The Tank Watch has expired. Time to cheer to win again!

[tontoz]

Kings with a 1 pt victory over the Jazz (Favors went 0-13 lol). Nets with a 2 point win over the Warriors.

The only teams left with 17 wins are the Raps and Cavs.

[hands11]

just a thought. maybe Wall is purposely assisting the tank b/c he knows it means more ping pong balls and a better shot at Davis. i wouldn't blame him and that may just be the smartest thing for Wiz.

I think last night game against Philly proves this theory wrong. Wall is trying to be relevant on offense. He is just playing poorly and forcing things like he tends to do from time to time. But his defense is mostly there.

John will needs to adjust to Nene being here and the new make up of the team with Nick gone, Martin added, and Kevin stepping it up in the post. The team is now more post centric instead of guard centric to score. Wall needs to learn to manage the assets and the flow of the game. He needs to find his lanes and pick he spots to drive. He has to probe the defense. First thing that would help him with that he should never never neverrrrr give up his dribble. I really find it hard to understand how he hasnt learned that yet. You can't probe the defense if you are not in command of the ball. Hell, Mack knows not to pick up his dribble.

He also needs to find he mid range shot again. With the new production from other players and new style of offense, he needs to also learn to hit a 3 ball with his feet set where by he isnt learning backward. That can come next year. There is no need for him to lean backward on that shot. Roger needs to get with him to work on that. Go up straight or lean into it a little. Don't lean backward. He just needs to hit it went he is open. Not like he needs to be Kobe or anything.

[queridiculo]

Cleveland has lost six straight and Irving is banged up. As much as I would like to see the Wizards win, I hope they don't have yet another late season surge that kills out lottery chances.

[closg00]

Dammit, NOH keeps losing close games, this-time to the Lakers.

[nate33]

New Jersey is playing Sacramento tonight.

One of them has to win.

[hands11]

Cleveland is in full tank mode for sure. They are on a 7 game losing streak and most the games are not even close. SA up next so make it 8. Then their schedule starts to get a little easier again.

NJ, Cats, DET, TOR and a head to head with the Wiz

Hopefully the Wiz built enough cushion.

[7-Day Dray]

Eric Gordon is coming back tomorrow. Good for the tank.

[The Consiglieri]

Yep, I've started eyeing Cleveland with a great deal of alarm. They are playing awful lately and we play them twice in the last two weeks. Those games could finish off the risk they present or exacerbate it. On the positive end, New Jersey, Toronto and suckramento have all put enough cushion between us to insure a bottom 4 pick pre-lottery barring some insane winning streak (7 games cushion with 13 to play is pretty darn solid, hell Cleveland's 5 game spread from us is borderline fine, so long as they manage to win a couple of there last 15 or so).

I smell a bottom 2-3 finish and hopefully the 1st overall pick.

[closg00]

Betting-pool for who gets the #1 pick this year? The Cats or the Nets is my guess today.

[The Consiglieri]

double post

[The Consiglieri]

They don't rig it anymore, i just don't believe that. There's way way way too much money at risk. Teams know how the #1 overall picks are in drafts like the '03, the '04, '05, '07-'09, '10, and '11. Sometimes the drafts are weird and the values a little later like '05, sometimes the draft has nothing but a #1 and role players like '09 and to a degree '11, but many many years, the #1 pick has HUGE value, franchise changing value and this year is no different. Teams should, and would, sue the bajesus out of Stern if he was rigging this. Think about Blake Griffin to the clips, Irving to the Cavs, Lebron to the Cavs, Howard to Orlando, maybe Wall to us? Without those moves, those franchises would be absolute toilets, and three of those franchises would be in big time fiscal trouble in this Great Recession.

Nobody is going to stand for a rigged lottery. Nobody, and last years lottery is a great example. If the Clips hadn't made that horrific trade to unload the Fat Baron, they'd have Kyrie Irving instead of Chris Paul, and still have a ton of assets to help continue building around Griffin. Instead, the Cavs got Irving, instead of Tristan Thompson (or Valunciunas) to begin their rebuild around.

