Double Helix wrote:I agree with Grange here 100%. In fact, I've written as much on here. Giving up and starting over every time things look a little hard isn't sporting to me. These things are cyclical in my opinion. You go through some bad years to get some lottery picks. You develop them. You keep some or trade some but the goal after 5 or more losing years in a row should eventually be to try and get out of the basement. Give it a **** try! Move past the basketball on paper and the hypothetical and actually go out there and play some good basketball. Get creative. Try to build the best basketball team you can and climb as high as you can without brutally sacrificing future rebuild eras and enjoy some winning seasons and then, when the cupboards seem bare, and you're already sliding back with no real hope of moving any further up the pecking order, tear it all down, start over, tank as ruthlessly as you want, and be a really bad developing team for a few seasons in a row. Then, slowly rise back up again and compete. The issue is that the Raptors didn't tank hard enough for long enough last time. If you tank hard for a few years you improve your chances of a more exciting compete window later. No half measures. When you're bad be bad. When you're in your compete window don't be afraid to spend money or make a bold trade. But there needs to be a compete window eventually. It's not a video game where you just keep pressing "start over" every time you do something less than perfect out of the gate.
You can't always luck into generational talent and generational talent is often what it takes to win it all. It's simply not realistic to expect to deliberately aim to be as bad as you can be indefinitely until the ping pong balls start bouncing your way and you nab 3 x top 3s in a row that all look like top 10 players of the future. You might wait 10-15 years straight if the balls don't bounce your way. That's game theory thinking and nothing more. It's not practical so hoping for it and wishing for horrible basketball to be played in front of you for as long as it takes until you land a generational superstar is borderline bandwagon thinking. What you're basically saying when you demand that is that you don't love the game enough to watch it on any level below one that's highly probable to be the best in the league. You can do that right now if following anything short of a title contender is excruciating to you. Just change your favorite team to a new contender each season if winning it all is the only thing you enjoy about following a team.
Don't forget that as much as we all talk about the "tank it till you make it" mentality there's still the very real possibility that even if you do luck into the next Lebron... He and his people might not want to play in Toronto when he's an UFA. That's where building this brand up from one that always loses and barely feels a part of the association to something with even a modest winning history comes into play. The more sustained winning we do now (ideally going past the first round before the next rebuild) the more legit we'll seem to the next wave of phenoms, and their reps, and their families for the next rebuild era. We're trying to move past the idea of the Raptors as being perennial bottom feeders among the league that can never get out of the bottom. If you were a next generation superstar wanted by every team in the association would you really be excited over the challenge of being the first dude to actually do something meaningful on some cold weather team outside of the U.S. when you can play anywhere else due to demand? Let's be real here. Not all players better than Demar in the league now or to be drafted in the future would see it as the challenge he did and want to stay and build something here when other cities come calling. We will always have a slight market disadvantage so we have to make this place seem like one that has a bit more recent relevancy than some others and build the brand up as a fun place to play with passionate fans. We're doing that now. We shouldn't quit so soon. Build something better now and the next gen of superstars may take us more seriously later.
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I'll quote you Double H, because it was perfectly stated and completely echo's my opinion. In fact it was what I think Grange was trying to state but not saying it clearly enough.
The problem is that Grange and yourself (and now me) are going to be attacked because by by saying that winning a championship is a process and is involved with just as much luck as it is skill, then we somehow don't want to win a championship. We need to grow a pair of balls because we don't want to blow it up. It is this bandwagon "I need an immediate championship strong contender or tank now mentality" that drives me crazy and is based on myth not fact.
The fact is that NO team with the possible exception of Duncan and the Spurs have one a team with a Number 1 draft pick that stayed with the original team in the last 20 years. (and that wasn't a deliberate tank job but just a fluke injury, and crazy luck to land into generational talent) The very model of how to tank and win a championship that the tankers have been using that also involved crazy luck (the Thunder) haven't won and look to never win a championship.
Atlanta that have been a "treadmill" team for 8 years look to have a legit shot of going to the finals. Yet Rap fans get eliminated in the first round for the 2nd year in a row and "we can never get better, we have to blow it up now" is what is constantly heard on this board.
Of course the non-tankers want to win a championship just as much as the tankers. I just think that getting lucky and going from a mid playoff team to a championship team is just as possible (actually more) than it is to tank and get a generational talent. Detroit, and Dallas did this. Since it is just as likely to go from middle to top as it is to go from bottom to top, I quite frankly prefer cheering for a playoff team and "enjoy the ride" as Grange suggests.
This doesn't mean that I don't think we don't need to make changes and get lucky to get to the next level. It also doesn't make me a wimp and not a true fan if I say that I enjoyed to 3 months of good ball that we played this season, better than I would have if we were say the 76'ers.
