SMTBSI wrote:BannersOnly wrote:Writebloc wrote:There have been plenty of terrible teams in the NBA that didn't want to tank. To think that teams in the NBA are only bad because they are trying to tank is naive.
Disagree. Teams going nowhere and in position to land a Top 3-5 pick almost always try to tank and lose over the the final 2-3 weeks of the season. It's why many people hate the NBA draft system. Brooklyn, even if they are really bad, will have a owner, GM and coach trying to pull out all the stops to win down the stretch to save themselves from e embarassment of handing the C's a top 3-5 pick. An extra 2-3 wins is the difference between #3 and #7 some years. Just calling it like I see it.
The Knicks went into last year genuinely trying to win, and came out of the gate 4-20 (and later 5-36). They were 5-33 when Melo was officially "shut down".
Now, they definitely ultimately went full in the tank, so you don't technically have an example here of a team being one of the worst all season long while trying not to be. But, their win% was better after shutting Melo down than before. I feel pretty confident they were absolutely going to have one of the worst records in the league, even if they had kept "trying".
They would have had to go 21-23, after the date Carmelo was shut down, just in order to not be in position for a top five pick. So, I think that's a pretty solid counter example.
(That being said, I agree that the majority of the bottom slots will usually be occupied by teams that are trying to be there. There's probably - wild guess - something like one surprise-genuinely-terrible team per year in the bottom five.)
The other example you are looking for is the Cavs landing the Wiggins pick. They were moving assets to get into the playoffs and still couldn't get better than the ninth lotto seed, then ultimately won the lotto.
