Everything 2018 Off Season

[Shaolin Fantastic]

If we won the championship every year are we a treadmill team?

Sure, but that's one I'd gladly be on (i.e. the Warriors).

[Shaolin Fantastic]

I think Boston and Philly don't fit the category because they won 50+ games and a playoff round.

I also don't think it's as obvious as you make it out that they can be leaps and bounds better than they are.

Really? Boston just did what they did with their one of their top 3 guys out the whole year and another out almost 1/3 of the season and for the whole playoffs. They have those two coming back, a ton of assets and two of their key contributors this year, Brown and Tatum, are in their 2nd and 1st years. Not obvious they can get a lot better? Fuck out of here with that bullshit man. I know we hate Boston but let's not be silly.

Philly has two generational talents that are just at the beginning of their careers and will be a major player in free agency. There's a ton of room for them to improve as well.

Our key guys are aging, we only have one prospect who's truly a very promising talent and we're absolutely capped out with not a lot of good assets. If you see no difference in those situations you're either lying to yourself or blind.

[DanH]

Sure, but that's one I'd gladly be on (i.e. the Warriors).

OK so it's a meaningless word then.

The strict metaphorical parallel is not important. That's not how the word is used. When people say treadmill, they mean a team stuck in the middle. The Raptors are not stuck in the middle, because they are not in the middle. By any stretch.

[DanH]

Really? Boston just did what they did with their one of their top 3 guys out the whole year and another out almost 1/3 of the season and for the whole playoffs. They have those two coming back, a ton of assets and two of their key contributors this year, Brown and Tatum, are in their 2nd and 1st years. Not obvious they can get a lot better? Fuck out of here with that bullshit man. I know we hate Boston but let's not be silly.

Philly has two generational talents that are just at the beginning of their careers and will be a major player in free agency. There's a ton of room for them to improve as well.

Our key guys are aging, we only have one prospect who's truly a very promising talent and we're absolutely capped out with not a lot of good assets. If you see no difference in those situations you're either lying to yourself or blind.

We have no idea how much of their success can be replicated with guys like Irving and Hayward in the lineup. Maybe they will be a lot better? Maybe not? I like Tatum and Brown and Stevens a lot. But they'll be losing some key pieces to free agency soon, and Horford is a huge impact piece who is, like our guys, on the wrong side of the aging curve.

Philly is a team with loads of promise that could just as easily slide back to 45-ish wins as take the next step, the hardest step to take. As for their cap space, it'll be a cold day in hell before I'm shaking in my boots wondering how Bryan Colangelo is going to use cap space to improve an opposing team.

The Raptors have very key weaknesses that could in theory be addressed with a couple of (admittedly risky) moves. They almost certainly can't improve as much as those two teams can, but they are starting off ahead of them. And if our window is shorter, well, that makes sense, as theirs just opened.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

OK so it's a meaningless word then.

The strict metaphorical parallel is not important. That's not how the word is used. When people say treadmill, they mean a team stuck in the middle. The Raptors are not stuck in the middle, because they are not in the middle. By any stretch.

Tbh I've always thought treadmill meant you're not making meaningful progress towards winning a championship. Leiweke specifically mentioned the 7-11 spots but it's more than just that.

For me a treadmill team (in the negative connotation) is a team that is currently on a track that has no chance of leading to a championship. So that applies to teams that are good but can't get to that next tier (us, Washington, Portland, etc) and teams that are mediocre with limited to no upside (Detroit, Charlotte, Memphis, etc), and probably also teams that are very bad with limited to no upside who draft poorly (Orlando, Sacramento, etc).

For the first category, these treadmill teams are usually ones who don't have superstars or players who might develop into superstars or a reasonable way of acquiring superstars. This bars them from serious title contention and thus makes them effectively treadmill teams.

[DanH]

Tbh I've always thought treadmill meant you're not making meaningful progress towards winning a championship. Leiweke specifically mentioned the 7-11 spots but it's more than just that.

For me a treadmill team (in the negative connotation) is a team that is currently on a track that has no chance of leading to a championship. So that applies to teams that are good but can't get to that next tier (us, Washington, Portland, etc) and teams that are mediocre with limited to no upside (Detroit, Charlotte, Memphis, etc), and probably also teams that are very bad with limited to no upside who draft poorly (Orlando, Sacramento, etc).

For the first category, these treadmill teams are usually ones who don't have superstars or players who might develop into superstars or a reasonable way of acquiring superstars. This bars them from serious title contention and thus makes them effectively treadmill teams.

Us, Washington, Portland?

Geez, nevermind. Yeah, we are totally in the same boat as Washington and Portland.

[Nilanka]

Us, Washington, Portland?

Geez, nevermind. Yeah, we are totally in the same boat as Washington and Portland.

At first read, that comparison does seem ridiculous. But aside from regular season accomplishments, what really is the difference between Raps, Wiz and Blazers?

[slaw]

One thing to consider in your offseason ponderings is this: a lot can change in 1 year, let alone 5. If you go back 5 years, people's projections and guesses about who would be the best teams in the East are likely almost all wrong. Teams that may look good today might not look so good tomorrow. Success and failure graphs are not linear. A team like Atlanta has gone from out of the playoffs to 60-win team to out of the playoffs just in that stretch. Rosters turn over once or twice in that time span. So, while Boston and Philly look really well-positioned, injuries, trades, personality issues, coaching changes, ownership changes, management changes, other teams, etc. can all change the dynamic in short order.

Who knows, the Knicks might be the best team in the East in 5..... no, LOL, just kidding. The Knicks will still suck but it's hard to say with anyone else.

