The Myth of the draft Lottery.

[humblebum]

wow, you are really bending things to make it seem like tanking was important in 2007. it really wasn't.

here are the picks from 5-9 that year:
Jeff Green
Yi Jinlian
Corey Brewer
Brandan Wright
Joakin Noah

you really think Seattle was super excited to pick jeff green over those other guys? really? the best guy turned out to be noah, who was picked 9th and many folks still thought it was a reach.

i think seattle could have cared less whether it was a #5 or #7 pick. the point is, we were supposed to get a #2 pick by tanking. we were supposed to get Durant. that's what was supposed to happen. getting a #5 was the absolute worst-case scenario. how anyone can use that to justify tanking is beyond me. it's a clear example of why NOT to tank. you really have to do some logic gymnastics to make it seem like getting that #5 pick was the key to everything. but i guess people will just keep seeing what they want. fortunately ainge is more sensible.

This is pure assertion, you have no evidence to this effect at all. The reality is it did take a top 5 pick, you have no way of knowing if a worse pick would have worked. Using hindsight to tell us how good the pick was doesn't fly.

You, and Darth, are also getting hung up on the word "tank" as though the intention involved matters. Having high picks is usually an essential ingredient for building a contender is the modern era. #7 picks aren't bad, but generally it'd be better if they were top 5. It's not bad you got M.Smart at #7, it's bad that there's only 1 guy like that on your roster, and he doesn't look like he can develop into the sort of building block you can build a contender around (rather, he looks like a complimentary piece, not a star), nor is there anyone else on your team who can. That's the issue. Making the playoffs, or scraping in, is the problem. Even winning 30 games or less and finishing 7th worst would be fine. Not ideal, but fine. Finishing 16th so you can get swept in Rnd 1 of the playoffs is not so good though.

You're quickly becoming one of my least favorite thinkers and basketball minds on this board.

The intention and the situation in which "tanking" occurs is highly relevant. You're clearly an advocate of tanking which is defined as losing more games than you should based on your talent, competition and roster composition via methods that involve sitting, trading players or shuffling lineups to produce excess losses. Whether or not the Celtics should have pursued that strategy is what we've had to debate here all season.

Where you miss the boat is in your weak level of basketball analysis. Marcus Smart is a star like Draymond Green is a star. It's the intangible leadership, confidence, and defensive versatility that creates a winning identity for a team to follow. This is especially important when your coach preaches a gameplan that is built on outworking the opponent on both ends. Take Draymond Green off that GS team and their entire defensive identity crumbles.

Guys like Sullinger, Crowder, Bradley and Thomas, are all viewed as "low upside" players, but in actuality these guys are all rotation players on pretty much any and every playoff team. They are all big time competitors. Then you have some high skill bigs in Kelly and Zeller. Again, you are writing these guys off but they are actually solid players, as is Evan Turner in his own quirky fashion.

If the Celtics trade a bunch of assets to move up to 6 or 7, people will just remember it as the Celtics tanking and valuing the draft lottery when in reality, they view it in much more of an "opportunistic" fashion where you make intelligent "dips" into the lottery but prolonged stays in the garbage bin of the NBA are big no-no's for any franchise that is actually willing to put in the hard and expensive work of scouting, coaching and building cohesive systems that allow players to flourish.

That's what the Celtics do, so please step off with these weak ass garbage.

Tanking doesn't work unless it's based on a real strategy. Notice how all the teams in the lottery are basically perfectly desperate due to past and current ineptitude. You don't want to have to rely on winning by losing. If you have an injured star and a deflated locker room like the Celtics had in 07'? Absolutely, you tank the **** out of that thing. But you have to be smart, and you have to be flexible.

Ainge knew that Stevens had something going in the lockerroom and he made the call that he thought Stevens and max contract space would allow him to bring in a significant influx of talent this offseason. I agree with him. Also, when everyone is preparing for 2016, Ainge is a year early. So in that sense he was also very intelligent.

Take your seat at the back of the bus homes.

[humblebum]

Minnesota, the Lakers, the Sixers, the Knicks... these are four of the most poorly run franchises of recent years. They are all epic failure teams. Sacramento and Denver have also slid into joke status. You act like these teams have some plan. They don't. They just suck.

We should be envious?

Marcus Smart is already winning more games in the NBA than Wiggins. Should I be scared?

No. People talk about there are no more Kobe's must not have seen the past couple seasons where #15 pick Kawhi Leonard put himself on a superstar track in San Antonio. What happened there? Grainy footage of Leonard caused scouts to miss his potential as a two way dominant stud swing forward?

