Who is the Most Overrated Team in the East ..aka.. Why Boston Sux.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

I'm 100% certain they would not give us a 1st round pick for the privilege of rather sharply increasing their tax bill.

Then you take on more money in the deal. There are trades to be made you just don't want to rebuild.

[DanH]

Then you take on more money in the deal. There are trades to be made you just don't want to rebuild.

I want to rebuild in a meaningful way. Ibaka for the 24th pick and taking on short and long term salary accomplishes nothing if your goal is a high end lottery pick to get a superstar.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

I want to rebuild in a meaningful way. Ibaka for the 24th pick and taking on short and long term salary accomplishes nothing if your goal is a high end lottery pick to get a superstar.

It accomplishes getting worse and getting an asset.

Would follow that up with shipping out Lowry and DeMar as well, probably JV too.

[DanH]

It accomplishes getting worse and getting an asset.

Would follow that up with shipping out Lowry and DeMar as well, probably JV too.

You think Ibaka moves the needle much without those guys to actually drive winning? Ask Orlando about that. You wait a year to move Ibaka, try to leverage his expiring to get a better asset while taking on that salary.

Getting worse is also largely meaningless unless you can get really bad. The reality is that this team can't make moves to get bad right now. Especially if you want to take back salary to bring back draft assets. Salary is usually not attached to terrible players, but overpaid mediocre ones - which means you are driving your team towards mediocrity, not awfulness.

Then what's the brilliant plan? Trade up with your 14th and 24th and a few other ~20th picks to get the 1st overall pick? Wonderful.

Tanking is not about being bad. It's about getting bad the right way - leveraging your assets to maximize return in the process of moving from good to bad, so that you aren't just relying on your own draft pick. Taking on long term salary and dooming the team to never reach a cap room status just handcuffs the team from making higher value deals than for the 24th pick in the first year of a rebuild. Trying to rush down may end up just lifting the floor of the team.

If the cap landscape was more friendly, and Ibaka had value, then this would be a good time to move him. But it is not, he is not, and the team would be better served trying to move him at the deadline or next summer. If the team wasn't so deep, there would be a clear path to being bad this season. They are, however, and there is no clear path to getting that bad, even assuming you can find takers for all 4 of the key veteran contributors on the team (which they almost certainly will not be able to find value for all of them).

Don't give me this crap about my not wanting to rebuild. I want the same thing as you, success for the team, and I'm very aware that rebuilding is one way to go about that.

For the moment, the team has some quality trade assets that could be leveraged to try to get a star over the next two seasons. If you can use DeRozan as a centrepiece in a trade for a star (with some of our various youth assets moving with him), that should be the move. Then you have Lowry as a complementary piece and a roster with at least a little depth remaining to see what you can build around them. If not, you settle for the best "maybe" you can get for DeMar (whose value almost certainly peaks this summer) - something like Wiggins and picks makes sense - and then explore value for other guys.

But the next jump in potential superstar trades is the following summer, when the team will have massive expirings (Lowry, Serge and potentially JV if he opts in) to help leverage a deal for a star by offering significant salary relief to another team and exchanging them young, cheap talent along with that. And if that opportunity fails, again you leverage those expirings into the best "maybe" you can find, even if that is just picks, and if that's not there by the trade deadline, you let them expire and leverage the resulting cap space the same way that summer.

And THEN you get bad. Because you won't get truly bad much faster by trying to blow it all up now, and you'll end up with a bunch of low end prospects like we already have. And you'll have abandoned the other achievable route to a superstar just to blow your wad on some late first rounders and to move up 10 spots from 25th to 15th to get a slightly-less-low-end-but-not-by-much prospect.

That's the point of a rebuild. Chase every opportunity to get a star. Get into every bidding war, make your best bids, and if you fall short, THEN you sell for lesser assets. Settling for the first draft pick that comes your way is the cheap and dumb version of tanking and won't get you where you need to go any faster than doing it properly.

Hey, if there are lottery picks and prospects with superstar potential floating around in offers for Ibaka, JV and Lowry this year, then go nuts. I can't imagine such a scenario being the case.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

You think Ibaka moves the needle much without those guys to actually drive winning? Ask Orlando about that. You wait a year to move Ibaka, try to leverage his expiring to get a better asset while taking on that salary.

Getting worse is also largely meaningless unless you can get really bad. The reality is that this team can't make moves to get bad right now. Especially if you want to take back salary to bring back draft assets. Salary is usually not attached to terrible players, but overpaid mediocre ones - which means you are driving your team towards mediocrity, not awfulness.

Then what's the brilliant plan? Trade up with your 14th and 24th and a few other ~20th picks to get the 1st overall pick? Wonderful.

Tanking is not about being bad. It's about getting bad the right way - leveraging your assets to maximize return in the process of moving from good to bad, so that you aren't just relying on your own draft pick. Taking on long term salary and dooming the team to never reach a cap room status just handcuffs the team from making higher value deals than for the 24th pick in the first year of a rebuild. Trying to rush down may end up just lifting the floor of the team.

