dobrojim wrote:9 and 20 wrote:Big time competition for a top 5 pick -
Utah
Toronto
Charlotte
Everyone else seems clearly a step above us - Detroit, Portland, etc. Utah will be hard to beat for that top spot.
My question, and I almost feel like it deserves its own thread, is what is the appropriate balance
between totally tanking and not tanking at all. You can have the worst record and still not get a
very high pick. Going that route could hurt the development of the players you already have.
Being awful doesn't guarantee anything except being awful. Or as PIF would point out, high
picks are no guarantee of getting good players even as they do give you better opportunities
for the best players. That said, I think 10 years from now, it will probably be the consensus
that in certain years, like last year with Wemby, there is a pretty clear choice. Maybe that
is a more of a rare circumstance than the promoters of tanking would readily concede.
Would Zion still go before Ja in a redo with perfect foresight? Of course, they went 1-2,
so you still had to be bad and have lotto luck to draft either.
I think the very early returns of our 1st year players looks reasonably promising. This hints
that we could do okay without necessarily getting the #1#1.
But It will be interesting to see, after 3-5 years, what order our 3 rookies would rank
among themselves. But this wouldn't tell you which order you would have had to draft
them in in order to get them.
I actually like what they’re doing. Play the young foundational players as much as possible, see what they can do and what you have in them, let them learn & develop, the losses will come just due to lack of experience, and hopefully the losing will motivate them to work hard this offseason, as well as lead to a high draft pick.
I’ve been imagining Flagg in a Wizards uniform running with the Wiz Kids. Glad to see I’m not the only one dreaming about it. 
