The Value of Tanking

[Schad]

Cosmo ... are you against tanking this season ... or tanking for consecutive seasons ... cuz if its the former, then your clearly wrong ... if its the former, I'm with you ...

We are not making the playoffs this season;
On January 15th we could add Josh Smith and Freddie Mercury to the roster and it wouldn't change that fact.

But we might get the eighth pick instead of a top three pick, and the massive difference between those two options is the entire point of the thread.

Plus, the utter impossibility of actually acquiring Josh Smith.

[timdunkit]

Cosmo ... are you against tanking this season ... or tanking for consecutive seasons ... cuz if its the former, then your clearly wrong ... if its the former, I'm with you ...

We are not making the playoffs this season;
On January 15th we could add Josh Smith and Freddie Mercury to the roster and it wouldn't change that fact.

But we might get the eighth pick instead of a top three pick, and the massive difference between those two options is the entire point of the thread.

Plus, the utter impossibility of actually acquiring Josh Smith.

I have us at about 19 wins for the season ... I don't think Josh Smith is going to helps close out games or stop the lay up drill thats ran against Bargnani ... This team still has a lot of holes and adding a legit talent piece isn't going to fix things (unless your adding D12, Kobe, Lebron, Wade and possibly Durant). It might raise the win total up 2-3 games, buh 21-22 wins is still great draft position.

[Morris_Shatford]

I would argue that the rebuilding teams like the Bulls before and the Blazers now end up on the same sort of treadmill we claim to be trying to avoid,

You think that the Bulls and Blazers are treadmill teams? They will probably both win around or over 50 games. If that is your definition of treadmill, sign me up.

When I say Bulls;
I mean the Hinrich, Deng, Gordon era of build via the draft, not the one on the floor currently.

As for Portland;
They have 50m committed through 2014/15 on four players, and that is before they need to make an uncomfortable decision on Oden this summer who I don't see not being driven up to 5/60 via free agency.

A team good enough to win 45-50 games, but not good enough to make the second round...
Isn't that what we had and that we were unhappy with?

[AfricanSensation]

But you have to guarentee your Chris Paul or Deron Williams 1st.
If you more to quick and get a Iggy at the deadline, then draft 7th instead of top 4, Iggy or Smith becomes useless.
I want to secure my top4 pick now and hope we don't blew it, then I will worry about filling up the roster.
The good thing is the roster is so weak, even with Irving, we will be an excting young team with hope, but still a bad team, ready for another top 4 pick.

OKC had 4 chances in at top 4 picks in 3 years and got 2 right (Durant and Westbrook vs Green and Harden). I think getting 2 out of 4 is pretty fair, so I want us to package all we have into trying to get extra top 5 pick, not mess with the one waiting for us at season end.

[AfricanSensation]

I would argue that the rebuilding teams like the Bulls before and the Blazers now end up on the same sort of treadmill we claim to be trying to avoid,

You think that the Bulls and Blazers are treadmill teams? They will probably both win around or over 50 games. If that is your definition of treadmill, sign me up.

When I say Bulls;
I mean the Hinrich, Deng, Gordon era of build via the draft, not the one on the floor currently.

As for Portland;
They have 50m committed through 2014/15 on four players, and that is before they need to make an uncomfortable decision on Oden this summer who I don't see not being driven up to 5/60 via free agency.

A team good enough to win 45-50 games, but not good enough to make the second round...
Isn't that what we had and that we were unhappy with?

Sorry, we were never as goos as the Blazers for the past 4 years. Have you been watching Raps-Blazers game since they got Roy?

[Schad]

I have us at about 19 wins for the season ... I don't think Josh Smith is going to helps close out games or stop the lay up drill thats ran against Bargnani ... This team still has a lot of holes and adding a legit talent piece isn't going to fix things (unless your adding D12, Kobe, Lebron, Wade and possibly Durant). It might raise the win total up 2-3 games, buh 21-22 wins is still great draft position.

19 wins is even more optimistic than my 23-25 win expectation, but 42 games worth of Josh Smith playing over Kleiza or whatever will get you a lot more than 2-3 extra wins. Josh Smith is a top-25 player. He is very good at basketball, and very good at the bits of the game that tend to win games. And once you get into the 27-28 win range, you're dangerously close to talking yourself into Corey Brewer on draft day.

Also, and this bears repeating, there isn't a single player or combination of players on our roster that Atlanta would take for him.