Look. We get that you guys are obsessed with these philosophies but the stats are just not in support of these teams being able to turn successful tanks into championships.

Talking about contention is simply moving the goal posts. It's about championships, and as we all know that comes down to basically striking lightning in a bottle, or having perfect timing and alignment of a variety of assets (players) at a time when they're all "affordable" together.

It's about "team" building, more than it's about "star making". Players that achieve greatness in the team game, and stay True to the game (Pierce, being a great example) end up being rewarded. It's a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience to always strive toward winning. You hear a lot about losing cultures and shedding losing cultures, well, let's skip that and just win and let that push you forward like it has pushed San Antonio forward through the years to define and redefine who they are each year.

[GuyClinch]

The intention and the situation in which "tanking" occurs is highly relevant. You're clearly an advocate of tanking which is defined as losing more games than you should based on your talent, competition and roster composition via methods that involve sitting, trading players or shuffling lineups to produce excess losses. Whether or not the Celtics should have pursued that strategy is what we've had to debate here all season.

What's amusing about this is that's exactly what the Spurs did for Duncan - and they have been the most dominant team post Jordan. I guess after Rondo left we need a new Orwellian issue here. No longer is Rondo is great but everyone else sucks. It's now tanking never works - when it in fact works better then EVERY OTHER METHOD. And almost all the new contenders feature some level of tanking in their immediate past.. The only 'treadmill' team to do any damage is Atlanta. Forgive me if don't want to be the next Atlanta Hawks.

[ParticleMan]

i think the point of the OP was that Duncan was the ONLY time it has worked in the last 20 years, where by worked it means winning a title. you can say "oh but lots of other high picks have been successful". yes but then you also have to consider all the ones who haven't, and there's a LOT more of those.

it's not that tanking never works, it does, it's just less likely than intelligent team building. given our lottery luck (i am not a lottery-is-fixed conspiracy guy but the reality is we have never once moved up from where we were supposed to be, not once, ever) i'd say relying on that is asking to get slapped on the other cheek yet again.

[LuckyLeprichan]

i think the point of the OP was that Duncan was the ONLY time it has worked in the last 20 years, where by worked it means winning a title. you can say "oh but lots of other high picks have been successful". yes but then you also have to consider all the ones who haven't, and there's a LOT more of those.

it's not that tanking never works, it does, it's just less likely than intelligent team building. given our lottery luck (i am not a lottery-is-fixed conspiracy guy but the reality is we have never once moved up from where we were supposed to be, not once, ever) i'd say relying on that is asking to get slapped on the other cheek yet again.

Sure, they are the only team. They also account for 5 of the past 15 titles. When you look at it that way, tanking has won 33% of the titles in recent history which sounds a lot better than 1/20. Not saying I'm pro tank, I'm just trying to show an alternative but equally accurate perspective on the OPs numbers.

As for talks about our lack of lottery luck, I could just as easily make a case that the 3 Lakers wins with Shaq and the 2 Heat wins with LeBron never happen for the Celtics so pinning our hopes on FA is just as bad. Then it comes down to trades and you have to ask yourself if winning an extra 15 games and moving from #8 to #16 helps or hurts your trade value.

[Luciferswings]

The intention and the situation in which "tanking" occurs is highly relevant. You're clearly an advocate of tanking which is defined as losing more games than you should based on your talent, competition and roster composition via methods that involve sitting, trading players or shuffling lineups to produce excess losses. Whether or not the Celtics should have pursued that strategy is what we've had to debate here all season.

Firstly, the intention is completely irrelevant, because it's unknowable by fans anyway. We can speculate, but the exact intention the front office has is not relevant, the assets are. I actually don't care how a team gets the necessary assets, whether by scrapping the roster, or resting guys, or having other teams stupidly gift them 2 #1 picks in 3 years like the Lakers had happen in the 80's. But it's nearly impossible to build a contender without assets like that, so you should be trying to get them, to give yourself the best chance of contending.

Where you miss the boat is in your weak level of basketball analysis. Marcus Smart is a star like Draymond Green is a star. It's the intangible leadership, confidence, and defensive versatility that creates a winning identity for a team to follow. This is especially important when your coach preaches a gameplan that is built on outworking the opponent on both ends. Take Draymond Green off that GS team and their entire defensive identity crumbles.

