By Not Tanking

[Ruzious]

The Warriors will also look to trade one if not both of their picks in the lottery

So they get 7 and 14. I think that takes away any chance that they'll be able to make a move for Beal.

[pcbothwel]

The Warriors will also look to trade one if not both of their picks in the lottery

So they get 7 and 14. I think that takes away any chance that they'll be able to make a move for Beal.

Most likely. But who knows how teams value Wiseman (Im not a fan at all).
I LOVE 13-20 in this draft with Butler, Giddey, Garuba, Springer, Duarte, and at least 2-3 of: Sengun/Mitchell/Bouknight/Kispert/Wagner

So if some team in 2-4 would take Wiseman + 7, then it gets interesting.
If the Cavs really want another wing to pair with Okoro and keep the Garland/Sexton backcourt, then that trade would be perfect for them:

Garland
Sexton
Okoro
1 of: Kispert/Barnes/Kuminga/Wagner/Johnson
Wiseman

We get 3, 14, 2022 1st, 2027 1st, and Wiggins for Beal

Russ / Giddey(14)
Green(3) / Mathews
Rui / Deni
Garuba(15) / Bertans
Bryant / Gafford

Keep Russ as we'd have 3 19 y/o rookies from 3 different continents along with our other young guys.
Look to move Russ next summer for a bad contract and pick...same with Bertans in the next year or two.

[Dark Faze]

I like Suggs for the Raptors. They can keep going about their general plan without the pressure of the timeline now, and will have a lot of cap space. Problem is, is there anyone worth using it on?

[I_Like_Dirt]

They've got four good youngish players just entering their prime (Siakam, Anunoby, Van Fleet, Trent Jr.) and only Lowry who is over the hill. It doesn't make much sense at all for them to rebuild around a draft pick. If anything they'll trade the draft pick for another good veteran.

They’ll draft and play Jalen Suggs in place of Lowry.

Possibly, but Toronto might want to win now. And I think it'll take Suggs a while to adjust to the NBA. It's hard for rookie PG's not named Morant adjusting to the NBA when they're not real good 3 point shooters. At Zag, he was phenominal, but it helped that he was on the most skilled team in the country. His best quality might be his D, and NBA refs don't give rookies any benefits on D.

The Raptors are quietly a rather young team. They traded Powell for Trent just this season which suggests they're cool with a longer view. If it takes Suggs 2 or 3 years to adjust, it's not like Siakam and VanVleet will be retired or worthless at age 29-30. Winning teams usually have a couple veterans like that. Suggs fits reasonably well with guys like Anunoby, Trent and Flynn. And among the lottery teams, they were probably the biggest "better than their record" team as they sat several starters every game and Kyle Lowry would joke about it to the press. They seem smart enough to realize they can easily make the playoffs but won't win a championship without a superstar. I'd be pretty surprised if they traded the pick.

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[gambitx777]

They’ll draft and play Jalen Suggs in place of Lowry.

Possibly, but Toronto might want to win now. And I think it'll take Suggs a while to adjust to the NBA. It's hard for rookie PG's not named Morant adjusting to the NBA when they're not real good 3 point shooters. At Zag, he was phenominal, but it helped that he was on the most skilled team in the country. His best quality might be his D, and NBA refs don't give rookies any benefits on D.

The Raptors are quietly a rather young team. They traded Powell for Trent just this season which suggests they're cool with a longer view. If it takes Suggs 2 or 3 years to adjust, it's not like Siakam and VanVleet will be retired or worthless at age 29-30. Winning teams usually have a couple veterans like that. Suggs fits reasonably well with guys like Anunoby, Trent and Flynn. And among the lottery teams, they were probably the biggest "better than their record" team as they sat several starters every game and Kyle Lowry would joke about it to the press. They seem smart enough to realize they can easily make the playoffs but won't win a championship without a superstar. I'd be pretty surprised if they traded the pick.

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Also like MU has shown he will swing big to win so like. He could make an offer for beal or another all NBA type to pair with van fleet and pascal . Like put a brad or a CJ, or dame, or harden, or butler on that team and they might be right back into it.