[timdunkit]

But you have to guarentee your Chris Paul or Deron Williams 1st.
If you more to quick and get a Iggy at the deadline, then draft 7th instead of top 4, Iggy or Smith becomes useless.
I want to secure my top4 pick now and hope we don't blew it, then I will worry about filling up the roster.
The good thing is the roster is so weak, even with Irving, we will be an excting young team with hope, but still a bad team, ready for another top 4 pick.

OKC had 4 chances in at top 4 picks in 3 years and got 2 right (Durant and Westbrook vs Green and Harden). I think getting 2 out of 4 is pretty fair, so I want us to package all we have into trying to get extra top 5 pick, not mess with the one waiting for us at season end.

Alot of the deals depend on where we at the deadine. If we are in the thick of things (bottom 3-7 int he league) then using the TPE for talent is a risk that could cost us draft position. If we are bottom 2 (which it seems like to me we will be) then we'll likely be 4-5 wins below everyone else and can add talent.

[Morris_Shatford]

Cosmo ... are you against tanking this season ... or tanking for consecutive seasons ... cuz if its the former, then your clearly wrong ... if its the former, I'm with you ...

We are not making the playoffs this season;
On January 15th we could add Josh Smith and Freddie Mercury to the roster and it wouldn't change that fact.

But we might get the eighth pick instead of a top three pick, and the massive difference between those two options is the entire point of the thread.

Plus, the utter impossibility of actually acquiring Josh Smith.

Now you are just being mean

Yeah, but I am a selfish season ticket holder.
I would rather we have competent scouting at make the best of pick eight and have basketball on the floor for two seasons that doesn't make me ill.

You may need to help me here because my draft lottery knowledge is clearly not as good as yours and others in this thread;

We need the worst record in the NBA to be assured at least the fourth pick?
How poorly can we do in our overall draft selection (in terms of position) if we have the second or third worst records?

[Ponchos]

I mean the Hinrich, Deng, Gordon era of build via the draft, not the one on the floor currently.

As for Portland;
They have 50m committed through 2014/15 on four players, and that is before they need to make an uncomfortable decision on Oden this summer who I don't see not being driven up to 5/60 via free agency.

A team good enough to win 45-50 games, but not good enough to make the second round...
Isn't that what we had and that we were unhappy with?

I don't think the Blazers are really worried about the tax. If Oden commands/deserves a big contract they will give it to him. Perhaps we're rating them differently but I see the Blazers as a far better team than any of the past few Raptor teams. Additionally they have a lot of nice young talent going forward.


Isn't the current Bulls squad constructed through the draft?

[Rhettmatic]

We need the worst record in the NBA to be assured at least the fourth pick?
How poorly can we do in our overall draft selection (in terms of position) if we have the second or third worst records?

You can theoretically move back three positions.

[Dr Positivity]

I would argue that the rebuilding teams like the Bulls before and the Blazers now end up on the same sort of treadmill we claim to be trying to avoid,

You think that the Bulls and Blazers are treadmill teams? They will probably both win around or over 50 games. If that is your definition of treadmill, sign me up.

The Blazers are collapsing in front of our eyes. Roy has two bad knees - which is a huge problem because he's not far above the athleticism threshold needed to iso drive/kick as much as he does. He's also dropped weight the last two years to support his knees, which has lowered his effectiveness after his 24 PER year. If you take 10% of Roy's athleticism and strength away that might be enough to eliminate his iso driving (apparantley the Blazers have taken Roy iso out of their playlist cause he can't do it anymore in his current state), essentially turning him into a John Salmons or Caron Butler level SG and ruining their chances for the foreseeable future, barring Oden drinking frmo the fountain of health

The Bulls could be great. Really great. The Noah pick was amazing. Would I count on them winning a title soon? Dunno. With Millsap's breakout I'm interested how much Boozer's stats were a product of that cushy Utah situation. If the Bulls contend soon it's cause they're built on the right things - defense, rebounding, smart decisions to go alongside their star, and they weren't afraid to win now right after they got Rose to maintain that culture. But for now I'm guessing they sit where Utah, Denver, New Orleans have been lately. 50 wins, on the threshold. A few moves away. That's usually how contenders are made. Not from going straight from the tank to the top, but by going from the tank to 1st round knockout to 2nd round knockout to contender. A to B to C to D, not A to D. The best place to be if you're not at D is C, IMO. Utah and New Orleans are *right there*. Both could plausibly be there this year. Portland would be similar if not for the injuries. It's debateable whether B or A is better, but assuming you're built on young talent, I think being a 1st round knockout with a young star (a la the Bulls the last two years) is better than being say where we or Minnesota are

[timdunkit]

I have us at about 19 wins for the season ... I don't think Josh Smith is going to helps close out games or stop the lay up drill thats ran against Bargnani ... This team still has a lot of holes and adding a legit talent piece isn't going to fix things (unless your adding D12, Kobe, Lebron, Wade and possibly Durant). It might raise the win total up 2-3 games, buh 21-22 wins is still great draft position.