This thing isn't rigged anymore. There would be massive lawsuits if it was. At this point, its a percentages game, and because the lottery is unbelievably retardedly percentaged out, it allows for inumerable wacky results. When the worst two teams combined don't even have a working majority chance of winning the lottery, you know the system is idiotic, and ripe for crazy results, which can and has consistently happened (Minnesota always getting screwed, until 2011, the Boulez getting absolutely hosed, or at best, not improving at all, save for a horrific draft, and the Wall draft in more than 25 years etc).

At the end of the day, we are playing this right, we're going to have a 1 in 5, or a 1 in 6.7 chance of getting Davis, and basically a what, a 75-85% chance of getting a big 4 pick so long as we hold off New Orleans.

That's what matters. Davis would be a franchise changer, 2-4 would be a franchise helper, and 5 could be if Drummond is too attractive (and all of the big 5 are declared) to some team ahead of us. That's whats in play here.

I don't have any view on this other than that there's basically a 60% chance or so tha Charlotte, New Orleans, or we win it, and about a 30-35% chance that a team like New Jersey, Suckramento, Detroit, or Toronto wins it. So it won't be all that surprising if any of these guys go 1.

The lottery is just moronically set up. It should be something like:

1. 40%
2. 25%
3. 12.5%
4. 6%
5. 3%
6. 1.5%
7. .75%

etc

The first 2 picks should have at least a 70-75% chance of winning the lottery, not a freaking 60% chance. There's something inherently wrong with the idea that teams picking 3-6 combined have basically the same chance as teams picking 1-2 pre-lottery. The math just sucks.

[montestewart]

Maybe the lottery should be a mixture of standings and record. Imagine the worst six teams having records of 18-64, 19-63, 19-63, 20-62, 20-62, and 21-61. The worst team won only 3 fewer games than the sixth worst team, but would have over thirteen times better chance at getting #1. The tanking under that system would make Tank Girl look like Betty Cooper. (Or something like that.)

Also imagine under the current system (or any weighted system), a middling team squeaking into the playoffs, to be swept in the first round. Imagine another team, a better team with a better foundation and better long term prospects, but with an identical record, missing the playoffs on the last day of the season through a head-to-head competition, and beating the long-shot odds and winning the #1. Crazy, huh? And that's about what happened when Orlando won the lottery and chose Chris Webber.

Not sure what a perfect lottery system would look like, but I agree the current one is far from it.

[Rafael122]

Betting-pool for who gets the #1 pick this year? The Cats or the Nets is my guess today.

Portland, Utah and New Orleans each have two lottery picks. One of them will win it. I doubt Cleveland would have won the lottery last year if they had gotten the Clippers pick. Seems as though the lottery system weighs both lotto picks, thus increasing their odds.

If you believe in the conspiracy theories, I would say New Orleans gets the top pick.

BTW, Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio suggests that the Wizards are the best team to acquire another lottery pick. I think the best trading partner would be Utah.

[fishercob]

BTW, Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio suggests that the Wizards are the best team to acquire another lottery pick. I think the best trading partner would be Utah.

This would have to be using Lewis' contract in exchange for a lot of crap contracts. Maybe we'd have to include a young player or our second as well. Perhaps even a protected future first.

So we'd use Lewis' $22M contract on draft night in a trade, and then he'd be waived the next day and provide an instant savings of about $9M.

The most logical partner is Detroit, because they are both in the lotto and have the worst cap situation of any bad team going forward. Something around Lewis for Villanueva and Gordon.

Maybe New Orleans for Okafor and Ariza, but I think at their stage of development NOH would rather have a decent vet or two and the pick, even if they're overpaid. They dont have other bad deals on the books.

Utah doesnt make much sense because Jefferson and Harris don't have much more time left on their deals; they wouldnt save enough long term to warrant coughing up a lotto pick.

I'm actually not thrilled with this idea; it would seem to me that if you have Nivek and CCJ running our draft that you could get just as good a player in the early second (or late first if we want to trade up a bit) as we would would in the late lotto -- and we wouldnt have to take on terrible deals and the player we draft will be locked into a much cheaper deal.

If the draft "market" were efficient, I might feel differently, but we all know it's not.