Smart has done nothing to be mentioned in the same breath as Draymond Green. Green almost won DPOY this year, would have been an all-star in the East, and is about to get a max contract. Smart has a long way to go to get compared to this guy. Green also fits an important role in the NBA, that is very hard to fill; he's a tough as nails defensive 4 who can hit threes and pass well. Smart isn't an easy guy to slot onto a system, because while he does do some things fantastically well (play D, fight through screens) he hasn't shown he's a good scorer, and he can't shoot. That makes him a tough fit on a contender as a starter, and we saw Memphis (as grind a team as you can imagine) face that exact problem in the playoffs, where they did things like sagging off Tony Allen, and putting freaking Bogut on him, and turning him into a liability.

Stuff like "leadership" and "winning mindset" and "intangibles" are always overrated by fans and commentators. They exist and are important, but a team which has those things (but insufficient talent) will not win, while a team that doesn't have those things (but has a lot of talent) can win a lot. It's the same reason arguments about "winning experience" is such nonsense. Did the lack of winning experience the Thunder had in Durant's first two years stop them from winning 50 games in his 3rd year? I could give a tonne of examples just like this. Winning is largely a result of talent, and schemes that maximise that talent. You have a good coach, but the talent is way, way below where it needs to be in order to contend. Everyone here is busy chalking those Nets pick into the low lottery, which I think is unlikely, but the reasoning used to justify it (the rest of the East will improve) is the same reasoning for why you guys might fall out of the playoffs next year, just like Charlotte did last year. Yeh, yeh, during X stretch you looked good, some of which was against tank teams. Every team, including the Nets, could build a narrative like this, and say "well, during X stretch when we were clicking we won Y, so next year we'll be that good". It rarely works out that way for teams. There's an 82 game season because those things average out. Charlotte fans were doubtless pointing to the same hot streak at the end of 2014 to justify how they'd get better in 2015. The 82 game season doesn't work that way.

Guys like Sullinger, Crowder, Bradley and Thomas, are all viewed as "low upside" players, but in actuality these guys are all rotation players on pretty much any and every playoff team. They are all big time competitors. Then you have some high skill bigs in Kelly and Zeller. Again, you are writing these guys off but they are actually solid players, as is Evan Turner in his own quirky fashion.

I'm not sure I agree all those guys are rotation players on playoff teams, indeed I can't imagine some of them getting minutes on Golden State, but let's leave that aside for a moment. Rotation players are not the problem. The Celtics need star power, however you want to call it. They need a massive talent upgrade. Rotation players are comparatively easy to get, stars not so much.

If the Celtics trade a bunch of assets to move up to 6 or 7, people will just remember it as the Celtics tanking and valuing the draft lottery when in reality, they view it in much more of an "opportunistic" fashion where you make intelligent "dips" into the lottery but prolonged stays in the garbage bin of the NBA are big no-no's for any franchise that is actually willing to put in the hard and expensive work of scouting, coaching and building cohesive systems that allow players to flourish.

A team with the 6-7 pick isn't likely to want to move it for a bunch of middling picks/assets. If you can do that, then great, but it seems fantastically unlikely. The best option for trading up I've seen would be something like moving Bradley and the #16 pick for the #10.

[Luciferswings]

Minnesota, the Lakers, the Sixers, the Knicks... these are four of the most poorly run franchises of recent years. They are all epic failure teams. Sacramento and Denver have also slid into joke status. You act like these teams have some plan. They don't. They just suck.

Fans opposed to tanking always have this same argument. "Team X tanked and didn't get better, therefore it doesn't work." What a straw man. Any plan will fail if you do it badly (e,g, the Kings/Wolves), the question is what plan is more likely to succeed. One can point to lots of examples of teams who tried to improve without tanking and who failed too. That sort of analysis leads nowhere. What is instructive is looking at the teams who were legit contenders and asking "well, how did they get to be that good?" The answer almost invariably involves a high lotto pick (or more than 1) as a key ingredient. There are some exceptions of course, but it's never easy planning to be the fluke. It's particularly strange that you list Denver (a team who built their playoff run on tanking, and then sustained it for 2 extra years by flipping their lotto talent for more talent) and the Knicks (whose tanking has often been anything but intentional), the Lakers (certainly haven't been tanking until this year), the Wolves (were definitely trying to win recently), and the Sixers (they've tanked for all of 2 years now).

Marcus Smart is already winning more games in the NBA than Wiggins. Should I be scared?