19 wins is even more optimistic than my 23-25 win expectation, but 42 games worth of Josh Smith playing over Kleiza or whatever will get you a lot more than 2-3 extra wins. Josh Smith is a top-25 player. He is very good at basketball, and very good at the bits of the game that tend to win games. And once you get into the 27-28 win range, you're dangerously close to talking yourself into Corey Brewer on draft day.

Also, and this bears repeating, there isn't a single player or combination of players on our roster that Atlanta would take for him.

Deadline is about 35 games left anyways, Josh Smith would be about the best value we can get at the deadline (thats like extremely amazing steal deal). Realistically, we can get a guy below his level or slightly, or add an overpaid C like Gortat to the roster who can bring that legit size and grit we've been missing. We can also move our prospects, for better ones by giving up quality/quantity for better quality. If Denver decides to blow it up, maybe aim at Nene etc ...

[AfricanSensation]

BTW we are not getting Josh Smith, just putting it out there.

[ATLTimekeeper]

I went back 12 years and did a crude study. These are semifinalists that were awful enough at one point to get a top 3 pick, and used that pick to build that team into something great. I did this quickly without much use of resources, so I may be have left some teams out.

2010: Orlando, Boston
2009: Denver, Cleveland, Orlando
2008: San Antonio, Boston
2007: San Antonio, Cleveland, Utah
2006: None
2005: San Antonio
2004: None
2003: Spurs, Nets
2002: Nets
2001: Spurs, Bucks, Sixers
2000: Knicks, Pacers
1999: Knicks, Spurs, Pacers

If you don't want to include Boston, you would need to re-word your criteria. They were awful enough for a top 3 pick in 2007, they simply were unlucky in the lottery. Still, their tanking allowed them to acquire Ray Allen. So if we're looking at the rewards of tanking, they should be in the discussion, no?

Even if you use Boston, it still only includes two extra teams that "tanked" and turned itself into a contender. That's 22 out of a potential 48 contender spots. 46%.

Then look at the teams that drafted top 3 in the past twenty years or so, let's start at 1990. In brackets I've included how many times the team made a conference finals within a decade of their selection.

1990: Nets (0), Sonics (2), Heat (1)
1991: Hornets (0), Nets (0), Kings (0)
1992: Magic (2), Hornets (0), Wolves (0)
1993: Magic (2), Sixers (1), Warriors (0)
1994: Bucks (1), Mavs (1), Pistons (2)
1995: Warriors (0), Clips (0), Sixers (1)
1996: Sixers (1), Raptors (0), Grizzlies (0)
1997: Spurs (6), Sixers, Celtics (1)
1998: Clippers (0), Grizzlies (0), Nuggets (0)
1999: Bulls (0), Grizzlies (0), Hornets (0)
2000: Nets (2), Grizzlies (0), Clippers (0)
2001: Wizards (0), Clippers (0), Hawks (0)
2002: Rockets (0), Bulls (0), Warriors (0)
2003: Cavs (2), Pistons (Darko), Nuggets (1)
2004: Magic (2), Bobcats (0), Bulls (0)
2005: Milwaukee (0), Hawks (0), Jazz (1)

Actually I'll stop at 2005 because Williams was the last top 3 pick to make it to a conference finals. Lotta zeroes, and I know I set the parameters, but I consider a decade to be enough time to build a contender. Then consider that the Magic had two top three picks in a row, and Duncan's Spurs are, as Schad pointed out, an aberration. It's more like, if you drafted Duncan, or LeBron, or Howard, or Shaq, you made the right choice to tank.

[Ponchos]

We need the worst record in the NBA to be assured at least the fourth pick?
How poorly can we do in our overall draft selection (in terms of position) if we have the second or third worst records?

You can theoretically move back three positions.

This is true, but to add to this the odds of falling back 3 positions gets smaller and smaller.