Point is, whether or not the Raps do what you personally want them to do this very offseason will neither doom nor save the franchise over any mid-range time span, let alone any long term one. Grand unification theories of the NBA universe are pointless.

[slaw]

At first read, that comparison does seem ridiculous. But aside from regular season accomplishments, what really is the difference between Raps, Wiz and Blazers?

In what sense? As of right now? I can't speak for WSH, don't follow them closely enough, but as an ex-Blazers fan I keep track of my old team. Their biggest issue right now is that they have way too many unproductive pieces more than a few of which are locked into bad deals. Leonard, Harkless and Turner are all problems. That would be the biggest difference to me. Portland's cap issue is also worse and they have a significant player, Nurkic, who they could theoretically lose - Toronto was able to re-sign all its key pieces.

Again, don't follow WSH, but based on reading some of the fan sites during the playoffs, that situation is a mess from the GM on down as opposed to a stable situation in Toronto.

EDIT: I should say that the Blazers/Raps comparison is somewhat fair as they have a lot of similarities in terms of management, coaching, ownership, etc. and they've taken at least somewhat similar approaches, though, I would say the Raps have done a better job with young players.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Us, Washington, Portland?

Geez, nevermind. Yeah, we are totally in the same boat as Washington and Portland.

At first read, that comparison does seem ridiculous. But aside from regular season accomplishments, what really is the difference between Raps, Wiz and Blazers?

This is my point exactly. These are the 3 most similar teams in the league in terms of what their core is. Two all-star but not super star level guards and a traditional center:

Lowry-DeRozan-JV
Lillard-McCollum-Nurkic
Wall-Beal-Gortat

The difference is that the Raptors have the best management followed by Portland and then Washington, and as a result the Raptors have the best team constructed around those guys, but the ceiling of all three is the same. All three team are capped out with limited good trade assets, and have no shot at ever winning the title with their current core.

You can pretend that's not similar if you want but the reality is they are. The Raptors are better off than the other two because we don't have some of the atrocious role player contracts that they do on guys like Mahinmi and Evan Turner (although you could very easily argue Ibaka is one of those now), but the ceiling and core composition is almost identical.

[S.R.]

One thing to consider in your offseason ponderings is this: a lot can change in 1 year, let alone 5. If you go back 5 years, people's projections and guesses about who would be the best teams in the East are likely almost all wrong. Teams that may look good today might not look so good tomorrow. Success and failure graphs are not linear. A team like Atlanta has gone from out of the playoffs to 60-win team to out of the playoffs just in that stretch. Rosters turn over once or twice in that time span. So, while Boston and Philly look really well-positioned, injuries, trades, personality issues, coaching changes, ownership changes, management changes, other teams, etc. can all change the dynamic in short order.

Who knows, the Knicks might be the best team in the East in 5..... no, LOL, just kidding. The Knicks will still suck but it's hard to say with anyone else.

Point is, whether or not the Raps do what you personally want them to do this very offseason will neither doom nor save the franchise over any mid-range time span, let alone any long term one. Grand unification theories of the NBA universe are pointless.

Whoa whoa whoa, you're undermining the very bedrock of sports fandom and most sports media coverage, which is creating narratives arcs to tie together and lend meaning to things that otherwise have a lot less cohesion and a lot more uncontrollable and even random variables than we'd ever want to admit. We are humans, we are in control of our destinies, and we like to tell stories about it - don't tell us otherwise or we light the torches and bring out the pitchforks!

[MixxAOR]

writing this story hurt me physically pic.twitter.com/SaJIiZB3A4

— William Lou (@william_lou) May 10, 2018

Not gonna lie...that would fuck with me psychologically too. Lebron mastered Art of War

[KHD]

been away and just watched the pressers. not very inspiring.

If all three of Casey/Lowry/Demar are here next year then Masai is gutless.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

One thing to consider in your offseason ponderings is this: a lot can change in 1 year, let alone 5. If you go back 5 years, people's projections and guesses about who would be the best teams in the East are likely almost all wrong. Teams that may look good today might not look so good tomorrow. Success and failure graphs are not linear. A team like Atlanta has gone from out of the playoffs to 60-win team to out of the playoffs just in that stretch. Rosters turn over once or twice in that time span. So, while Boston and Philly look really well-positioned, injuries, trades, personality issues, coaching changes, ownership changes, management changes, other teams, etc. can all change the dynamic in short order.

Who knows, the Knicks might be the best team in the East in 5..... no, LOL, just kidding. The Knicks will still suck but it's hard to say with anyone else.

Point is, whether or not the Raps do what you personally want them to do this very offseason will neither doom nor save the franchise over any mid-range time span, let alone any long term one. Grand unification theories of the NBA universe are pointless.

Yeah this is true, we can't know the future. But we can look at evidence to predict how things might go and make our evaluations based on that. If it's "pointless" to talk about things we don't already know then we might as well shut down the forum.

I hate it when people come back at an opinion they disagree with by trying to shut down the conversation entirely. Same goes for the moronic comment that SR followed this up with. The forum is for discussion and people are going to have different opinions and make projections on the future based on facts as well as those opinions.

[KHD]

Yeah this is true, we can't know the future. But we can look at evidence to predict how things might go and make our evaluations based on that. If it's "pointless" to talk about things we don't already know then we might as well shut down the forum.

I hate it when people come back at an opinion they disagree with by trying to shut down the conversation entirely. Same goes for the moronic comment that SR followed this up with. The forum is for discussion and people are going to have different opinions and make projections on the future based on facts as well as those opinions.

ironic