It's about what Wiggins can grow into, versus what Smart can. Wiggins can grow into a Dominique Wilkins/T-Mac type player, while Smart projects to maybe be an upper middle class Tony Allen.

No. People talk about there are no more Kobe's must not have seen the past couple seasons where #15 pick Kawhi Leonard put himself on a superstar track in San Antonio. What happened there? Grainy footage of Leonard caused scouts to miss his potential as a two way dominant stud swing forward?

Well sure, it's possible to build a contender by just being so much smarter than everyone else you keep owning them every whichway. But Ainge has been on the job for a while now, if he was as good as the Spurs GM we'd know by now. It's always possible to look at a draft in retrospect and say "well, we could have gottten X and Y with low picks" but how many modern contenders have been actually built this way? Almost none. It's incredibly difficult to do. Never aim for the least likely longshot, aim for the plan that will maximise your chances of success.

[GuyClinch]

Well sure, it's possible to build a contender by just being so much smarter than everyone else you keep owning them every whichway. But Ainge has been on the job for a while now, if he was as good as the Spurs GM we'd know by now. It's always possible to look at a draft in retrospect and say "well, we could have gottten X and Y with low picks" but how many modern contenders have been actually built this way? Almost none. It's incredibly difficult to do. Never aim for the least likely longshot, aim for the plan that will maximise your chances of success.

You been killing it man. It will be interesting to see what Philly does this year. Will they tank again or try to win? As soon as one of these teams surges ahead of the Cs - people will start to get mighty pissed at Ainge. He had better have some angle on Durant - cause that would see to be the only way out for this team..

[theman]

Let's look at how the last few Champions got their most important piece(s)
1991 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1992 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1993 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1994 Houston Rockets - Draft
1995 Houston Rockets - Draft
1996 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1997 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1998 Chicago Bulls - Draft
1999 San Antonio Spurs - Draft
2000 Los Angeles Lakers - Draft & Trade
2001 Los Angeles Lakers - Draft & Trade
2002 Los Angeles Lakers - Draft & Trade
2003 San Antonio Spurs - Draft
2004 Detroit Pistons - Free Agency & Trade
2005 San Antonio Spurs - Draft
2006 Miami Heat - Draft & Free Agency
2007 San Antonio Spurs - Draft
2008 Boston Celtics - Draft & Trade
2009 Los Angeles Lakers - Draft & Trade
2010 Los Angeles Lakers - Draft & Trade
2011 Dallas Mavericks - Draft & Free Agency
2012 Miami Heat - Draft & Free Agency
2013 Miami Heat - Draft & Free Agency
2014 San Antonio Spurs - Draft

It appears that to win a championship you need to acquire at least one piece through the draft.

Looking a little deeper at where champions drafted that important piece:
Chicago drafted there piece with the #3 pick.
Houston drafted #1
San Antonio drafted #1 and #28 and #57 and #15 (acquired by trade of player acquired with #26)
Lakers drafted #13 (acquired of trade of player acquired with #26)
Heat drafted #5
Celtics #10
Lakers drafted #13 and #10
Mavericks drafted #9 (Traded back from #6)

There is problem with this analysis. We have no idea what would have become of these player and teams had a different team had drafted a player earlier. How many championships would Portland have won had they taken Jordan over Bowie (more than they did), would they have won six? If not there would be another team with championships. What if Milwaukee kept Dirk do they win a championship? Likely not. What if Detroit or Toronto drafted Wade?

[Luciferswings]

I'm not a big fan of the "such and such only looks good in the Spurs/insert-good-team-here's system". Who are the examples for it? Which Spurs in recent years left the Spurs and looked worse? Of course teams develop guys, but it's so unknowable it's almost not worth discussing. A great front office can't turn a middling player into a star, and a bad team can rarely fail to develop a star. You still need to get the talent to develop it, and it's hard to get without high draft picks.

[Fencer reregistered]

By the way, if we include Finals losers:
Orlando of course built around the #1 overall pick (in two different eras, come to think of it).
So did Cleveland.
Oklahoma City had multiple high picks, including #2 and (I think) #3.
NJ had Kidd, who they got in trade for Marbury, who was #4/5. Also, Kittles was #8 or so, and Kenyon Martin was a well-chosen #1 in a historically bad draft.
The Knicks built around Ewing.
The Sonics had Payton.

However:
Utah got Stockton and Malone alike impressively late in the draft, and Eaton a lot later than that.
Phoenix (Kevin Johnson, Barkley, Chambers, Ainge et al.) did a remarkable job of team building.