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[I_Like_Dirt]

Possibly, but Toronto might want to win now. And I think it'll take Suggs a while to adjust to the NBA. It's hard for rookie PG's not named Morant adjusting to the NBA when they're not real good 3 point shooters. At Zag, he was phenominal, but it helped that he was on the most skilled team in the country. His best quality might be his D, and NBA refs don't give rookies any benefits on D.

The Raptors are quietly a rather young team. They traded Powell for Trent just this season which suggests they're cool with a longer view. If it takes Suggs 2 or 3 years to adjust, it's not like Siakam and VanVleet will be retired or worthless at age 29-30. Winning teams usually have a couple veterans like that. Suggs fits reasonably well with guys like Anunoby, Trent and Flynn. And among the lottery teams, they were probably the biggest "better than their record" team as they sat several starters every game and Kyle Lowry would joke about it to the press. They seem smart enough to realize they can easily make the playoffs but won't win a championship without a superstar. I'd be pretty surprised if they traded the pick.

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Also like MU has shown he will swing big to win so like. He could make an offer for beal or another all NBA type to pair with van fleet and pascal . Like put a brad or a CJ, or dame, or harden, or butler on that team and they might be right back into it.

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He might. He seems pretty astute at reading dynamics, though. The team that won the title had Lowry, Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Danny Green and Norman Powell too. And Kawhi is a better player than any of the guys they might trade for. They'd be a few steps down and Masai would know it. He went all in but he went all in when he had an opportunity to build a real powerhouse and then didn't lose his cool when faced with the reality of tearing that powerhouse down quickly. I doubt Masai does anything like that until he knows he had a really good team that's a superstar away from a possible championship. Stranger things have happened but it really doesn't seem in character for him to make that kind of rush move.

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[dckingsfan]

Or we could have MOST LIKELY been the Magic, Kings, Warriors or Pelicans, and come away nothing more than a late lotto pick.

just helping - coaches and players should never try to tank.

If we had made a set of trades that make us better in the future that would have caused us to lose more games - that is one thing.

Instructing your coach or players to lose is a whole other kettle of fish - and that gets stinky really fast.

[The Consiglieri]

Or we could have been the Magic, Kings, Warriors or Pelicans, and come away with a late lotto pick.

Sure. But if you're in the lottery, you have the chance at a top pick.

If you're getting your butt handed to you in the first round with no hope of advancing, you have no chance of anything at all.

I'm not saying there isn't some logic to tanking. I'm just saying that you can't just assume we would have been the Toronto of this group. We could have just as easily been one of the losers of the lottery.

We were too good to finish in the bottom 5. Westbrook was going to keep us in the 7-12 range even if we tried to tank, leaving us with just a 10% or so shot at a top 4 pick. CCJ presented a false comparison. It wasn't playoffs plus #15 pick versus tanking plus the #4 pick; it was playoffs plus the #15 pick versus tanking plus a 10% shot at the #4 pick.

I really do think the argument for tanking has been greatly diminished with the revised lottery odds.

To some extent, but not really (on your last point) because the NBA is still a league where you aren't ---- unless you can land an elite mega player that other players would like to join and play with. Until the NBA does something to fix the mess they've created, this is how the league will function, and whatever inclination people may have to take lessons from '20-'21 they shouldn't. This was a crazy covid season with crazy scheduling patterns and crazy results, it is an outlier, and doesn't fit the trend. The NBA is built to reward cities and franchises that our attractive to a select few. D.C. isn't attractive for any reason whatsoever. No NBA History, no track record, and it's not a destination city like NYC, Miami, Chicago, LA etc. As such no FA's of any franchise changing import will EVER come here period, unless we draw in some of that elite mega talent....

So how can DC win? The only way to win is the lottery miracle, and this year we had a chance to play that story out by trading Beal and going full tank. We didn't, and with the late April run, we went from a 4th-7th worst team (where 2 of the 3 lottery tickets landed) to playoff road kill which has been exactly what we've been in every single rare playoff run of my watching experience save 2 (one Arenas year, and one Wall/Beal/Gortat year if memory serves) covering five decades of occasional attention.

