The argument for Tanking: Why it works, and you just don't remember

[Chicago-Bull-E]

That’s not a logical argument against tanking being a legitimate team building strategy based on real world circumstances. It’s simply an example of it not working. Everyone already agrees that it’s unlikely to work. Just like every other team building strategy intended to build a contender.

We can all make lists of hundreds of examples of types of strategies failing. Doesn’t mean the strategy itself should be universally discarded.

I wish I could give multiple And 1s. I mentioned this initially, that the data of other strategies failing spectacularly is much greater than a formal tank. But no one seems to care, no one shouts at the rooftops "Building a title contender through free agency doesn't work, here are 200+ examples over the last decade"

The majority of contenders this season were not built through tanking to get high picks. They were built through smart drafting - hitting gold in the mid-to-late draft, combined with smart FAs and/or trades. There is *one* tank team that is a contender this season - the Sixers. All the rest are not.

The Mavs are the next closest thing, but the team that ended up getting them in a position to trade up for Luka wasn't a tank team - Harrison Barnes, Wes Matthews, old man Dirk, old men Barea and Devin Harris, young (ultimately a bust) in Dennis Smith Jr., grimey-players Ferrell, Finney-Smith, and even Powell/Kleiber, and fliers on Nerlens Noel and Doug McDermott. That team was just hurt a lot and bad "by accident." (Similarly, the Blazers got Lillard on one bad year after 3 years in the playoffs, then only had one bad year with Dame before being back in the playoffs in the west).

If the Hawks become contenders - a pretty big if - then you'd have a 2nd "tank worked" team (where they dumped Millsap, Horford, Schroeder and sucked for a very long time).

Meanwhile, you still fail to factor in the reduced lotto odds - making being bad less attractive in terms of your chances of drafting high and getting a shot at a generational player.

While I agree with you, based on how you're defining "tanking", very few teams even implement this approach, so to say more teams at the top are built through free agency is disingenuous.

I'll do this as an extreme to make it clear, but let's say there are 6 teams that are contenders. One of them is a tank, and only 2 teams tanked in the league, the others did not. So the success rate of tanking is actually 50%, while other methods have an 18% success rate (5 contenders out of the remaining 28 teams).

Those numbers are arbitrary (so please don't respond with 'actually, 6 teams tanked'), but the point is the same, what percentage of each approach is working is a more telling study.

I agree, the tanking odds are hard. EVERY path to a championship is hard and a very low success rate.

[dougthonus]

I mean sure, I am not against those trades, but even if we hit relative gold we would just get a pretty good player that we could acquire through other means. We would have to strike platinum to get a special asset. That is 50 players I went through, and only Rudy and Siakam were ever guys who couldn't easily be acquired.

I agree that it is unlikely these trades move the needle. Its just a matter of asset management. You can either have a future 1st or Otto the rest of this season. If you are .500, you might actually keep Otto in that situation. If you are projected as a bottom 10 team, then you might as well take the late 1st even if it isn't that valuable because its something that has SOME value or nothing.

[cjbulls]

So who would you rather be the last 20+ years, the Bulls or Utah/Indiana?

The Bulls essentially followed a few tank like rebuilds, made a conference finals and had several competitive playoff years in two different rebuilds, or be Indiana/Utah where they are perennially competitive, made a conference finals but always had a good team without embracing a tank.

I don’t think either answer is necessarily “wrong”, but I know I’d rather be one of those small market squads over the Bulls constantly chasing stars at the expense of winning.

Maybe I’d feel differently if I was rooting for them all this time.

[coldfish]

Again, tanking is to acquire assets to help build. It does not mean only keeping and developing rookies. The Lakers are not the champs without LeBron OR tanking. They needed those high lottery prospects to acquire AD.

It’s a more nuanced issue than its being distilled to here. I also reject “championship teams” as the sample size. It should be any well built team capable of contending for its conference championship. And if we go back over the years we will find a strong percentage of such teams built through heavy reliance on their draft assets.