[Luciferswings]

By the way, if we include Finals losers:
Orlando of course built around the #1 overall pick (in two different eras, come to think of it).
So did Cleveland.
Oklahoma City had multiple high picks, including #2 and (I think) #3.
NJ had Kidd, who they got in trade for Marbury, who was #4/5. Also, Kittles was #8 or so, and Kenyon Martin was a well-chosen #1 in a historically bad draft.
The Knicks built around Ewing.
The Sonics had Payton.

However:
Utah got Stockton and Malone alike impressively late in the draft, and Eaton a lot later than that.
Phoenix (Kevin Johnson, Barkley, Chambers, Ainge et al.) did a remarkable job of team building.

Utah and Phoenix built those teams in a different era and a very different CBA. You'd be hard pressed to follow that kind of roadmap these days (as the Suns have been finding out).

[ParticleMan]

there is just so much incorrect logic and twisting of facts it's beyond belief. it's roger goodell-level stuff, makes fox news seem fair and balanced.

where to begin?

ok, let's start with Duncan. that guy was a transcendent talent. everybody knew it. if he came out a year early he would have still been the consensus #1. if there as a tim duncan or lebron level player in these last two drafts, i would have been much more in favor of tanking. sorry, wiggins and okafor don't move the needle for me. not all #1 picks (or top picks) are created equal.

speaking of duncan, he came to a team that had 2 allstars who just happened to be injured most of the previous year. yeah, let's try arranging that. not to mention, their FO has done a hell of a job placing guys like parker and ginobli around him with late picks. TD doesn't come close to 5 titles without those guys. it's a complete fallacy to say "oh they got a #1 pick and the rest was easy as pie." that is a great franchise who also got lucky, a tough combo to beat.

so the only clear success story for tanking was such an incredible anomaly of circumstances that probably won't happen again for a century. more to the point, our team is not in anywhere close to that kind of situation. so to think that just because we tank and luck into a top pick we can repeat the duncan scenario is pure fantasy.

many more teams have tanked and failed. dismissing that by calling it a "straw man" is just cherry-picking. the key point is this: bad franchises tank. so the argument that "oh tanking didn't work for them because they are a bad franchise" is switching cause and effect. they had to tank *because* they suck as a franchise and can't do it any other way. i don't think that our franchise sucks by a longshot.

in the end you need a combination of good drafting, a bit of lottery luck, and good trades. there's not any one sure route to success. i think tanking is a viable strategy in some circumstances. but for me to support tanking, most of the following would have to be true:

- there is at least 1 and preferably 2 transcendent talents in the draft. the Durant draft was such a case, although okafor didn't quite work out so well. the lebron and duncan drafts, obviously. not sure i can thinking of too many more.

- the current team must be low-upside. this is probably where i disagree most with the tank crowd -- i think our current crew, most of them under 26, has some pretty good upside. they are young, they are clearly improving even over the course of a season. tankers seem to think that guys who aren't top picks by definition must suck. simply not true. often times guys who are lower pick have tons of talent but put it together later, which is why they weren't a top pick. did anyone think jimmy butler would be a max FA 2-3 years ago?

- the current team must be far from a playoff team. this is evidently untrue for us since we made the playoffs. if you can realistically make the playoffs then already your team is well above tanking level.

if all those things were true, i would have supported tanking last year. the year before, we were clearly not a good team and didn't have big upside by the end of the year, playing a bunch of D-league guys. so i supported tanking there at the end, even though there wasn't really a transcendent player in the draft. but this past year? no chance. all of the above criteria were false for us.

i have to say, after the rondo/green trades, it could have gone the other way, and we could have been in the same situation as the previous year. but it didn't. if you were watching the games you could see that the talent level was far superior last year to the year before. maybe nobody on our team will ever be an mvp candidate, but we could certainly have some future jimmy butler-level players on our team. better to give those guys playoff experience so we can try to sort out the keepers. i strongly believe there are some big-time keepers on this team.

[celtxman]

By the way, if we include Finals losers:
Orlando of course built around the #1 overall pick (in two different eras, come to think of it).
So did Cleveland.
Oklahoma City had multiple high picks, including #2 and (I think) #3.
NJ had Kidd, who they got in trade for Marbury, who was #4/5. Also, Kittles was #8 or so, and Kenyon Martin was a well-chosen #1 in a historically bad draft.
The Knicks built around Ewing.
The Sonics had Payton.