This is why the run in April lead me to so much despair I gave up entirely and why I find you guys so odd. I shouldn't though, it's like being a fan of Everton, or Toulouse, or Parma, or Athletico Bilbao, or Hannover etc. None of them have a chance in hell either but the fans roll in every year anyway. I'm just used to American sports, where even the most hopeless of franchises can turn around things with competent ownership and management, and luck, and win a title. Baseball broke a bunch of horrible historical streaks a decade and two ago when the Red Sox, White Sox, Phillies, Cubs, and then our Nats all managed to end monstrous historical runs of futility. The Patriots under Billichek and Brady ended what had been decades of futility for New England Football, Russell Wilson ended a history if irrelevance and broken hearts for Seattle fans, the Caps finally ended the most unknown and unacknowledged track record of futility in the playoffs in '18...I could go on and on and often do. But in Basketball it's just so much harder because players rule the league, and the league is radically tilted by single individual players in a way that simply isn't true in any other sport to this degree (only QB comes close, and you still need to build a massive team around a QB, in Basketball, you just need 2 other elite players to surround that guy with)....

Anyway that's why I'm in despair. I saw this season as one that offered hope with a Beal deal. I really didn't think they'd be insane enough to ignore this opportunity and instead short circuit the potential to do a double rebuild year in probably the deepest draft of potential studs since 2003. There's something truly infuriating in the way the teams like Houston and Golden State, and Toronto could get this right on the fly, in-between nonstop contention, while we've never gotten it right virtually ever. Triply infuriating (is that a word?) was Cleveland getting, what like the 20th top 3 pick in the past 10 or 11 years? Insane.

Anyway, I admire how you guys can still care, Im trying to work my way to not caring. The Euro's are definitely helping, I'm a more passionate soccer fan than Basketball fan, so my attention has been directed that way, following Denmark, my maternal Grandmother's place of birth, and so they have definitely brought into perspective what sports can truly be in every good way imaginable, and they give me faith in sport, in athletes and in what really matters, even if Basketball gives me none. I'm glad you guys still have hope. I have no idea how you do, but more power to you, that's a great thing, that kind of special forces style, "not dead, can't quit" approach to fandom. I hope you get rewarded for it, you deserve too be, but you know the line from the Unforgiven and it applies to sports all to well.

[Silvie Lysandra]

Not saying they have to go that route, but too many organizations try to do this win now and win later thing. The next thing you know it's the heat of a playoff race and they making a shortsighted move. Just look at Philadelphia now. This is the first year that EMbiid has actually looked like a truly dominant player. At 27, he's in the middle of his prime. But they've been making win-now moves for 4 years and have basically - barring a miracle - maneuvered themselves into purgatory.?

Philly is a very bad example. Why? Not because you're wrong. But because the NBA forced Philly into this posture.
. Honestly, more NBA fans should be outraged that the league forced the 76ers to fire Hinkie just because they didn't like his approach.

And I'm not an "always tank" or "never tank" guy - it depends on the circumstances. But what matters is that the NBA punished an NBA franchise for trying to build for the future more aggressively than was perceived good for business, despite the overwhelming approval of the fans of that franchise.

I really do think the argument for taking has been greatly diminished with the revised lottery odds.

So I think tanking is probably good specifically for the Wizards, unless you feel like a new coach can create a better development environment for Rui and Deni. Beal and Westbrook just eat up too much usage, and Deni and Rui need to get to handle the ball at some point (especially Deni). But its a LOT less effective than it used to be because of the lottery changes, like you said.

Maybe a real coach can fix this though. But this is a star driven league, and our two stars definitely want the ball.

[Illuminaire]

Or we could have been the Magic, Kings, Warriors or Pelicans, and come away with a late lotto pick.

Sure. But if you're in the lottery, you have the chance at a top pick.

If you're getting your butt handed to you in the first round with no hope of advancing, you have no chance of anything at all.

I'm not saying there isn't some logic to tanking. I'm just saying that you can't just assume we would have been the Toronto of this group. We could have just as easily been one of the losers of the lottery.

We were too good to finish in the bottom 5. Westbrook was going to keep us in the 7-12 range even if we tried to tank, leaving us with just a 10% or so shot at a top 4 pick. CCJ presented a false comparison. It wasn't playoffs plus #15 pick versus tanking plus the #4 pick; it was playoffs plus the #15 pick versus tanking plus a 10% shot at the #4 pick.

I really do think the argument for tanking has been greatly diminished with the revised lottery odds.