Again, out of the top teams last year virtually all of them acquired their best players in the middle of the draft or by trade and free agency. Its not just championship teams. That's just an easy and objective way to present data because everyone knows the list. I have no particular desire to argue about who the 4th best team in 2007 was and how they were built.

And yeah, a lot of teams were built up on draft assets but the Bucks taking Giannis at #15 or the Nuggets taking Jokic at 41 are not examples of drafting. There is a grand total of zero people who advocate drafting poorly.

[TheSuzerain]

The truth of it is that we've been trying to build up slowly since trading Butler. We didn't do a teardown at all. They literally traded Butler for 3 roster players.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

But the data of the other strategies doesn’t result in perennial 20-win teams that are borderline unbearable to watch as fans.

If tanking didn’t require you to be terrible and uninteresting, more people would be on board. Or if you only had to do it for a year or two. But that hasn’t been the case. Bulls fans are already tired after the last three bad years to sign up for 3-5 more, and even then have a marginal chance at even a conference finals contender.

Of course they do.

Maybe not 20 win teams, but Chicago, Sacramento, Orlando are all teams that haven't actually tanked, and have even signed veteran free agents or tried to build with cap space. And it hasn't worked out, they're in a different kind of hell where they consistently draft at the end of the lottery and no one considers as real contenders (Orlando is off to a good start but I have doubts).

Building through the draft and "have the chips fall where they may" so to speak and signing support veterans fails all the time. It's probably the most common form of failure.

Out of the last 69 players taken in the top 3 of the draft, a grand total of zero of them have stayed on their team and lead them to a title.

Trying to build a team up slowly is unlikely to work but it doesn't have the 0% success rate that tanking does. As I have noted, there are legitimate reasons for this. You only have a guy under contract for so long. Once you have ripped the spine out of your team, its not easy to build it back in time to convince the great guy you drafted to stay. No one has been able to do it for a long, long time. Its never been done on anything that looks like our current free agency rules.

You're purposefully narrowing the definition of tanking, I've made this clear already.

I provided a definition for the discussion in the OP, and have made pretty clear examples of it in the OP. I don't know what more I could say over and over again to get it through. If you completely disagree with that definition, then fair enough, stop using the same stat over and over again.

[cjbulls]

He only went back there because he’s from Akron AND because by being terrible they had accumulated the necessary assets to convince him they could immediately contend.

Cleveland could also have accumulated those assets by not being terrible. Not Kyrie, specifically, but a .500 squad that could win the East by adding LeBron and some ring chasers. Tanking proved to be an effective path for Cleveland but not the only path that it could have taken.

I do not deny that tanking can get the job done, when the job is to accumulate assets that can accompany a generational superstar. But again, it is not the only path, nor is it the important part of the job. Getting the superstar is what really matters.

lol what assets did they have other than Kyrie and the #1 overall pick that was traded for Love?

The anti-tankers arguing against Cleveland just look disingenuous.

Yeah, just win 3 #1 overall picks in 4 years and have one of the top five greatest players of all time grow up in your hometown.

Easy, peasy.

[DuckIII]

That’s not a logical argument against tanking being a legitimate team building strategy based on real world circumstances. It’s simply an example of it not working. Everyone already agrees that it’s unlikely to work. Just like every other team building strategy intended to build a contender.

We can all make lists of hundreds of examples of types of strategies failing. Doesn’t mean the strategy itself should be universally discarded.

I wish I could give multiple And 1s. I mentioned this initially, that the data of other strategies failing spectacularly is much greater than a formal tank. But no one seems to care, no one shouts at the rooftops "Building a title contender through free agency doesn't work, here are 200+ examples over the last decade"

But the data of the other strategies doesn’t result in perennial 20-win teams that are borderline unbearable to watch as fans.

If tanking didn’t require you to be terrible and uninteresting, more people would be on board. Or if you only had to do it for a year or two. But that hasn’t been the case. Bulls fans are already tired after the last three bad years to sign up for 3-5 more, and even then have a marginal chance at even a conference finals contender.