However:
Utah got Stockton and Malone alike impressively late in the draft, and Eaton a lot later than that.
Phoenix (Kevin Johnson, Barkley, Chambers, Ainge et al.) did a remarkable job of team building.

Utah and Phoenix built those teams in a different era and a very different CBA. You'd be hard pressed to follow that kind of roadmap these days (as the Suns have been finding out).

The only thing I ask of you is to give me the percentage chance of succeeding in the goal of tanking with no qualifiers. For example my bank recently ran a promotion saying their interest rate on CD's was 5X better than their competitor, but didn't immediately list the rate. Their claim was absolutely true and later, as I found out, my bank was offering 1%.
The goal will be be becoming a top 5 championship contender with the picks you accumulated. So you have free reign to be unscientific, but I just please ask for no qualifiers or explanations - just answer with a percentage - 4%, 29%, 80% etc.

[humblebum]

there is just so much incorrect logic and twisting of facts it's beyond belief. it's roger goodell-level stuff, makes fox news seem fair and balanced.

where to begin?

ok, let's start with Duncan. that guy was a transcendent talent. everybody knew it. if he came out a year early he would have still been the consensus #1. if there as a tim duncan or lebron level player in these last two drafts, i would have been much more in favor of tanking. sorry, wiggins and okafor don't move the needle for me. not all #1 picks (or top picks) are created equal.

speaking of duncan, he came to a team that had 2 allstars who just happened to be injured most of the previous year. yeah, let's try arranging that. not to mention, their FO has done a hell of a job placing guys like parker and ginobli around him with late picks. TD doesn't come close to 5 titles without those guys. it's a complete fallacy to say "oh they got a #1 pick and the rest was easy as pie." that is a great franchise who also got lucky, a tough combo to beat.

so the only clear success story for tanking was such an incredible anomaly of circumstances that probably won't happen again for a century. more to the point, our team is not in anywhere close to that kind of situation. so to think that just because we tank and luck into a top pick we can repeat the duncan scenario is pure fantasy.

many more teams have tanked and failed. dismissing that by calling it a "straw man" is just cherry-picking. the key point is this: bad franchises tank. so the argument that "oh tanking didn't work for them because they are a bad franchise" is switching cause and effect. they had to tank *because* they suck as a franchise and can't do it any other way. i don't think that our franchise sucks by a longshot.

in the end you need a combination of good drafting, a bit of lottery luck, and good trades. there's not any one sure route to success. i think tanking is a viable strategy in some circumstances. but for me to support tanking, most of the following would have to be true:

- there is at least 1 and preferably 2 transcendent talents in the draft. the Durant draft was such a case, although okafor didn't quite work out so well. the lebron and duncan drafts, obviously. not sure i can thinking of too many more.

- the current team must be low-upside. this is probably where i disagree most with the tank crowd -- i think our current crew, most of them under 26, has some pretty good upside. they are young, they are clearly improving even over the course of a season. tankers seem to think that guys who aren't top picks by definition must suck. simply not true. often times guys who are lower pick have tons of talent but put it together later, which is why they weren't a top pick. did anyone think jimmy butler would be a max FA 2-3 years ago?

- the current team must be far from a playoff team. this is evidently untrue for us since we made the playoffs. if you can realistically make the playoffs then already your team is well above tanking level.

if all those things were true, i would have supported tanking last year. the year before, we were clearly not a good team and didn't have big upside by the end of the year, playing a bunch of D-league guys. so i supported tanking there at the end, even though there wasn't really a transcendent player in the draft. but this past year? no chance. all of the above criteria were false for us.

i have to say, after the rondo/green trades, it could have gone the other way, and we could have been in the same situation as the previous year. but it didn't. if you were watching the games you could see that the talent level was far superior last year to the year before. maybe nobody on our team will ever be an mvp candidate, but we could certainly have some future jimmy butler-level players on our team. better to give those guys playoff experience so we can try to sort out the keepers. i strongly believe there are some big-time keepers on this team.

This post just took a massive dump on the tank crowd.

Tanking doesn't work except in rare circumstances. This is a statistical FACT. Stop trying to move the goal posts, it's about championships and only one or two franchises have turned successful tanks into championships and those teams were generally able to make massive trades or draft steals to solidify their roster after acquiring said tanked for player.

Again, the teams who tank, they generally need to tank because they are pathetically and horribly run franchises. Just look at the bottom 6-7 teams in the lottery. They are all standard bearers for poor management, coaching, and team building.

