The Tank 11'12 thread.

[heyrayray]

are you really comparing the last 25 years Jazz-Warriors? Do i have to write the records?

When you write "we spent too much time actually trying to win games" you're saying that losing mentality is in you.

You NEVER spend too much time trying to win.


But if you're ok with that, i'll not disturb anymore. Enjoy.

I'm sorry but you're just a joke right now. You've clearly selectively ignored the facts and you're arguing a contrarian take to a bunch of people who watched every single Warriors game. Warriors did the same thing the Jazz did in 04' and the same thing countless other franchises have done. Don't know why there's a big stink about the Warriors, who haven't tanked in our lifetime. First time the FO actually starts playing the game of lottery seeding the right way, they get a whole mob ready to tar and feather. I guess no one wants to see the Warriors actually become a decent franchise. Ha.

COME ON, MAN! Get your facts straight before you come all crazy like.

[Coxy]

Great dunk, but we lost that series.

[LeonGenesis]

boo yaa! that dunk is iconic!

[LeonGenesis]

the Utah state needs to ban this Jefff guy because he's embarrassing the people of Utah LOL.

are you really comparing the last 25 years Jazz-Warriors? Do i have to write the records?

When you write "we spent too much time actually trying to win games" you're saying that losing mentality is in you.

You NEVER spend too much time trying to win.


But if you're ok with that, i'll not disturb anymore. Enjoy.

I'm sorry but you're just a joke right now. You've clearly selectively ignored the facts and you're arguing a contrarian take to a bunch of people who watched every single Warriors game. Warriors did the same thing the Jazz did in 04' and the same thing countless other franchises have done. Don't know why there's a big stink about the Warriors, who haven't tanked in our lifetime. First time the FO actually starts playing the game of lottery seeding the right way, they get a whole mob ready to tar and feather. I guess no one wants to see the Warriors actually become a decent franchise. Ha.

COME ON, MAN! Get your facts straight before you come all crazy like.

[Chris Porter's Hair]

When you write "we spent too much time actually trying to win games" you're saying that losing mentality is in you.

You NEVER spend too much time trying to win.


But if you're ok with that, i'll not disturb anymore. Enjoy.

Of course you can/do. When Mark Jackson was doing postgames saying, "We're going to do everything we can to win every game. I don't know any other way.", he was saying basically the same thing. And he was foolish and wrong.

You aren't going to make the playoffs. You might even be mathematically eliminated. But you keep trotting out your most important players for 48 minutes a game, running them into the ground, risking injury so you can "spend as much time as possible trying to win." That doesn't make you a winner. That makes you stupid. You keep your rookies and young guys on the bench, having no idea what they'd do with more minutes, because you want Mikki Moore's seasoned veteran experience out there trying to win you every game possible. Stupid.

Any time a team takes the floor, obviously there is some priority on winning that night. And one of the reasons is because if you win that night, it increases your odds of making the playoffs. When it doesn't really increase your chances of making the playoffs, however, the value of winning that night changes. And since you have other goals on any given night (making your team win for the balance of the season on the whole, making your team win in the years to come, etc. etc.), if you ignore that, you're being really short-sighted. If you really believe the rah-rah idealistic line you spouted above, we should have been running Curry out there every night, too. Sure, we might do irrepairable damage to his ankle and ruin the career of a potential franchise player. But it would be worth it, because we would have been "winners" who won 25 games instead of 23 games.

Get real. And make sure to keep fouling when you're down 27 points with 3 minutes to go, because if you don't, you're instilling a losing culture.

[hellla]

When you write "we spent too much time actually trying to win games" you're saying that losing mentality is in you.

You NEVER spend too much time trying to win.


But if you're ok with that, i'll not disturb anymore. Enjoy.

Of course you can/do. When Mark Jackson was doing postgames saying, "We're going to do everything we can to win every game. I don't know any other way.", he was saying basically the same thing. And he was foolish and wrong.