Coldfish, this is what I was referring to. You may not advocate against tanking because you are just tired and bored with losing. But it does describe a lot of fans at realgm and it would be easy to prove by looking at the many threads we’ve had about the topic. And these are the hardcore fans who would be more inclined to tolerate some losing, rather than just general fans who want to tune into the occasional game to be entertained.

And there’s nothing wrong with that outlook. But there is a line between “I don’t want to do that because it’s a miserable experience for me” and “it’s an obsolete strategy” that frequently gets blurred in here. With people who have the first view adopting the second one as a rationalization. Despite the second thing being false.

It’s not obsolete or unwise generally. Rather, it’s context driven. There is a huge difference.

[DuckIII]

Again, tanking is to acquire assets to help build. It does not mean only keeping and developing rookies. The Lakers are not the champs without LeBron OR tanking. They needed those high lottery prospects to acquire AD.

It’s a more nuanced issue than its being distilled to here. I also reject “championship teams” as the sample size. It should be any well built team capable of contending for its conference championship. And if we go back over the years we will find a strong percentage of such teams built through heavy reliance on their draft assets.

Again, out of the top teams last year virtually all of them acquired their best players in the middle of the draft or by trade and free agency. Its not just championship teams. That's just an easy and objective way to present data because everyone knows the list. I have no particular desire to argue about who the 4th best team in 2007 was and how they were built.

And yeah, a lot of teams were built up on draft assets but the Bucks taking Giannis at #15 or the Nuggets taking Jokic at 41 are not examples of drafting. There is a grand total of zero people who advocate drafting poorly.

You are still using an artificial sample. If I were to go back 18 years (starting arbitrarily with LeBron being drafted as an “era”) and evaluate the roster of every team in the top 4 of its conference (to set a firm definition of conference contender), I no doubt would find a large number of those teams being built based on the value of higher end lottery picks.

I’m not going to do that right now, but I doubt you’d disagree anyway that it’s what I’d find.

[cjbulls]

We just saw the Eagles do it it Sunday night in a prime time NFL game and people are killing the Jets for winning last week. It was ugly and will start the dialogue on NFL taking and they will probably reform the lottery like the NBA to stop teams from doing it.

I mean, doesn't that just show the hypocrisy of fans and the media, and why front offices shouldn't care at all what they say?

On one side, Jets fans were FURIOUS their team WON a game. That is protank.

This week, the media and fans were FURIOUS the Eagles lost a game. That is antitank.

These are two weeks apart from each other.

The NFL isn't going to do anything because it actually adds intrigue, ratings, and eyeballs to games that don't matter at all. They love the idea of the Jets taking up TV time when they are awful.

If you want to talk other sports, the Cubs had a large and well documented tank job that won them a world series. If that franchise didn't tank, they are still waiting 100+ years for a title.

You’re ignoring the context.

Jets lost out on #1 in a year with a sure-fire top pick (as much as can be reasonably said in NFL). They also won a game that was largely meaningless. It is also not clear what would have been said if the Jets purposely lost with a minute left, like handing the ball off to the other team. People were questioning their last second loss to the Raiders.

Eagles lost a game that moved their pick from 9 to 6 when they have no specific need or plans for the pick. They did it in a game that essentially meant they chose which rival team to let into the playoffs. This felt like a bigger affront to the integrity of the nfl because it affected the playoffs.

[RSP83]

The logical argument against tanking can be found in the Lauri Markkanen thread. Lauri was a highly regarded lottery prospect. He was surrounded with a bunch of young guys who didn't know how to play and a coach who didn't know how to teach. The end result is that we really don't know what we have in Lauri and are either going to have to wildly overpay him based on potential, trade him for peanuts or just let him walk.

That’s not a logical argument against tanking being a legitimate team building strategy based on real world circumstances. It’s simply an example of it not working. Everyone already agrees that it’s unlikely to work. Just like every other team building strategy intended to build a contender.

We can all make lists of hundreds of examples of types of strategies failing. Doesn’t mean the strategy itself should be universally discarded.

True.

Look at it more statistically. From last year, how many teams in the top of the NBA were built around a player they drafted high in the draft? From my perspective, only Boston. Even then, it wasn't their pick (Tatum). Everyone else built their team on mid round picks, free agency or by trade. Houston, Miami, LAL, LAC, Tor, Denver, etc.

