sixerswillrule wrote:SichtingLives wrote:sixerswillrule wrote:
The moves by the Sixers this off-season were by a new GM. So they were pretty much the opposite of a last ditch effort to his save his job.
So that would totally override the history of tanking and it's high percentage failure to achieve sustained success? Remains to be seen in Philly, we'll find out there. It's not always a last ditch maneuver, it's sometimes just a maneuver by a sub-par GM. Once in a great while it does work, but then again.....that's still all about the luck of the draw and maturation of the assets.
Don't get me wrong, some teams are in a position that it is the smartest thing to do. If you're already bottomed out, then why the hell not. But RealGM logic makes it sounds like every team who doesn't make the playoffs ought to be headed straight to the bottom.
There is a high percentage of failure with ANY strategy. 29 out of 30 teams don't win the championship every year. 13 teams have never won a championship. But what can't be disputed is:
1) Building a winner usually starts with drafting a superstar.
2) You're most likely to draft a superstar at or near the top of the draft.
You can't fault someone for trying to put their team in the best position to obtain a franchise player. I'm all in favor of throwing a way sustained mediocrity in an attempt for true contention. #1 picks were largely responsible for 10 of the last 15 championships.
Want to argue that the Spurs didn't land Duncan by tanking? Don't. It's irrelevant whether or not they intended to be horrible because being horrible is exactly what led to their 4 championships, and that's the bottom line.
Want to argue that the Lakers didn't land Shaq by tanking? Don't. Being a permanently attractive destination for superstar free agents isn't exactly a viable alternative for almost every team.
Want to argue that the Heat didn't land LeBron by tanking? Don't. They never get LeBron without drafting Wade. See 1 and 2 above.
All I'm seeing here is more justification for why tanking is the most desperate model to obtain sustained success in the NBA. Top players in the draft don't get drafted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in that order, ever. Not all the time, but very often, top 3 players in each draft are drafted outside of the Top 5, and often out of the top 3. Sometimes quite a bit outside the Top 5. Check your draft history for proof of that. Nor do the best players always (or even regularly) remain with the team that pissed away years of time to throw their blind luck into the lottery. Nor do the best players in a draft reveal themselves immediately for what they're worth.
Tim Duncan? Seems the C's and Grizzlies executed a much more efficient tank job for him than the Spurs did, guess the math was just off with the lottery balls. And no, tanking always has an element of intentionally losing games or "persuading a losing environment" from the Top of the organization down to the bottom for a chance at better odds on the best picks, so you're pretty much off on the whole definition there. Just being terrible isn't tanking and is not the same thing at all....nor would the common fan be privy to how much of which is actually applicable in every separate scenario.
Your Shaq example doesn't even make sense, it actually runs directly counter to your point and you need to re-word it to continue on that...then Lebron to Miami? Holy 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, I got news for you mano, Lebron in Miami has nothing more to do with than a personal decision he made and he could've just as easily chosen somewhere else. Miami ends up with 3 of the 4 best players drafted in 2003 8 years later and you're trying to tie that to tanking (if you can even prove they didn't just suck, pure and simple that year) for Wade? That is quite the reach, you probably want some more direct examples to back up your point. These are all pretty cloudy.
In this day and age (sadly), it is up to the stars of the league to plot and scheme how they want to build teams, GMs aren't in the drivers seat as much as they used to be, although the decent ones still have plenty of a say in how they build a team. Buffoons running crap organizations like crap to get a shot at some maybe-stud so they can develop said stud on a team that will continue to be not-quite good enough to win a ring so a big market team who has more star power to influence the decision and eventually swipe that stud away in their prime, yeah, that's actually the second most successful outcome you can get from tanking next to the miniscule chance you're going to draft the next Tim Duncan and everything works out peaches.
Fact is, a good GM plays poker and a poor one plays roulette. Tanking is roulette, not poker. You can win but there isn't much strategy behind it. There's a time and place for it, but it shouldn't be unless you're already working from a place of severe weakness with a short stack of chips in front of you. Teams with actual assets shouldn't be pissing them away on a pipedream just because they aren't an immediate "contender", this is just alot of internet hypetalk that grows out of control in the off-season. Happens every year, nothing new.