Sure, if the stars all align and you can strategically dip into the lotto without sacrificing your roster, coach or fanbase, sure... but the Celtics weren't in that position and there is very little separation between the talent level of the #1 prospect vs. the #10 prospect in this draft.

Teams like Golden State are the model for successful management. They didn't tank for top 3 picks, they let things play out, drafted well in the 6-10 range (which coincidentally, is the area where the Celtics are slated to make multiple picks through this rebuild) and they made intelligent "buy low" trades for guys like Bogut and Iguodala. Absolutely no need to tank to put yourself in the championship conversation.

[Luciferswings]

I'm not going to make up an arbitrary percentage of success. What I am going to do is point out that most contenders constructed in the modern CBA environment (so post 99) needed high lotto picks as a key ingredient. Not the only ingredient, but a necessary precondition. Pretty much all champs but 1 or 2 fall into that categorisation too. You don't need a percentage to see that is compelling.

I will give you one percentage that is pretty helpful. If you go back through the draft, and we can make it 10 years, we can make it 20 years, the top 10 picks in the draft usually give you a legit piece to build around 3 or more times on average per 10 picks. By a legit piece, I mean a guy who is better than a run of the mill all-star, and is a borderline (or actual) all-nba teamer. We can go through the names if you like, I've done the math on this before. Depending on what year you begin with, it comes out to about a 33% chance every year. Those are far better odds than you'll find in free agency.

[Luciferswings]

many more teams have tanked and failed. dismissing that by calling it a "straw man" is just cherry-picking. the key point is this: bad franchises tank. so the argument that "oh tanking didn't work for them because they are a bad franchise" is switching cause and effect. they had to tank *because* they suck as a franchise and can't do it any other way. i don't think that our franchise sucks by a longshot.

Many teams have failed using many methods. Take the Kings/Wolves. They have failed both tanking and not tanking. The fact that they failed is indicative of their poor management, not the value of tanking/not-tanking. What we should be looking at is the most likely method to succeed.

Tanking doesn't work except in rare circumstances. This is a statistical FACT. Stop trying to move the goal posts, it's about championships and only one or two franchises have turned successful tanks into championships and those teams were generally able to make massive trades or draft steals to solidify their roster after acquiring said tanked for player.

I have no idea how you can keep repeating this, you've been corrected on it like 50 times now. If we limit the discussion to champions, and not just contenders, the math is even worse for you. Nearly every single title team, going back to the 70's, has won on the back of high lotto picks (whether they kept those picks to get guys to build around, or whether they traded them to get guys to build a title team around). There are a handful of exceptions, none of which are sensible for you to model yourselves on. Are you going to be the Lakers, by travelling back in time to 1996 when the CBA was different, and taking advantage of an NBA environment that doesn't exist anymore? There's basically the Pistons, and that's more or less it. The rest all needed high draft picks to win titles, the Spurs, the Bulls, the Rockets, the 08 Celtics, the Heatles/Heat, the Magic Lakers, the Bird/McHale Celtics, the Bad Boys, etc.

Teams like Golden State are the model for successful management. They didn't tank for top 3 picks, they let things play out, drafted well in the 6-10 range (which coincidentally, is the area where the Celtics are slated to make multiple picks through this rebuild) and they made intelligent "buy low" trades for guys like Bogut and Iguodala. Absolutely no need to tank to put yourself in the championship conversation.

Golden State has 3 freaking lotto picks in their starting line-up, including two top 7 picks. And why did Curry fall to 7? Because he tried to sabotage his draft stock by refusing work outs and scaring teams off, so he fell all the way to 7, but that was as far as he could fall. You can hardly bank on that sort of thing. Who is your Curry? And how will you get him (or Klay, etc) when you have no picks? Who is the Iggy who will force his way to your team, when your team is not contending, and has a generally poor track record getting free agents (something your own GM admits).

[Marley2Hendrix]

I'm not going to make up an arbitrary percentage of success. What I am going to do is point out that most contenders constructed in the modern CBA environment (so post 99) needed high lotto picks as a key ingredient. Not the only ingredient, but a necessary precondition. Pretty much all champs but 1 or 2 fall into that categorisation too. You don't need a percentage to see that is compelling.