As I noted before, virtually no team gets super bad, drafts a great player and goes on to become a title winner. That's tanking and it doesn't work. Like, since 1997 it has worked zero times. The other paths obviously aren't guaranteed success but they don't have a 23 year 0% success rate.

If your argument is that during the path of building up a team you should take a step back from time to time to step forward later, I can't disagree but that's a different discussion and not really tanking. Miami has done that to get Butler for example. They preserved capspace. That said, they didn't run their team into the ground to do it.

+1. I really like how Miami have been running their team. They have their lows, but I feel that they recover relatively quickly. The recovery don't always reach jackpot level, but they're respectable.

When Riley first took over they built around Alonzo Mourning, and they signed really good vets like Hardaway, Mashburn, etc. Then Mourning got sick, they try to stay competitive with fringe All-Star like Chris Gatling, but still result in lottery. Picked up Caron Butler, signed Lamar Odom, and got Wade. Traded Butler and LO for Shaq. Won championship, and got bad really fast, then tried to stay competitive with Wade, picked the wrong guy in Beasley. And then they have enough cap space to sign the Heatles. After the Heatles, they just sort of remain in that 10th to 9th seed, despite that Spo coached that team well, they only lack talent. They got guys like Dragic, Whiteside, and them guys. And then they picked right with their mid first round, got Bam, Herro and eventually they're able to sign Butler, and back to the Finals. Look, the Heat don't always hit big, but I'm fine with a team run like this, building a dynasty is not easy. Just try to build a winning team, and improve along the way.

[TheSuzerain]

Again, tanking is to acquire assets to help build. It does not mean only keeping and developing rookies. The Lakers are not the champs without LeBron OR tanking. They needed those high lottery prospects to acquire AD.

It’s a more nuanced issue than its being distilled to here. I also reject “championship teams” as the sample size. It should be any well built team capable of contending for its conference championship. And if we go back over the years we will find a strong percentage of such teams built through heavy reliance on their draft assets.

Again, out of the top teams last year virtually all of them acquired their best players in the middle of the draft or by trade and free agency. Its not just championship teams. That's just an easy and objective way to present data because everyone knows the list. I have no particular desire to argue about who the 4th best team in 2007 was and how they were built.

And yeah, a lot of teams were built up on draft assets but the Bucks taking Giannis at #15 or the Nuggets taking Jokic at 41 are not examples of drafting. There is a grand total of zero people who advocate drafting poorly.

You need a superstar. Ideally two. That's really the bottom line. In the current league landscape, we have 2 huge superstars who were drafted late which is unusual. More typically, those superstar players are found at the top of drafts. That is empirically true.

You can can also sign a superstar in FA or trade for them. This avenue is most workable for the LA teams, Miami, and maybe NY teams where superstars are willing to re-sign and stick around. We've been burned too many times before to have much confidence in our ability to sign a FA star. Trading is an option but that involves trading away your assets and runs the risk of the star player bolting (e.g. Kawhi). I most like the trading option to bring in a 2nd superstar to go for it. Or the rare case where a young star (e.g. Harden) becomes available, but that is exceedingly rare.

I don't think anyone is advocating for us to tank until we land 2 superstars or something (basically the extreme Hinkie version). But I do think a true teardown would achieve several goals:

1. Re-roll on core. We currently have a low IQ and unbalanced group with too many 1-way players. Why would you want that as a foundation even if you're going the "slow build" route? Even if we don't land a superstar, I view this as beneficial. Need to purge the group that got GarPax fired.

2. Possibly landing a star talent. It's not guaranteed, but picking higher (and more often) in the draft will improve our chances of landing a star talent.

3. Better contract management. If the rebuild was done properly, we could stack multiple lotto picks in the same draft which I view as beneficial from a contract perspective. That maximizes the intersection of us being an appealing, young, talented team and having cap space to make moves. Other part of stacking multiple picks is that it reduces the need to select perfectly. We want margin for error.