If the cap landscape was more friendly, and Ibaka had value, then this would be a good time to move him. But it is not, he is not, and the team would be better served trying to move him at the deadline or next summer. If the team wasn't so deep, there would be a clear path to being bad this season. They are, however, and there is no clear path to getting that bad, even assuming you can find takers for all 4 of the key veteran contributors on the team (which they almost certainly will not be able to find value for all of them).

Don't give me this crap about my not wanting to rebuild. I want the same thing as you, success for the team, and I'm very aware that rebuilding is one way to go about that.

For the moment, the team has some quality trade assets that could be leveraged to try to get a star over the next two seasons. If you can use DeRozan as a centrepiece in a trade for a star (with some of our various youth assets moving with him), that should be the move. Then you have Lowry as a complementary piece and a roster with at least a little depth remaining to see what you can build around them. If not, you settle for the best "maybe" you can get for DeMar (whose value almost certainly peaks this summer) - something like Wiggins and picks makes sense - and then explore value for other guys.

But the next jump in potential superstar trades is the following summer, when the team will have massive expirings (Lowry, Serge and potentially JV if he opts in) to help leverage a deal for a star by offering significant salary relief to another team and exchanging them young, cheap talent along with that. And if that opportunity fails, again you leverage those expirings into the best "maybe" you can find, even if that is just picks, and if that's not there by the trade deadline, you let them expire and leverage the resulting cap space the same way that summer.

And THEN you get bad. Because you won't get truly bad much faster by trying to blow it all up now, and you'll end up with a bunch of low end prospects like we already have. And you'll have abandoned the other achievable route to a superstar just to blow your wad on some late first rounders and to move up 10 spots from 25th to 15th to get a slightly-less-low-end-but-not-by-much prospect.

That's the point of a rebuild. Chase every opportunity to get a star. Get into every bidding war, make your best bids, and if you fall short, THEN you sell for lesser assets. Settling for the first draft pick that comes your way is the cheap and dumb version of tanking and won't get you where you need to go any faster than doing it properly.

Hey, if there are lottery picks and prospects with superstar potential floating around in offers for Ibaka, JV and Lowry this year, then go nuts. I can't imagine such a scenario being the case.

I just said I would follow it up by trading Lowry, DeMar and JV as well.

This team can't get it done. Blow it up and rebuild now.

We wait longer and all of a sudden we're having to hand out big deals to the guys we already have like Wright, Siakam, etc.

[DanH]

I just said I would follow it up by trading Lowry, DeMar and JV as well.

This team can't get it done. Blow it up and rebuild now.

We wait longer and all of a sudden we're having to hand out big deals to the guys we already have like Wright, Siakam, etc.

The point is whether you trade Ibaka, Lowry, JV this year when they likely have little value, or wait and see if you can leverage their deals for more next year. I get the sense you didn't bother to read my post, that was the entire point of it, that trading them now does not help the team get worse fast enough to make a difference, and may be (almost certainly) settling for a return that won't help you long term and might have a real opportunity cost.

DeMar should move this summer, I can't envision his value improving much from here.

Wait, what's your point on the last bit? Wright, Siakam, etc will all be getting their raises before a meaningful tank is completed anyway. If you want to avoid that, you trade them. But that's a whole other conversation from whether you rush to dump Ibaka now just to satisfy your urge to DO SOMETHING rather than being smart about it and making the right moves at the right time.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

I'm not interested in delaying a tank. Especially since I know next year the same excuses will be made and we'll probably re-up Lowry and start Siakam or find a replacement for Serge and you'll be the one championing those moves.

[DanH]

I'm not interested in delaying a tank. Especially since I know next year the same excuses will be made and we'll probably re-up Lowry and start Siakam or find a replacement for Serge and you'll be the one championing those moves.

Re-up Lowry next year? That would be surprising since he'd still be on his contract. The year after? I suppose anything's possible, but unless he's signing for cheap, I don't see the interest from the team.

The window is very clear. Unless the team exhibits significant growth next season (which I find unlikely unless they do manage to leverage DeRozan+ into the right kind of high end talent), I don't see why anyone would be wanting the core, especially the aging members of the core, to be brought forward.

What have I done to make you suggest I am anti-rebuild? I sometimes forget you have only been around for like a year.

I've been trying to explain to you that making moves now does not in any meaningful way expedite the tank, and waiting for the right trades for the core as they progress down the standings does not in any meaningful way delay the tank.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Re-up Lowry next year? That would be surprising since he'd still be on his contract. The year after? I suppose anything's possible, but unless he's signing for cheap, I don't see the interest from the team.

The window is very clear. Unless the team exhibits significant growth next season (which I find unlikely unless they do manage to leverage DeRozan+ into the right kind of high end talent), I don't see why anyone would be wanting the core, especially the aging members of the core, to be brought forward.

What have I done to make you suggest I am anti-rebuild? I sometimes forget you have only been around for like a year.

I've been trying to explain to you that making moves now does not in any meaningful way expedite the tank, and waiting for the right trades for the core as they progress down the standings does not in any meaningful way delay the tank.

It delays it by a full year, that is meaningful. And that's assuming we even tank after that.