You aren't going to make the playoffs. You might even be mathematically eliminated. But you keep trotting out your most important players for 48 minutes a game, running them into the ground, risking injury so you can "spend as much time as possible trying to win." That doesn't make you a winner. That makes you stupid. You keep your rookies and young guys on the bench, having no idea what they'd do with more minutes, because you want Mikki Moore's seasoned veteran experience out there trying to win you every game possible. Stupid.

Any time a team takes the floor, obviously there is some priority on winning that night. And one of the reasons is because if you win that night, it increases your odds of making the playoffs. When it doesn't really increase your chances of making the playoffs, however, the value of winning that night changes. And since you have other goals on any given night (making your team win for the balance of the season on the whole, making your team win in the years to come, etc. etc.), if you ignore that, you're being really short-sighted. If you really believe the rah-rah idealistic line you spouted above, we should have been running Curry out there every night, too. Sure, we might do irrepairable damage to his ankle and ruin the career of a potential franchise player. But it would be worth it, because we would have been "winners" who won 25 games instead of 23 games.

Get real. And make sure to keep fouling when you're down 27 points with 3 minutes to go, because if you don't, you're instilling a losing culture.

And this post right here just shut Jeff down.

[EvanZ]

Gotta remember there are 3 "F"s in Jefff. Triple the fail.

[shazam_guy]

I'm still laughing over the idea of Mikki Moore's veteran experience being the key to winning games.

[Coxy]

Epic thread.

[Sleepy51]

A discussion on tanking backed up by some numbers.
http://wagesofwins.com/2012/04/02/bad-t ... ediocrity/



The vertical axis is your record for the prior year. The horizontal axis is whether or not the team became a 50 win team over the subsequent 10 years. It's worth thinking about.

[floppymoose]

That image has been bouncing around the forums for a while now. I'm sure I've seen it a couple of times before.

So if I'm reading that correctly, only half of the 55+ win teams ever hit 50 wins again in the next 10 years.

[floppymoose]

I want to see a different chart. One that shows me how many of the 50+ win teams drafted a stud in the prior 10 drafts, versus how many didn't.

[Sleepy51]

That image has been bouncing around the forums for a while now. I'm sure I've seen it a couple of times before.

Sorry, typo. Horizontal is improvement to 50+. Vertical is prior year record.

There's lots of other pretty graphs in the article and they all tell the same story. Mediocre teams become good teams at a higher rate than bad teams do. Tanking is apparently a statistically poor gamble.

[floppymoose]

That graph doesn't tell us much. Almost all the terrible teams transition through being a mediocre team before getting to 50 wins. I mean, sure, the Thunder went straight from 23 to 50. But more teams are like Orlando, which hit 36 and then 40 wins before hitting 50.

So all those teams like the Magic team, which started off with 21 wins but eventually got to 59) end up counting in multiple rows, inflating the stats for the middling teams.

What you really want is a graph that shows what was the worst season in the prior 10 for the 50 win teams versus the rest. But screw that, what we REALLY want to know is what I asked above: did those 50 win teams get there by having a strong draft stud (or two or three or four), or did they do it some other way?

[Sleepy51]

So all those teams like the Magic team, which started off with 21 wins but eventually got to 59) end up counting in multiple rows, inflating the stats for the middling teams.

You're getting hung up on the summary chart. Look at the big matrix in the article. Every team counts in multiple rows. Or they count in the same row multiple times. There's no inflation given to the middling teams by the stats. It's that too many bad teams never even become middling teams to improve their odds of progressing further.

[floppymoose]

Thanks. Now that I look at the fuller graphs, here's something to note:

31% of <20 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
38% of 20-24 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
36% of 25-29 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
27% of 30-34 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
27% of 35-39 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
30% of 40-44 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.
28% of 45-49 win teams get to 50+ wins in 10 years.

So the teams who got down to under 30 wins had an edge in building a good team a decade later.

I got these numbers by adding up the bottom two cells from the rightmost column of each table.

I still have some questions about the meaning of his numbers. I'm going to run my own and get back to you on what I find.