2nd to 5th -----> 12.4% chance
3rd to 6th ------> 4.1% chance
4th to 7th ------> 1.4% chance

[Morris_Shatford]

Sorry, we were never as goos as the Blazers for the past 4 years. Have you been watching Raps-Blazers game since they got Roy?

I didn't make that argument;
I simply said that they for all their draft wizardry in the grand scheme of things have failed to make it out of the first round twice.

They haven't become vastly better this offseason, and potentially they may have five players locked up till 2014/15 making over 60m.

They are talented, they are fun to watch,
However before OKC was OKC the argument for the tank and build was the wondrous success that Kevin Prichard and the Blazers were going to have because of their excellent drafting and glut of draft picks.

For all of that praise;
They are a team that has made the playoffs twice since 2005 and lost in the first round twice even though they were the home court team in one of those years.

If they are a better team then we ever were (which they are) is moot,
They are the result of a team who built via the draft and perhaps one of the most successful ones in the last decade and they are in a place that we were unhappy to be in a few seasons ago.

[Ponchos]

There have been a lot of posts poking holes in the "high draft pick to win" theory, however there has been absolutely no viable alternative presented to building a contender.

[Morris_Shatford]

As many posts as there have been poking holes in the "high draft pick to win" theory there has been absolutely no viable alternative presented to building a contender.

So we are content to accept that this tank and draft thing is a long shot;
but since we don't think we can do any better via other methods we are cool with it.

Honestly;
That's all I wanted.

If we are going to go down this road, I would hope our expectations are very very low.

[So Clutch]

Even if we could get Josh Smith with our assets then what?

We couldn't build a playoff team with Chris Bosh so I have no hope that a guy like Smith would take a BC-built team anywhere except 35 wins and another middling pick.

Josh Smith, Iquodala and Love aren't talented enough to do anything for us unfortunately. If we land Barnes or Irving, then it might make some sense but you still need to get Barnes/Irving FIRST.

Tanking is essentially our only way to really improve. If you want a perpetual 35-45 win team then we there are much more options but then you lose your right to cry about us being perennial first round fodder.

I understand the logic behind the Tank;
However I just don't like the odds behind the tank.

Would I rather be a middling 35 - 50 win team that may surprise and get to the second round, and be somewhat entertaining doing so by adding guy who I know can play at an NBA level,

Or do I stink and watch terrible basketball for three seasons and hope that Barnes, Rivers, and Joe Bagadoughnuts don't end up like Drew Gooden, Tyrus Thomas, and Shaun Livingston who were in theory the "right" picks.

I am still looking for this successful rebuilding via the draft model?
OKC? I think maybe Sam Presti owes Kevin Prichard a Coke, You flip that draft order and they aren't even a playoff team.

I would argue that the rebuilding teams like the Bulls before and the Blazers now end up on the same sort of treadmill we claim to be trying to avoid,

I'm no statistician so I won't give an answer or number, but: Are the chances of us getting a player like Iggy/Smith, getting 35-45, making the playoffs, sneaking into the next round ANY HIGHER than us sucking, getting and making the right picks and having them turn into good players?

I just think of the numerous years we've been adding "players we know can play" to help Chris Bosh (who we know can not only play, but play at a star level) and predicted playoff berths and 2nd round appearances, only to miss those expectations completely (we've missed the playoffs how many years? WITH Chris Bosh, etc).

You speak of the horrible odds of tanking for a good pick, but forget that the odds of your suggested plan may not be very good. I would argue the odds are worse, with an even lower potential ceiling of success.

[Schad]

I didn't make that argument;
I simply said that they for all their draft wizardry in the grand scheme of things have failed to make it out of the first round twice.

They haven't become vastly better this offseason, and potentially they may have five players locked up till 2014/15 making over 60m.

They are talented, they are fun to watch,
However before OKC was OKC the argument for the tank and build was the wondrous success that Kevin Prichard and the Blazers were going to have because of their excellent drafting and glut of draft picks.

For all of that praise;
They are a team that has made the playoffs twice since 2005 and lost in the first round twice even though they were the home court team in one of those years.

If they are a better team then we ever were (which they are) is moot,
They are the result of a team who built via the draft and perhaps one of the most successful ones in the last decade and they are in a place that we were unhappy to be in a few seasons ago.

That's because they have been the most injury-prone team in basketball over the past three years. Really has very little to do with their approach to talent acquisition...they won 50 last year despite having six players out simultaneously with injuries last year, which exceeds our best-ever season and in a tougher conference. They ain't doing badly.