doctor ordered.

Still there is hope... The Hinkies get two more real swings at it this year with their own pick likely to be a top 3 pick and the Lakers pick which is sure looks to be top 10. Unless they tank and finish bottom 3 and the pick stays with them.

So after 5 years of abject shittiness and no hope the Sixers have again in the cold light of day put themselves in a position to be a team that will finish anywhere from dead last to 7-10 from the bottom of the heap for the next couple of years.

Thats going to be close to a decade of pretty serious sucking. Your players such as they are will know nothing but losing and that will show in attitude and effort on the floor. Hinkie has also put the Sixers in a position that in all likelihood will make any decent free agents steer clear of this flea bag of a franchise.

Tank at your peril.

Which is why the Sixers should put up a statue of Sam Hinkie and let pigeons shit on it for decades as repayment for what he did to this franchise.

[KeonClark]

So .. two minutes for another viewpoint on the notion that tanking might have led the Raps to become the Timberpups...

The Twolves are one outcome of the much debated strategy of tanking. Tanking is a viable but hugely risk laden strategy. Where there is some hope for the 10 and 21 Puppies (just not this year) there is the stark reality that you could also become the Philly Sixers... who after 4 years of total and abject self inflicted shittiness beyond anything one has seen in pro sports they have the following to show for it.

After losing almost 200 games in 4 years ...the Hinkies are again world class crappy With a robust 7 and 23 they have a worse record than the Brooklyn Nets (who haven't had the benefit of a draft pick in years) and are dead effing last in the league.

The Process has so far yielded

a) Nerlens Noel (who they want to trade for whatever they can get.. but it won't be a 6th overall pick and a player)
b) Jahil Okafor who the Sixers also would like to trade if they got anything approaching a decent offer.
c) Dario Saric who isn't a raw rook as he has played better than NCAA ball for year in Europe but hasn't shown the kind of jam that would make anyone notice other than family members.
d) Joel Embiid who looks like he is a really really good player...but if he is on his own for a while he will most likely become a frustrated one man band on a perpetually losing team... see Cousins, Boogie in Sacramento
e) Ben Simmons.. who may or may not have the impact a first overall has .. but one has to think if he played this year instead of being dead last.. maybe they would be 3rd or 4th from the bottom ?. Still nothing to write home about.

Still there is hope... The Hinkies get two more real swings at it this year with their own pick likely to be a top 3 pick and the Lakers pick which is sure looks to be top 10. Unless they tank and finish bottom 3 and the pick stays with them.

So after 5 years of abject shittiness and no hope the Sixers have again in the cold light of day put themselves in a position to be a team that will finish anywhere from dead last to 7-10 from the bottom of the heap for the next couple of years.

Thats going to be close to a decade of pretty serious sucking. Your players such as they are will know nothing but losing and that will show in attitude and effort on the floor. Hinkie has also put the Sixers in a position that in all likelihood will make any decent free agents steer clear of this flea bag of a franchise.

Tank at your peril.

Which is why the Sixers should put up a statue of Sam Hinkie and let pigeons shit on it for decades as repayment for what he did to this franchise.

I'm in disagreement on your hinkie analysis. Sure it seemed outlandish, but they have now have one, maybe 2 (simmons?) Franchise guys with possibly a 3rd this year. Sure the losing sucks bad, but if your be all end all goal is a ring, they very well could have the last half in 5 years.

[Scraptor]

In this case, it seems pretty clear that the lottery talent of the past 5 or so years, even if you put it all on the same team, wouldn't stand a chance at winning a title, and that's even assuming you pick the right guys -- look at Philly.

So I think it's fair to say that in the circumstances, deciding not to sell your top talent for lottery picks was the better decision in terms of maximizing your odds at a championship. And, importantly, you can make that determination without actually winning a championship.

GS might not win the championship this year, despite signing KD. That doesn't mean signing KD wasn't the best move to improve their odds at winning a championship, and it certainly doesn't prove that they never should have signed him.

Sorry, what?

You don't even need to put all the lottery talent on one team to stand a chance at winning a championship. You just need to look at Minnesota.

They are losing this year, mainly because they are incredibly young, but they remind me very much of OKC, which was 23-59 in Durant's sophomore year.

Then OKC went on a series of strong playoff runs that would have had high odds of producing a championship or two had they not dealt Harden the following year.

