eureca20 wrote:MoochieNorris wrote:would be pretty dumb for okc to trade him at this point.
dont be a joke team. you're at .500 and in the playoffs over 1/3 into the season. go for it.
Go for what exactly? The 8th seed so they can be swept and miss out on a lottery pick? A lottery pick where you have much better odds of jumping up than previous years.
Tanking can start a vicious cycle far worse than the dreaded 'mediocrity treadmill'. High draft picks are never even close to guaranteed to be good, let alone franchise type players. Losing can cast a pall over a team, and usually it isn't worth the slightly better odds of picking a better player, especially since the lottery odds have been adjusted. Look at teams like Boston and Dallas. Neither purposefully tanked, yet they came up with serious playoff contenders anyway, and without alienating fans. Every player on a winning team tends to have more trade value than if those same players are on a loser. Is tanking the trade value of the players on a team's roster worth the higher draft pick? Probably not. Also, young players get accustomed to losing and can develop less effectively because of it. If it appears that the franchise is embarking on a multi-year tank-job, players will be much less motivated to produce, stunting their development. Those players who do improve will be more likely to leave during free agency, or ask for more than market value contracts, or demand a trade. A player who had to deal with a multi-year tank is far less likely to tolerate a future injury-related down year for the team. And other team's free agents may be less motivated to join such a team. Fan pressure can force a sudden switch from a long-term tank process to a win-now process that then would likely lead to a series of bad decisions. Such bad decisions will usually create a situation that could create a multi-decade streak of bad basketball that can leave fans disgusted and anyone with any talent, from execs, to coaches, to players, with big reasons to avoid such a team, no matter how much money is offered. Generally, the downward spiral of tanking just isn't worth it.
There is a good chance the team could trade Adams and Gallo and still stay in the playoff hunt, and there is little reason not to do so. Specifically for OKC, making the playoffs would likely make CP3 more tradeable, since other teams would see that he can still be a leader of a winner. And SGA could benefit greatly from more playoff experience, especially as the team's star.