"I tried to tank a couple years ago," Colangelo said. "And I didn't come out and say, 'Coach, you've got to lose games.' I never said that. I wanted to establish a winning tradition and a culture and all of that. But I wanted to do it in the framework of playing the young players, and with that, comes losing. There's just no way to avoid that."
Colangelo said Avery Johnson -- while coaching the then-New Jersey Nets, who already had traded their first-round pick -- was "smirking" after losing to Toronto by 31 points in the final game of the season. That win led to the Raptors picking eighth in the 2012 draft and selecting Terrence Ross.
Had they lost, they could have been in a coin flip for the No. 6 pick, which -- as Colangelo emphasized -- eventually became Damian Lillard.
Really, Colangelo said he was aiming even higher. He wanted the No. 1 pick, but Toronto coach Dwane Casey interfered.
"He did too good of a job in motivating his players," Colangelo said.
Former Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said he wants all teams to try to win every game.
"Not what Philadelphia is doing right now, which is embarrassing," Van Gundy said in a panel that current Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie attended. "I don't care, [commissioner] Adam Silver can say there's no tanking or what's going on -- if you're putting that roster on the floor, you're doing everything you can possibly do to try to lose."
Van Gundy said he supports eliminating the NBA draft and allowing all rookies to enter the league through free agency.
Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey didn't endorse that specific plan, but he also wants the league to overhaul its method for assigning draft picks.
"We have to get rid of the marginal incentive to lose," Morey said.
The NBA places non-playoff teams into a weighted lottery -- worse teams getting better odds of a higher pick -- so accusations of teams tanking to get a higher selection have long been a part of the league's culture. As the highly anticipated 2014 NBA draft approaches, those murmurs have increased.
Morey finds the speculation justified.
"It's bad right now," Morey said. "I think last year, at the end of the season, I counted like two-thirds of the teams weren't trying to win."
So Colangelo admits to trying to tank(literally, in his own words), and Morey says he believed that 2/3 of the NBA wasn't trying to win last year.
But this is where I think the battle of semantics(which has been discussed many times on this board) pops up: Colangelo makes it clear that he wasn't telling his team to lose. Rather, he stockpiled his team with young players, and losing is a natural byproduct of playing primarily young, unproven guys.
How is that different from Philadelphia is doing? Philly traded their vets for young guys and assets. These young guys aren't very good, and they're losing a lot, but they've set a solid foundation to build on with MCW, Noel, Tobias, Harkless, and a boatload of picks. Is that tanking, or is that rebuilding? Is it disgraceful, or is it a way to construct your team?
What do you guys think?
Lucky for me, I had the same definition, as well as many others here.