Minnesota's ceiling is almost certainly higher than ours. Aside from their core they have capspace and assets and with the new CBA they can compete for the next decade.

Our window is maybe three years and we are capped out.

From a decade-long perspective the odds are almost certainly in Minnesota's favour. I'm not going to get sucked into this further but let's come back in three years before we reach a verdict.

[DanH]

I think you mean winter 2013 but fair point

I meant January and February 2014, pre-deadline.

[Demographic Shift]

I'm in disagreement on your hinkie analysis. Sure it seemed outlandish, but they have now have one, maybe 2 (simmons?) Franchise guys with possibly a 3rd this year. Sure the losing sucks bad, but if your be all end all goal is a ring, they very well could have the last half in 5 years.

Hinkie is indeed a polarizing figure.

Edit....Tanking cannot be unilaterally discounted as a strategy to improve your franchises lot in life but it is far from being a guaranteed strategy or even a 50% plus one outcome. Even if you finish dead last your odds of securing the first pick are 1 in 4 and you have to hope that a franchise player is eligible that particular year and that your staff has identified who that player is. Lots n lots has to go right. The cursory phrase.. Tank for Wiggins is just that. Wiggins or Towns could just as easily be Oden or Bargnani.


In Minny and maybe Phoenix it might work out ...but its too early to tell.... and sometimes it doesn't work at all (Philly) where its been 5 years and so far and shall we say, the optics look poor.

[Lupe]

At the end of the day there are multiple ways to build a team and tanking, nor building through trades, nor building through free agency or any other means are guarantees of winning the title. It seems like any time tanking doesn't lead to a title people in favour of it want to just chalk it up to bad management but sometimes you just don't get lucky, that's the reality. You're relying a lot on luck to get the best players and then more luck that they all stay, click and fit together to be the best team in the league and win it all.

Yep philly could've reached for Giannis at 6 somehow, drafted Porzingis instead of okafor and maybe looked better off now. Or maybe they reach for exum because they're scared of embiids injury problems and are even worse off. Looking back through the thread you can see names like vonleh and stauskas being thrown around, neither of whom look like stars. It's not some sure fire thing even if you have good management. Heck bosh was a good pick in 2004 but wade would've been a better one.

And the argument that Masai was going to tank is true but also not relevant. Masai himself has said he's glad he didn't and this is because of the unpredictable nature of what might have happened. Maybe we get Wiggins, Porzingis and Murray, add that to dd and jv and start ripping up the league in 2018. Or maybe we don't and we're still near the bottom of the league with none of our guys looking like superstar potential players (Wiggins himself looks like derozan with a lower motor fwiw). Impossible to say so to try to say tanking was the right move even now is just wrong IMO.

[lewro]

You see this kind of assumption I find so inaccurate...

1. We would have been bad but not THAT bad...we still would have had DeMar, JV, Ross etc. So the idea was to "rebuild" around them because prior to the Rudy trade we hadn't proven we could win and we had no pick in 2013

2. With that at the time young core still relatively in tact, I think if we were very lucky we would just make it in n get #5 overall...more than likely imo we would have been in the 6-10 range. So are odds would be drastically lower of not only fluking into one #1 pick (Wiggins) but another (KAT).

So with that in mind even if we say that we got in the 5-10 range we would have been looking at players like Randle, Exum etc not Wiggins, Parker and also highly unlikely Embiid with JV still here during the '14 draft and in '15 it would have been more likely Mudiay, Turner, and not likely Booker when we still would have had DD n Ross. So while I think that could have created a very solid young team...I don't think we really would have been any better just would have happened later. Hard to imagine imo that, that hypothetical team would eventually be a 55+W team n we could become a 60W team...the grass isn't always greener.

I was assuming total liquidation for full tank.

Read some speculation that hinkie was interested to draft zinger but management vetoed it. Anyway, gotta discount a lot with choosing three C's plus Simmons.
Also, can't remember if zinger worked out for anyone? I know he did in Vegas. Maybe private one for Knicks? Not much iirc.

[JamesNaismith]

I was assuming total liquidation for full tank.

Read some speculation that hinkie was interested to draft zinger but management vetoed it. Anyway, gotta discount a lot with choosing three C's plus Simmons.
Also, can't remember if zinger worked out for anyone? I know he did in Vegas. Maybe private one for Knicks? Not much iirc.