[Sleepy51]

If that conclusion is significant then by extension you would never want to be a 50 win team because you probably won't be one again 10 years later? Who cares? That just sounds like reversion to the mean to me. I think we know that is inevitable.

Probably more important that identifying that bad teams can peak specifically 10 years later at a higher rate than teams that are already good would be to understand the range of performance over the course of those intervening 10 years. Which is what I think the summary table agregates.

[floppymoose]

So I only have easy db access to 2002 to 2011 nba data. So first I took a look at the 50+ win teams from 2009 to 2011. I limited it to those years so there would be some history to look at before they were good. For teams that had more than one 50+ win season in those years, I just included the peak one. Here are the teams:

Code: Select all

season  W     L     team
========================
2009    53    29    atl
2010    56    26    bos
2010    62    20    chi
2009    61    21    cle
2010    57    25    dal
2009    53    29    den
2010    57    25    lal
2010    58    24    mia
2010    55    27    okc
2009    59    23    orl
2009    54    28    pho
2009    50    32    por
2010    61    21    sas
2009    53    29    uth


Here are the worst seasons, if they got below 30 wins, for each of those squads before their peak, but not further back than 2002. (The teams in parens did not have a sub 30 win season in that time):

Code: Select all

2004     13     69     atl
2006     24     58     bos
2003     23     59     chi
2002     17     65     cle
(dal)
2002     17     65     den
(lal)
2007     15     67     mia
2007     20     62     okc
2003     21     61     orl
2003     29     53     pho
2005     21     61     por
(sas)
2004     26     56     uth

And here is my very brief analysis of the key events that got those succesful teams to where they were:

ATL: mostly the Joe Johnson trade. They traded two future first round picks to get him, so being bad definitely helped. Being bad also got them Al Horford. They got a steal on Smoove at #17. Those three ingredients got them to 53 wins.

BOS: Being bad, and young (except for Pierce) definitely helped them get good. They traded the #5 pick from the 2007 draft to get Ray Allen, and traded young stud Al Jeff to get KG (and also just abused the Minny FO to do it).

CLE: Got terrible, drafted Lebronze.

CHI: they were bad a long time and didn't have a lot to show for it until finally drafting Deng, Naoh, signing Boozer, and getting amazingly lucky to get the #1 pick and land Rose. They made a ton of mistakes along the way, trading LMA for Tyrus Thomas and drafting a lot of bums over the years, but in the end they were saved by happenstance, and getting a great coach.

DAL: This one is also fairly textbook, it's just that they stayed good for soo long that their building phase was before 2002. Draft Dirk, steal Nash right after he was drafted, and they also drafted Kidd while bad - and while they weren't smart enough to keep him, they at least turned him into Finley who, along with Nash and Dirk, turned the team around.

DEN: Got terrible, drafted Carmello.

LAL: drafted Kobe, and are a special case as a premier FA destination.

MIA: They did it entirely differently, I admit. Not sure how a team can imitate them. But even they wouldn't be where they are now without having been bad enough to get the #5 pick in 2003: Dwayne Wade.

OKC: classic tank (trading prime Ray Allen for #5 pick in draft) and build through draft

ORL: Got terrible, drafted Dwight.

PHO: Free Agency wins here. Nash was the key piece. They still needed the home run of Amare at the #9 pick to make it work, though.

POR: Got terrible, drafted LMA and Roy. Ok, they didn't literally draft them, but it was draft day deals that only worked because they had great draft picks to trade.

SAS: Got terrible*, drafted Duncan. They were just good so long that it was before 2002 when they built.

UTH: Got terrible, drafted Deron.

*yeah, I know they actually weren't terrible. They tanked when the Admiral went down.

[Sleepy51]

The Lakers traded for Kobe (or for the Hornets pick) at 13. They did not get terrible to draft Kobe. that one goes solidly in the don't-tank column.

[Sleepy51]

And you looked at the last 10 years.

The article looks at every 10 year period going back to 1978.