captaincrunk wrote: Larry Brown was probably the biggest single individual piece in regards to our poor performance.
We’re in agreement that Brown needed to go. The morale was in the toilet and I’ve always valued him more as a teacher than a coach. The game had passed him by and his rotations might as well have been decided by paper/rock/scissors.
But the primary reason this club has struggled is simply that they aren’t particularly good and in the off-season, every one else around us got better.
captaincrunk wrote: do you remember the post I made that was several paragraphs long about how MJ would be an idiot to kill our fanbase by making the team suck on purpose? Yeah, go read that one.
Yeah, I remember that post. Something you had pasted from a friend if I recall. I was unable to write any type of lengthy response at the time as I had just had lasik the previous afternoon and shouldn’t have even been on the computer.
I think fans are pretty tolerant of sucking if they see that you are building towards something. For example, lets hypothetically say we presently had John Wall and a better cap situation but were only a 6 or 7 win team instead of an 11. I don’t think the attendance swing would be terribly significant.
What I do think is a danger, which we’ve seen some of already, is losing casual fans through attrition who saw the teams playoff birth, mistakenly thought the club was going places and are now puzzle and disappointed that the team has seemingly stalled out.
captaincrunk wrote: EDIT: And teams don't get better by tanking. IF they do tank, 4-5 years later they do what they should have done in the first place and trade/draft well, and compete.
Tell that to the San Antonio Spurs (Tim Duncan), the OKC Thunder (Durant) and the 03-09 Cavs (Lebron) and the Nugs (Melo).
These teams saw the writing on the wall, knew their seasons were shot and instead of stubbornly trying to make band-aid trades in a hail mary effort to make a cameo playoff appearance, they shut it down for the season. This afforded them the lottery balls necessary that made it possible to draft these players who changed to course of history for their franchises.
Say what you will about Lebron leaving Cleveland and Melo ditching Denver but these players never would have signed in those cities as Free Agents otherwise. 7 years of Lebron is better than zero. He took them to the NBA Finals, re-invigorated fan interest and the franchise and city were better for it.
captaincrunk wrote: you'd be an idiot to think MJ wants to tank. No one wants to tank but you guys. The players don't want to lose games. Silas certainly doesn't want us to lose games.
You’re right about the players and Silas not wanting to tank. A coach’s job is to best prepare a team to win every game they play. This is why I’ve long advocated the segregation of coaching and GM duties since a GM’s job involves a time horizon much broader than individual games – namely positioning a club for long term success.
And you are absolutely right about MJ not wanting to tank. He’s the ultimate competitor and I don’t think he has the patience to do what’s necessary as a GM. The only way its going to happen is at figurative gun point (things hit absolute rock bottom, and he acquiesces to hitting the detonator). I don’t know if he has it in him though.
If not, we might be in for a decade of 35-45 win teams whose ultimate barometer of success is achieving a first round playoff appearance and loss.