[Dat2U]

If you believe in the conspiracy theories, I would say New Orleans gets the top pick.

Actually, if you really believe in conspiracy theories then there's no shot in hell NO gets the pick because the NBA knows how much heat it would get if the team it owns somehow gets the draft's most coveted prize.

[closg00]

Betting-pool for who gets the #1 pick this year? The Cats or the Nets is my guess today.

Portland, Utah and New Orleans each have two lottery picks. One of them will win it. I doubt Cleveland would have won the lottery last year if they had gotten the Clippers pick. Seems as though the lottery system weighs both lotto picks, thus increasing their odds.

If you believe in the conspiracy theories, I would say New Orleans gets the top pick.

BTW, Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio suggests that the Wizards are the best team to acquire another lottery pick. I think the best trading partner would be Utah.

Didn't know about the extra chances for Por.tland, Utah, and NOH. NOH winning looks-like a good bet.

[The Consiglieri]

Maybe the lottery should be a mixture of standings and record. Imagine the worst six teams having records of 18-64, 19-63, 19-63, 20-62, 20-62, and 21-61. The worst team won only 3 fewer games than the sixth worst team, but would have over thirteen times better chance at getting #1. The tanking under that system would make Tank Girl look like Betty Cooper. (Or something like that.)

Also imagine under the current system (or any weighted system), a middling team squeaking into the playoffs, to be swept in the first round. Imagine another team, a better team with a better foundation and better long term prospects, but with an identical record, missing the playoffs on the last day of the season through a head-to-head competition, and beating the long-shot odds and winning the #1. Crazy, huh? And that's about what happened when Orlando won the lottery and chose Chris Webber.

Not sure what a perfect lottery system would look like, but I agree the current one is far from it.

At the end of the day, its just a reminder that the lottery should be ended (of course, its a halftime ratings booster, so they like it), it hasn't had any effect whatsoever on tanking, as the handling of Charlottes roster this past year can attest to. When teams blow, they sell off their assets in firesales, and rebuild, particularly when quality assets are available in the draft. This has been the truth in baseball, hockey and hoops forever (not so much in football, as the reverse is more common, with massive rosters, and very short schedules, and short leashes, GM's and coaches are far more interested in the next 24 hours, than the next year). End the freaking lottery you idiot, Stern. It doesn't work, and has been shown in this thread, and around the country, the only thing its good at, is hosing franchises in moribund markets while gifting great markets (think Rose to Chicago, Griffin to the Clippers, Webber to Shaq's Magic etc), and exacerbating the preexisting belief that not only are regular season and playoff games compromised by paid refs/not disinterested refs, but that the draft itself is rigged so that Stern can hand prime markets prime stars, create storylines, and foster media attention as needed to fluff up ratings, and please TNT and NBC, and owners.

[The Consiglieri]

Betting-pool for who gets the #1 pick this year? The Cats or the Nets is my guess today.

Portland, Utah and New Orleans each have two lottery picks. One of them will win it. I doubt Cleveland would have won the lottery last year if they had gotten the Clippers pick. Seems as though the lottery system weighs both lotto picks, thus increasing their odds.

If you believe in the conspiracy theories, I would say New Orleans gets the top pick.

BTW, Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio suggests that the Wizards are the best team to acquire another lottery pick. I think the best trading partner would be Utah.

Didn't know about the extra chances for Por.tland, Utah, and NOH. NOH winning looks-like a good bet.

Those percentages are still pretty low though. And the picks in at least a few scenarios are still contested and wont be clarified till the last week or so (because of the protections, and performances of the involved teams.

[Severn Hoos]

If you believe in the conspiracy theories, I would say New Orleans gets the top pick.

Actually, if you really believe in conspiracy theories then there's no shot in hell NO gets the pick because the NBA knows how much heat it would get if the team it owns somehow gets the draft's most coveted prize.

Ahh, but that's the beauty of the whole thing. They know that you know that, so it insulates them from the criticism, since surely they wouldn't fix it for the team they own. Double reverse secret mind games going on and stuff.



Don't mess with the Stern.

[montestewart]

^
After Stern's claims about the lockout, I think he could rig the lottery with a straight face.