iCallBankshot wrote:Has anyone ever thought WINNING might be good for player development plus creating a WINNING culture? People are taking this tanking strategy to an obscene level. I understand the wonders of a top-5 pick but remember Andrea Bargnani went #1, Darko went #2, Anthony Bennett, and countless other busts. Meanwhile Kyle Kuzma, Draymond Green, Manu Ginobili and even Kawhi plus countless others went late round and second round. Good drafting is good drafting. I'm not with the let's lose on purpose strategy. Let's win and draft smart.
Winning is great. As long as it has a direction. Winning when the team's trajectory is pointed up is a great thing. Winning as a young team with room to grow is a great thing. Winning with assets to make a splash or space to sign needed players is a great thing. Winning knowing your 2-3 year window starts now and closes at the end of a player's prime is a great thing.
The Knicks are doing the worst kind of winning: winning with no direction and no hope of contention in the near future. The Knicks have placed all of their cap space into THJ, KP, and Noah (at least for next season). There's no real second star in the making on this team. There's no cap space. No competent NBA point guard. I want to see the Knicks win and I'd be happy if this team won 40 something games, but it's clear we aren't that team. With a healthy THJ, we are something like a 37 win team. And we don't have any clear upside moving forward, unless you really want to bank on Frank becoming a star, which I don't see.
The Knicks are myring themselves in mediocrity, and I think it's a scary proposition. Good drafting is good drafting, you are right. But there are FAR MORE GREAT PLAYERS drafted at the top of the draft than the bottom. You've named the rare standouts and have forgotten the hundreds drafted 20-60 that never even made the league. Meanwhile the majority of great players come in the top 3. You have a higher change of drafting a game-changing talent in the top 3-5 range. It gets exponential as you get to #1-2-3. Some years are outliers, like when we got KP instead of Russell or Okafor. But most years, it rings true.
Would you rather have the #1 pick or the #60 pick?
I'm not saying this team should deliberately tank. I don't want us to sit healthy players or give up on the court. A high draft pick should be the natural result of steering your team in the proper direction and giving playing time to the young players that matter most. If you'e asking whether I'd want to have Jarret Jack, Lee, Tim Hardaway, and Enes Kanter and win 38 games or have Frank/no name/Lance/KP/KOQ and win 25 games....I would take the latter in a heartbeat.
sure there's no guarantee that we get a star in the draft, but having less money on the books, a higher draft pick, and any assets we can accrue by trading Lee would be better for the long-term future of this franchise. There's no guarantee that the player turns into a star, but at least it gives us a good chance of getting what we need. The way we are going does not accomplish that.