And to be frank, I don't even think it would take that long for the rebuilt core to match/eclipse the performance of the current core. Literally could have a better group next season; so, the cost seems extremely low to me with decent upside. Once you have the new core, we either rocket ship (e.g. we land a top pick and they are a superstar) or proceed with a more of a gradual as you note.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

We just saw the Eagles do it it Sunday night in a prime time NFL game and people are killing the Jets for winning last week. It was ugly and will start the dialogue on NFL taking and they will probably reform the lottery like the NBA to stop teams from doing it.

I mean, doesn't that just show the hypocrisy of fans and the media, and why front offices shouldn't care at all what they say?

On one side, Jets fans were FURIOUS their team WON a game. That is protank.

This week, the media and fans were FURIOUS the Eagles lost a game. That is antitank.

These are two weeks apart from each other.

The NFL isn't going to do anything because it actually adds intrigue, ratings, and eyeballs to games that don't matter at all. They love the idea of the Jets taking up TV time when they are awful.

If you want to talk other sports, the Cubs had a large and well documented tank job that won them a world series. If that franchise didn't tank, they are still waiting 100+ years for a title.

You’re ignoring the context.

Jets lost out on #1 in a year with a sure-fire top pick (as much as can be reasonably said in NFL). They also won a game that was largely meaningless. It is also not clear what would have been said if the Jets purposely lost with a minute left, like handing the ball off to the other team. People were questioning their last second loss to the Raiders.

Eagles lost a game that moved their pick from 9 to 6 when they have no specific need or plans for the pick. They did it in a game that essentially meant they chose which rival team to let into the playoffs. This felt like a bigger affront to the integrity of the nfl because it affected the playoffs.

There is A LOT of context to these scenarios, and they're really complex, something the media screaming heads don't care much for. In terms of the Eagles 'tanking', their starting QB before he was pulled had a 35% completion percentage, 0 TDs, 1 INT. He was pretty horrid passing (but was running). The coach also left in a lot of their other high players. Not a doomsday tank job that everyone is talking about.

More context is the knocked a team out of the playoffs that had 6 freaking wins. Win more games.

My only point was the discussion around these (particularly the Eagles) is silly and for the most part ratings driven. Teams play backups in completely meaningless games to get a sense of where they're at. It's not the end of the world, and if it was a team in Tennessee and not New York, we probably wouldn't have heard about it.

[cjbulls]

Of course they do.

Maybe not 20 win teams, but Chicago, Sacramento, Orlando are all teams that haven't actually tanked, and have even signed veteran free agents or tried to build with cap space. And it hasn't worked out, they're in a different kind of hell where they consistently draft at the end of the lottery and no one considers as real contenders (Orlando is off to a good start but I have doubts).

Building through the draft and "have the chips fall where they may" so to speak and signing support veterans fails all the time. It's probably the most common form of failure.

Out of the last 69 players taken in the top 3 of the draft, a grand total of zero of them have stayed on their team and lead them to a title.

Trying to build a team up slowly is unlikely to work but it doesn't have the 0% success rate that tanking does. As I have noted, there are legitimate reasons for this. You only have a guy under contract for so long. Once you have ripped the spine out of your team, its not easy to build it back in time to convince the great guy you drafted to stay. No one has been able to do it for a long, long time. Its never been done on anything that looks like our current free agency rules.

You're purposefully narrowing the definition of tanking, I've made this clear already.

I provided a definition for the discussion in the OP, and have made pretty clear examples of it in the OP. I don't know what more I could say over and over again to get it through. If you completely disagree with that definition, then fair enough, stop using the same stat over and over again.

I covered why your definition is bad, but you ignored it. You’ve also said things like Sacramento and Chicago weren’t tanking, when they clearly have.

Even the Butler trade which I wouldn’t call tanking, would be tanking under your definition

[cjbulls]

I mean, doesn't that just show the hypocrisy of fans and the media, and why front offices shouldn't care at all what they say?

On one side, Jets fans were FURIOUS their team WON a game. That is protank.

This week, the media and fans were FURIOUS the Eagles lost a game. That is antitank.

