DusterBuster wrote:Norm2953 wrote:They are the Kings. There is a reason why they have been in the lottery since Chris Webber left
That's not technically true. They did make it to the playoffs the season after Webber was traded, in fact, a lot of ex-Blazers were featured on that squad; Bonzi, Shareef, and Monia. That was the last time they had a record above .500. They won 44 games and lost in the first round. In the 12 years since, they highest win total for a season the Kings have had is 38....
There's a reason I'm not excited to just blindly go into a blow-it-all-up rebuild, the Kings are Exhibit A for that.
The Suns would be Exhibit B. They're on their 8th season of no playoffs since blowing it up. They've had a better go of it, they had a 48 win season and missed the playoffs in one of those crazy western conference years where you need 50 W's for an 8th seed. Granted they're on a much better path to being a playoff team than the Kings are, but do they make the playoffs before hitting their a double digit drought? Unlikely.
I just think "The Process" is one of the biggest fools gold things to happen to the NBA in awhile. To me it's a "get rich quick" scheme and now every fan who see their team as stuck in that 50ish win range has a bad case of FOMO (fear of missing out). They saw the "The Process" in Philly where they were able to turn that franchise around in just 5 years, so everyone thinks 'If they can do it, so can we!'.
The problem being two-fold, one, more teams are willing to do that process means more competition at the bottom end and less chance of constantly being one of the Top 4 worst teams. The second problem is you have to also get lucky in the lottery, players have to pan out, stay healthy and the balls have to fall your way even when you're one of the 4 worst. Not to mention that the league is also changing how the lottery works starting next year to try and curb teams from attempting "The Process".
In most cases, you don't end up with the luck the Sixers had and you end up closer to 10 years for a complete tear-down rebuild than you do 5 years - which is "short" in NBA terms. For my money, if you have a 50 win caliber team, you keep it together and try to make moves to improve. It takes so much work and takes so long just to get that far, that I don't believe you just throw that away because a playoff series didn't go like you'd hoped or one FA summer went poorly. I think you only bottom out when it's necessary and it's out of your control to go any other way. If you have a star or two, you ride it out and try to build around as best as possible. If you lose one or both of those stars to FA or trade demands, than you bottom out. Just blowing it up cause your frustrated just feels very short-sighted imo.
But to each their own. That's just my view on how a team should be run.
I think it's important to note there is a difference between the likes of the Sixers and the Suns plus the Kings. Those two latter franchises have had spurts where they try to short-change the process by hiring middling veterans in a desperate attempt to reach the playoffs which the rest of the league and the fans just -know- isn't going to work out. From the Suns acquiring Dudley and Chandler to trading for Brandon Knight or Bledsoe to the Kings inexplicably signing Randolph and Hill.. it's just not a good thing, you know? That sets back the process. The Sixers didn't do any of that, at least that I recall, outside of signing JJ this year to a one year deal when they knew they'd be making a significant step forward.. and under a new regime.
If you interrupt your tanking process with those bad moves, it just keeps you in that terrible middling place or so long.
