KqWIN wrote:Luigi wrote:KqWIN wrote:
The risk of losing home court is also a big contingency. And regardless of how unlikely you think the plan was, it was obvious that they tanked. If you don’t think it was to avoid HOU, you have to come up with another reason why they egregiously tanked the game against POR.
The plan looks unreasonable to me, given the contingencies and risks. So now we need to explain the Portland loss, or else explain Denver's unreasonable behavior.
For the Portland loss, I'd chalk it up to rest. But as for the competing explanation, you'd also need to explain Denver either being insensitive to the risks, or else being out of control of the plan itself. Of the 2, I'm going with rest.
If you believe their plan was to rest, they are also being insensitive to the risk of losing the 2 seed. In either case they are not trying to win and increasing their chances of losing the 2 seed. You can say that the plan succeeding was unlikely, but you can’t argue that the chances of backfiring (meaning losing the 2 seed) meant a lot when they didn’t try to win. Chalking it up to rest is acknowledging that it didn’t matter a lot.
The risk was present in both explanations. Whether it was to tank or rest, both imply a disregard for the 2 seed. In all likelihood, the Nuggets wanted some rest but also saw the benefits of losing to POR.
Now, we can pretend that the Nuggets were oblivious or didn’t care about playing HOU...but Malone actively tried to lose that game. It wasn’t just holding out players to start the game, it was also benching his backups mid game in favor of third stringers to lose. Everyone around the situation and who watched the game saw this. It’s clear cut and very obvious to me. But to each their own.
Ah yes, that's true. I'm becoming a believer.