Hmm. Not sure I buy that this season. Before that epic run, weren't the Wiz in the 7th spot, with several teams still trying to make the tourney?

If they'd shut down and played the kids, anything from 5-10 would have been likely, with a reasonable shot at the top 4.

Perhaps I'm miss-remembering their position with 30 games to go.

[Super2477]

Super2477, Welcome Aboard!

I haven’t seen you post before and I just want to say a new voice is always good.

Definitely appreciate the welcome. I always had an account but I was not posting. I plan on engaging more because I like the different insight I see.

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[I_Like_Dirt]

Or we could have been the Magic, Kings, Warriors or Pelicans, and come away with a late lotto pick.

Sure. But if you're in the lottery, you have the chance at a top pick.

If you're getting your butt handed to you in the first round with no hope of advancing, you have no chance of anything at all.

I'm not saying there isn't some logic to tanking. I'm just saying that you can't just assume we would have been the Toronto of this group. We could have just as easily been one of the losers of the lottery.

We were too good to finish in the bottom 5. Westbrook was going to keep us in the 7-12 range even if we tried to tank, leaving us with just a 10% or so shot at a top 4 pick. CCJ presented a false comparison. It wasn't playoffs plus #15 pick versus tanking plus the #4 pick; it was playoffs plus the #15 pick versus tanking plus a 10% shot at the #4 pick.

I really do think the argument for tanking has been greatly diminished with the revised lottery odds.

I actually think the argument for tanking has increased with the revised odds, it's just the kind of tanking we're talking about that has changed. Scorched earth Hinkie-style tanking is less valuable. Tanking into the 6 to 8 range is quite a bit more valuable and is also quite a bit more achievable with strategic sitting of minor bumps and bruises and/or the odd trade here and there.

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[Silvie Lysandra]

Scorched earth Hinkie-style tanking is less valuable. Tanking into the 6 to 8 range is quite a bit more valuable and is also quite a bit more achievable with strategic sitting of minor bumps and bruises and/or the odd trade here and there.

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The main appeal of going scorched earth is talent development. You get to showcase your young/fringe talent and see if there's diamonds in the rough. That's how Hinkie found Covington and McConnell who turned out to be above replacement level NBA players (And Covington was a centerpiece for a trade for a star). The downside is that you tend to lack leadership and mentoring on the court/locker room, and the guys who can provide that tend to not want to play for tanking teams. I'd love to give Rui and Deni lots of touches and see what they can do, but you can't do that with Beal and RW in the mix.

With that said, I think Hinkie could have executed the strategy much better than he did, but the fact that he went ALL in was the right move.

[I_Like_Dirt]

The main appeal of going scorched earth is talent development. You get to showcase your young/fringe talent and see if there's diamonds in the rough. That's how Hinkie found Covington and McConnell who turned out to be above replacement level NBA players (And Covington was a centerpiece for a trade for a star). The downside is that you tend to lack leadership and mentoring on the court/locker room, and the guys who can provide that tend to not want to play for tanking teams. I'd love to give Rui and Deni lots of touches and see what they can do, but you can't do that with Beal and RW in the mix.

With that said, I think Hinkie could have executed the strategy much better than he did, but the fact that he went ALL in was the right move.

You don't need to go scorched earth to do that. You just need a management team committed to developing players. The Nuggets, Raptors, Blazers and Spurs all do this by limiting the actual amount of veterans they have on their bench forcing coaches to pick and choose between developing guys in some spots.

Honestly, scorched earth generally means a bunch of undeserving guys play without being held accountable on fundamentals, pad their stats and risk getting paid. Covington was great but after several years that's all the Sixers got. Other teams that didn't scorched earth things found as much or more talent off the scrap heap in that same time, be it free agents, late draft picks or undrafted free agents. Though I suppose the Sixers did find Jerami Grant too and their scorched earth didn't stop them from trading him for essentially two seconds.

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[WashWiz54]

Lets go the other way- by not tanking we may have kept Beal happy. Regardless of if you want to trade him or keep him, a happy star is (possibly) willing to sign an extension and will not publicly demand a trade. An extended Beal or even a non-angry Beal has a lot more value than the alternative. I’m much happier taking that route versus going for a 5% chance at a high pick.