I will give you one percentage that is pretty helpful. If you go back through the draft, and we can make it 10 years, we can make it 20 years, the top 10 picks in the draft usually give you a legit piece to build around 3 or more times on average per 10 picks. By a legit piece, I mean a guy who is better than a run of the mill all-star, and is a borderline (or actual) all-nba teamer. We can go through the names if you like, I've done the math on this before. Depending on what year you begin with, it comes out to about a 33% chance every year. Those are far better odds than you'll find in free agency.

I asked this after a post fencer made about most good teams featuring one player in the top of the draft, but again, why attribute so much of success to have a high lotto pick when virtually every team (86%) has had a high lotto pick (top 7) over the last ten years, with 60% (20 teams) having had multiple top 7 picks during this time frame.

Draft well, make good trades, have a strong coach/gm, and realistically evaluate one's own talent. That's it. That's the secret to NBA success. There is nothing magical about acquiring top picks. Even when you nail your top picks (see Durant/Harden/Ibaka), without coaching and roster composition, it doesn't matter. As stevens has noted, "winning is hard."


Team # of high lotto picks since 2005
Atlanta 3
Boston 2
Brooklyn 1
Cleveland 5
Charlotte 4
Chicago 2
Detroit 1
Golden State 3
LA Clippers 2
LA Lakers 1
Memphis 3
Miami 1
Milwaukee 3
Minnesota 7
New Orleans 3
New York Knicks 1
OKC 3
Orlando 2
Philadelphia 2
Phoenix 1
Portland 5
Sac 5
Toronto 3
Utah 3
Washington 4

[humblebum]

many more teams have tanked and failed. dismissing that by calling it a "straw man" is just cherry-picking. the key point is this: bad franchises tank. so the argument that "oh tanking didn't work for them because they are a bad franchise" is switching cause and effect. they had to tank *because* they suck as a franchise and can't do it any other way. i don't think that our franchise sucks by a longshot.

Many teams have failed using many methods. Take the Kings/Wolves. They have failed both tanking and not tanking. The fact that they failed is indicative of their poor management, not the value of tanking/not-tanking. What we should be looking at is the most likely method to succeed.

Tanking doesn't work except in rare circumstances. This is a statistical FACT. Stop trying to move the goal posts, it's about championships and only one or two franchises have turned successful tanks into championships and those teams were generally able to make massive trades or draft steals to solidify their roster after acquiring said tanked for player.

I have no idea how you can keep repeating this, you've been corrected on it like 50 times now. If we limit the discussion to champions, and not just contenders, the math is even worse for you. Nearly every single title team, going back to the 70's, has won on the back of high lotto picks (whether they kept those picks to get guys to build around, or whether they traded them to get guys to build a title team around). There are a handful of exceptions, none of which are sensible for you to model yourselves on. Are you going to be the Lakers, by travelling back in time to 1996 when the CBA was different, and taking advantage of an NBA environment that doesn't exist anymore? There's basically the Pistons, and that's more or less it. The rest all needed high draft picks to win titles, the Spurs, the Bulls, the Rockets, the 08 Celtics, the Heatles/Heat, the Magic Lakers, the Bird/McHale Celtics, the Bad Boys, etc.

Teams like Golden State are the model for successful management. They didn't tank for top 3 picks, they let things play out, drafted well in the 6-10 range (which coincidentally, is the area where the Celtics are slated to make multiple picks through this rebuild) and they made intelligent "buy low" trades for guys like Bogut and Iguodala. Absolutely no need to tank to put yourself in the championship conversation.

Golden State has 3 freaking lotto picks in their starting line-up, including two top 7 picks. And why did Curry fall to 7? Because he tried to sabotage his draft stock by refusing work outs and scaring teams off, so he fell all the way to 7, but that was as far as he could fall. You can hardly bank on that sort of thing. Who is your Curry? And how will you get him (or Klay, etc) when you have no picks? Who is the Iggy who will force his way to your team, when your team is not contending, and has a generally poor track record getting free agents (something your own GM admits).

Sure you need lotto picks, no one is even disputing that point. What I'm disputing is that the Celtics needed to tank this year or that you need to tank in order to have a chance to win a championship. This has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be a failed strategy. It doesn't work except in rare circumstances. If you're bad enough to pick in the top 3-5, you'll likely remain bad enough to never win a championship. This is a statistical fact.

[Marley2Hendrix]

What I'm disputing is that the Celtics needed to tank this year or that you need to tank in order to have a chance to win a championship. This has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be a failed strategy. It doesn't work except in rare circumstances. If you're bad enough to pick in the top 3-5, you'll likely remain bad enough to never win a championship. This is a statistical fact.

/debate