I can see the scenario where we go for it again, take 1 game off whatever team LeBron is on. Call that "progress" just like you spun this year's sweep as progress... and run it back again.

I'm tired of it. This team isn't capable of winning the title, which in and of itself isn't a reason to tank, but it is when your core players have reached their ceilings or are declining and your prospects are nothing to go crazy about.

And quite frankly idgaf what you're trying to explain, your explanations sound smart at the time and end up wrong. Like how you said in this very thread that Boston would be lucky to win 50 and wouldn't win a single playoff round. Or how you said this team would be able to take the fight to Cleveland and got swept again.

[DanH]

It delays it by a full year, that is meaningful. And that's assuming we even tank after that.

I can see the scenario where we go for it again, take 1 game off whatever team LeBron is on. Call that "progress" just like you spun this year's sweep as progress... and run it back again.

I'm tired of it. This team isn't capable of winning the title, which in and of itself isn't a reason to tank, but it is when your core players have reached their ceilings or are declining and your prospects are nothing to go crazy about.

And quite frankly idgaf what you're trying to explain, your explanations sound smart at the time and end up wrong. Like how you said in this very thread that Boston would be lucky to win 50 and wouldn't win a single playoff round. Or how you said this team would be able to take the fight to Cleveland and got swept again.

How does it delay it by a year? Seriously. You seem to think we are having a different discussion than we are. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't do everything they can to acquire a star. You accuse me of strawmen but you haven't seemed to care what I post at all, preferring to box with shadows.

The meaningful point in a rebuild is when you get the opportunity to draft a star, presumably (as is the point) with a top 5 or so pick.

If you think trading players away this year can get us to that point for next draft, more power to you. Live in your delusions and have a great time, but don't expect the rest of us to join you. It's not how it works. We can't get that bad that fast. It will take a couple years to get that bad no matter how fast we pull the trigger on deals, unless we don't care about getting value from those deals at all (which it appears you do care about, as you should). So we aren't delaying that at all. The bad year at earliest will be 19-20, after all of my proposed trades would occur.

A tank strategy starting now would follow some basic tenets: try to get bad by 2019-20.

- Use 2018 summer to move DeMar (attempt to acquire a superstar, probably fail; attempt to acquire a potential star; attempt to maximize draft asset return; attempt to cut salary while bringing in draft picks).

- Maximize trade value of Lowry, Ibaka, Valanciunas, Miles by trading them at peak value between now and deadline 2019 (ensure at least a couple are moved by summer 2019 to get bad enough for that season), which would almost certainly not be now. Take on salary that reaches only through 2020-21.

- Explore trade values of young players that will need to be paid before summer 2021 (Siakam, Poeltl, Wright) and move one or more if value is there and you don't think they are long term pieces.

- Use high draft picks in 2020 and 2021 to draft potential superstar pieces, ideally. Use other picks from deals in 19, 20 and 21 to add low cost role players to team.

- Use cap space to target a superstar free agent in 2021.

That gives you several windows to add superstar talent. You do your best to leverage DeMar's name and the variety of young pieces on the team now to get a superstar, either right away or as a swing at a potential guy. You do your best to leverage large expirings and the variety of young pieces on the team to get a potential superstar in exchange for taking on bad money. You get bad (at about the same time you would if you tried to dump talent faster), take a few swings in the draft. You leverage cap space to go after a star in free agency, hopefully with the help of all the talent you've acquired in the process.

None of that is anti-tank. None of that delays a tank.

[Mindlessness]

It delays it by a full year, that is meaningful. And that's assuming we even tank after that.

I can see the scenario where we go for it again, take 1 game off whatever team LeBron is on. Call that "progress" just like you spun this year's sweep as progress... and run it back again.

I'm tired of it. This team isn't capable of winning the title, which in and of itself isn't a reason to tank, but it is when your core players have reached their ceilings or are declining and your prospects are nothing to go crazy about.

And quite frankly idgaf what you're trying to explain, your explanations sound smart at the time and end up wrong. Like how you said in this very thread that Boston would be lucky to win 50 and wouldn't win a single playoff round. Or how you said this team would be able to take the fight to Cleveland and got swept again.

Why are you even on the forum then? You've already figured out what you want from this team, there's no discussion to be had with you.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Why are you even on the forum then? You've already figured out what you want from this team, there's no discussion to be had with you.

Everyone has their opinions and biases so that's not unique to me. Maybe you should leave too.

[Mindlessness]

Everyone has their opinions and biases so that's not unique to me. Maybe you should leave too.

Haha why? I'm not the one going around the forum calling people idiots, insulting their intelligence and their reading comprehension, all because they just can't understand anything other than a rebuild right now is stupid.

I'm not willing to descend down further into this hole with you, so that's the end of this conversation.

[Other Scott]

Shaolin, I think the problem is you aren't adding anything meaningful to discussions. All you're saying every post is "we need to tank now." That's been pretty much it, post after post. We get it, we know your opinion. Repeating it constantly isn't really achieving anything or adding anything.

[A.I]

Its funny, Masai already stated he isn’t tanking, not next season anyway, and Shaolin keeps going on and on about tanking.