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The Magic and Sixers are the only teams that have fielded teams not built to be competitive for the playoffs. The Suns intended that, but have been on a magical run.

Both NY teams don't own their first rounders.

Utah's record since Trey Burke came back from injury is almost .500-ish

The Bucks were projected to be a borderline playoff team in the preseason, and their pieces have just not gelled (and their best player in Sanders was injured until this week). You can call it "stealth tanking" but given the owner's track record, not likely.

Sacramento made a win-now move for Gay.

LAL was above .500 until all 3 of their PGs got injured, forcing their backup SF to start at PG.

Am I wrong? I don't get the constant complaining on this site about "integrity of the game" and "draft wheel" and "incentive to lose." There were 3 legitimate tanking teams this year, and 1 played its way out of the tank.

And I certainly don't believe any team is intentionally losing games.

How exactly are the Magic truly tanking? They havent traded away veterans. The roster they have is practically the same as last years which was the worst in the NBA, and they are in year #2 of a rebuild from having to trade away Dwight and burn through bad contracts of Arenas and Hedo.

Was Cleveland tanking after Lebron left or did they have to rebuild and retool? Same thing there.

edit: Believe me, plenty of Magic fans want them to truly tank by trading away BBD and AA, but it doesnt look like that will be the case.

Xepa777 wrote:Sacramento made a win-now move for Gay.

I rest my case

sabonis wrote:

Xepa777 wrote:[b][color=#FF0000]
Sacramento made a win-now move for Gay.

I rest my case

lol. nice.

If the Magic are truly tanking the Jazz are too

Check the sig...

Wait for the Raptors. The Gm is tanking, but the player are winning.

For example the Celtics or the Raptors are on tankmode too "rosterwise" but the unbelievable weak EC allow them to make the postseason! Bad for them...

The Nets tank for the Hawks with their pick swapping in the Joe Johnson deal. Atlanta could be the biggest winner ever on draft day if the Nets stay bad and probably make a top 3 pick

The suns never "intended" to tank. They knew they had a good team on their hands unlike every other person in the world who thought we'd be last in the league.

Celtics?

Superhuman wrote:The suns never "intended" to tank. They knew they had a good team on their hands unlike every other person in the world who thought we'd be last in the league.

I´ve to defend most of the "critics" because nobody could imagine that Bledsoe/Dragic works, Jeff Hornacek will be a genius on bench and especially Miles Plumlee will be that beast that he is this season!
Most of the Suns fans thought they gon be bad this year and tank the hell out of it!

You get confused with who is tanking and who is not,
when 30% of teams are tanking.

real tanking happens later after AS break.

I don't think the Magic are tanking, they just aren't very good. All young guys and their best player is Aaron Afflalo....

The only blantant tanking team is Philly. It's actually very embarassing and they should be punished for intentionally not even fielding an NBA-caliber team. At least teams like the Bucks and Bobcats actually tried to add NBA-caliber players.

Superhuman wrote:The suns never "intended" to tank. They knew they had a good team on their hands unlike every other person in the world who thought we'd be last in the league.

Didn't the Suns trade their starting centre for a draft pick and a guy everyone knew was injured? I'm sure that NOW the Suns are thinking about winning but that trade certainly wasn't about improving their odds this year.

Utah is clearly trying to tank.

illiance wrote:The only blantant tanking team is Philly. It's actually very embarassing and they should be punished for intentionally not even fielding an NBA-caliber team. At least teams like the Bucks and Bobcats actually tried to add NBA-caliber players.

So far, they have accumulated 9 wins and are on track to crack 20 wins which is by no means too outrageous.

More than anything, they should be rewarded for their year-long persistence of not rebuilding their team and staying mediocre (check their season record for the past 10 years). They even pass up the chance to rebuild after Iverson was traded - that was the year when Oden and Durant declared for the draft - and instead were lead by Andre Miller and Joe Smith. Heck, even more than one year ago they appeared to rebuild successfully with the acquisition of Bynum - without having to tank.

But enough is enough and the Sixers made the only prudent choice by completely rebuilding their team.

loserX wrote:

Superhuman wrote:The suns never "intended" to tank. They knew they had a good team on their hands unlike every other person in the world who thought we'd be last in the league.

Didn't the Suns trade their starting centre for a draft pick and a guy everyone knew was injured? I'm sure that NOW the Suns are thinking about winning but that trade certainly wasn't about improving their odds this year.

Good point. That trade was basically addition by subtraction tho. It got rid of Shannon Brown and Kendall Marshall, two eye sores on the team we wanted out. Gortat didn't seem to want to play in Phoenix anymore, ever since Nash left. And it wasn't like he was beasting or anything, averaging 11/8 that season. And the FO hoped either Plumlee or Len could fill that role, which Plumlee did, exceeding expectations.

Also getting the Wiz's 1st rd pick in a good draft was a plus, adding on to the other picks we'll have for that draft.

BKing10 wrote:real tanking happens later after AS break.

Yup. That's about the time players start going down with mysterious injuries..