Raptaurus wrote:billy_hoyle wrote:Pointgod wrote:
It’s so disingenuous to say that OKC isn’t an example of success through tanking. Their whole model was prioritizing picks and youth over established players. This is a team that blew a 44 win team by trading Chris Paul, Dennis Schroeder, Danillio Galanari and Steven Adams so they could go 22-50 the next year. Team compete would have had a meltdown if we started rebuilding the same way after our 48 win season.
Yes they didn’t need to hit on all of own picks except I’d argue hitting on Chet, Dort, Wiggins, Cason Wallace, Jaylin Williams are a big factor in their success. And you don’t get multiple opportunities to hit and miss on multiple players without employing a tanking strategy. Imagine where this team would be if they had just kept status quo with the Chris Paul version of this team.
I think it's way more disingenuous to say that OKC is good because of a tank.
As others have stated, only one of their rotation players is a top 5 pick.
We have three.
Our Tampa tank + this year is essentially more tanking than they did. We ended up with the 2021 ROY and whoever we get this year, they ended up with Chet and Caruso.
I think we did pretty well, relative to say Utah, we didn't do well compared to OKC, who keep nailing trades and post-top 10 picks.
OKC is good and will continue to be good mainly due to SGA and JDub.
I think the point is that Presti prioritized rebuilding when he traded a top 20 PG for a rookie SGA and a ton of picks/swaps. He could have easily just retooled and gotten veteran guys at the level of RJ, IQ, BI, and Bruce Brown. They still had Westbrook and probably could have continued to have a ceiling of a first round playoff team.
So yeah, they had a ton of draft picks - of which some were their own while others were pawned off from other teams by trading their veterans. They slowly rebuilt their team over the years. And yes, its not all about drafting as they also some good signings/trades to strengthen theur defence.
The "only 2 years of tanking" narrative is a distortion because the CP3 trade was a tanking move. They got a boatload of picks for what most of the league at the time thought was a washed CP3 while Westbrook had more value. He ended up rehabilitating his value and they won too many games (shades of Lauri/Utah! And we know what the non-tankers think of that). The dismantling of that team took half a decade.
The equivalent of this for the Raptors now would be a version of BI+ for PG's bad contract and the 3rd pick. Which the non-tankers find revolting. And Jak would have been traded for the Lakers pick/s. OG for one of those Bucks picks instead of a couple role players on the Knicks. Siakam for further out picks instead of a couple in a bad draft and the one we shipped out for BI.
The amount of crying done on this board if Presti would be here... they'd have found a new team to cheer for by now.