Ok I just never heard anything about Masai wanting to trade any of Ross, JV and DeMar. Remember we looked like crap with Rudy so the general feeling was if we traded Kyle for a pick or something we'd be able to "tank" into a top pick. I never heard of a desire to totally liquidate what were still young players at the time that were also holders of a poor record and irregardless we didn't have an extra pick for LaVine and again I don't see us being bad enough to get into the top 5 when you look how bad the record were and also the incredibly slim odds of landing the #1 overall twice despite the odd coincidence in MIN and CLE, certainly don't bank the franchise's future on the odds of that happening. Again we're on pace to potentially be a 60W team and we have pieces to potentially upgrade that so again to me the grass not always greener.

[themasao]

Sorry, what?

You don't even need to put all the lottery talent on one team to stand a chance at winning a championship. You just need to look at Minnesota.

They are losing this year, mainly because they are incredibly young, but they remind me very much of OKC, which was 23-59 in Durant's sophomore year.

Then OKC went on a series of strong playoff runs that would have had high odds of producing a championship or two had they not dealt Harden the following year.

Minnesota's ceiling is almost certainly higher than ours. Aside from their core they have capspace and assets and with the new CBA they can compete for the next decade.

Our window is maybe three years and we are capped out.

From a decade-long perspective the odds are almost certainly in Minnesota's favour. I'm not going to get sucked into this further but let's come back in three years before we reach a verdict.

Even if you're right that on a decade-long perspective, the odds are in Minnesota's favour (of which I'm not convinced), Minnesota represents the best possible result of that general approach.

In other words, going the tanking route would have given you something like a 1/5 shot (maybe worse) at being in Minnesota's shoes. If Minnesota is the ceiling for the tank approach, I'm just not that impressed.

Anyways, I drop by every year or so, so I'm happy to revisit in a few years. Will be interesting to see where Min ends up.

[S.R.]

I'm in disagreement on your hinkie analysis. Sure it seemed outlandish, but they have now have one, maybe 2 (simmons?) Franchise guys with possibly a 3rd this year. Sure the losing sucks bad, but if your be all end all goal is a ring, they very well could have the last half in 5 years.

I would have liked to see Hinkie be able to finish. I'm glad I don't have to watch Sixers basketball, but it's an interesting case study. There are metrics that show even the highest of draft picks don't really help you win for 2-3 years. Young players, as talented as they may be, just have too much to learn at the NBA level to have a winning impact for the first while. So aside from the scorched earth losing in order to get the picks, the Philly experiment needed to be ready for 2-3 years of bad basketball after that as their core developed.

For the sake of argument, even if you've improved your odds at acquiring a championship core with that method, that's a lot of bad basketball to put a franchise through for a slight improvement in odds. I don't think it's worth it.

[Fully]

Sorry, what?

You don't even need to put all the lottery talent on one team to stand a chance at winning a championship. You just need to look at Minnesota.

They are losing this year, mainly because they are incredibly young, but they remind me very much of OKC, which was 23-59 in Durant's sophomore year.

Then OKC went on a series of strong playoff runs that would have had high odds of producing a championship or two had they not dealt Harden the following year.

Minnesota's ceiling is almost certainly higher than ours. Aside from their core they have capspace and assets and with the new CBA they can compete for the next decade.

Our window is maybe three years and we are capped out.

From a decade-long perspective the odds are almost certainly in Minnesota's favour. I'm not going to get sucked into this further but let's come back in three years before we reach a verdict.

Minnesota is even worse than they were last year despite seemingly half of their roster ready to "make the leap" this season and adding Thibodeau as a coach. I'd probably tap the brakes slightly on calling their plan a home run success just yet. They have a very high ceiling agreed but so far all they've done is have a bad record in multiple years and collect lottery picks... also known as the easy part of bottoming out.

Tons of high end talent to salivate over but the OKC comparison is definitely premature. That Thunder roster had a linear upward trajectory... I don't remember them taking any steps backward like this.

[Majesiu]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AtlantaHawk..._upvote_party/

I'd recommend to take a look at Hawks fan mood right now, because it's most recent transition TO THE PROCESS.

Also true about Minnesota, with their regression I'm not sure you can be sure they'll be contender in upcoming years. At least they are spooky.