The Argument Against Tanking

[Wannabe MEP]

I wrote a 3-part series arguing against tanking this week for From Ashes. It may have already lost some of its relevance now that we've moved up to 9th, but I still thought I'd share.

Part 1: The Spurs Roadmap

There have been 110 top-5 picks since 1990. Only two of them, Duncan and Dwyane Wade, have won titles with their original teams.

So the Spurs path to Duncan wasn't to trade good players. It was to have them get injured so they'd be back to play with the new talent the following year. Someone should tell Nash to break his leg and Gortat to tear an ACL.

Part 2: The Immortal Steve Nash

According to 2-year adjusted +/-, Nash is the 3rd most valuable player in the league right now behind only Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Paul.

The Suns starters have the best raw +/- of any unit in the NBA this season, and it's not close. They are also among the elite units in adjusted +/- and overall rating. Among the surprises: They have a better offensive rating (114.75 to 111.24), overall rating (+14.92 to +13.24), and adjusted +/- (+12.62 to +7.79) than the Heat starters.

Nash's game is all about reading defenses, intelligence, court vision, crisp passing, shooting touch, creativity, and deception, none of which necessarily decline with age.

Part 3: A Culture of Excellence

You know that buzz that happened in the 2010 playoffs when the Suns' second unit started rolling against the Spurs' and Lakers' starters in the second half of close games, and the Suns' players on the bench would start freaking out? The best part was when Robin Lopez would drop down screaming and bouncing all over the place with his arms spread out as if the celebration was going to burst onto the court if he didn't hold everyone back, even though he was the one that was most out of control:



Yeah, that was an outburst of a culture of excellence. I have absolutely no idea what Lopez doing, but I loved it all the same. It said that the team loved playing--and winning--together when they would go nuts cheering for each other. I saw Lopez doing that again recently, and even though we were still irrelevantly below .500, I felt a nostalgic thrill. Stuff like that is contagious, and not just within the Suns organization. Surprises, thrills, excellence: anything buzz-worthy like that can go viral in the Twitosphere these days and create Excitement.

[Moochthemonkey]

Wow...that was a damn good read. Especially the last part. Thanks for posting

[Frank Lee]

DEBUNKING THE MYTH


The draft is an elixir to many... when in fact, unless taken with high doses(top/multiple picks in successive yrs) it really a just panacea. And even going the draft=rebuild philosophy, as mentioned and supported, a tremendous amount of luck is involved.

FA's/traded vets have a much greater return over a shorter span.

The Tank is not only parked, but it is slated for dismantlement. Besides, it was just a heavier bandwagon.

[Avp115]

Interesting read. I won't be pissed if we're in the playoffs, but I'll be pissed if we're 9th/10th in the west. The thing that irks me about our front office is that they aren't fully committed to the team's direction, one way or the other. They just care about what's in their bank accounts. We could've kept Amare, and made a run at it: if we did we could easily be 3rd or higher in the west right now, but we didn't. When we didn't do that, we had the option to trade Nash and fully commit to tanking, but we didn't. I want for us to compete, but losing in a late round of the playoffs (which I think would be the most we could do in the playoffs, currently) is ultimately the worst thing for an aging basketball team. Needless to say, if we do lose late in the playoffs, we can still get a star in this deep draft.