These are two weeks apart from each other.

The NFL isn't going to do anything because it actually adds intrigue, ratings, and eyeballs to games that don't matter at all. They love the idea of the Jets taking up TV time when they are awful.

If you want to talk other sports, the Cubs had a large and well documented tank job that won them a world series. If that franchise didn't tank, they are still waiting 100+ years for a title.

You’re ignoring the context.

Jets lost out on #1 in a year with a sure-fire top pick (as much as can be reasonably said in NFL). They also won a game that was largely meaningless. It is also not clear what would have been said if the Jets purposely lost with a minute left, like handing the ball off to the other team. People were questioning their last second loss to the Raiders.

Eagles lost a game that moved their pick from 9 to 6 when they have no specific need or plans for the pick. They did it in a game that essentially meant they chose which rival team to let into the playoffs. This felt like a bigger affront to the integrity of the nfl because it affected the playoffs.

There is A LOT of context to these scenarios, and they're really complex, something the media screaming heads don't care much for. In terms of the Eagles 'tanking', their starting QB before he was pulled had a 35% completion percentage, 0 TDs, 1 INT. He was pretty horrid passing (but was running). The coach also left in a lot of their other high players. Not a doomsday tank job that everyone is talking about.

More context is the knocked a team out of the playoffs that had 6 freaking wins. Win more games.

My only point was the discussion around these (particularly the Eagles) is silly and for the most part ratings driven. Teams play backups in completely meaningless games to get a sense of where they're at. It's not the end of the world, and if it was a team in Tennessee and not New York, we probably wouldn't have heard about it.

They don’t bench their rookie QB who is in a competition with their high priced QB to determine the future of the franchise in a close game, in favor of viewing a third 27yo career backup who has a 0% chance of ever being the starting QB.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

Out of the last 69 players taken in the top 3 of the draft, a grand total of zero of them have stayed on their team and lead them to a title.

Trying to build a team up slowly is unlikely to work but it doesn't have the 0% success rate that tanking does. As I have noted, there are legitimate reasons for this. You only have a guy under contract for so long. Once you have ripped the spine out of your team, its not easy to build it back in time to convince the great guy you drafted to stay. No one has been able to do it for a long, long time. Its never been done on anything that looks like our current free agency rules.

You're purposefully narrowing the definition of tanking, I've made this clear already.

I provided a definition for the discussion in the OP, and have made pretty clear examples of it in the OP. I don't know what more I could say over and over again to get it through. If you completely disagree with that definition, then fair enough, stop using the same stat over and over again.

I covered why your definition is bad, but you ignored it. You’ve also said things like Sacramento and Chicago weren’t tanking, when they clearly have.

Even the Butler trade which I wouldn’t call tanking, would be tanking under your definition

My definition is one that is used around the league. Don't participate would be my suggestion, because arguing the definition of tanking isn't the purpose of this thread.

[Chicago-Bull-E]

I don't think anyone is advocating for us to tank until we land 2 superstars or something (basically the extreme Hinkie version). But I do think a true teardown would achieve several goals:

1. Re-roll on core. We currently have a low IQ and unbalanced group with too many 1-way players. Why would you want that as a foundation even if you're going the "slow build" route? Even if we don't land a superstar, I view this as beneficial. Need to purge the group that got GarPax fired.

2. Possibly landing a star talent. It's not guaranteed, but picking higher (and more often) in the draft will improve our chances of landing a star talent.

3. Better contract management. If the rebuild was done properly, we could stack multiple lotto picks in the same draft which I view as beneficial from a contract perspective. That maximizes the intersection of us being an appealing, young, talented team and having cap space to make moves. Other part of stacking multiple picks is that it reduces the need to select perfectly. We want margin for error.

And to be frank, I don't even think it would take that long for the rebuilt core to match/eclipse the performance of the current core. Literally could have a better group next season; so, the cost seems extremely low to me with decent upside. Once you have the new core, we either rocket ship (e.g. we land a top pick and they are a superstar) or proceed with a more of a gradual as you note.

And to add, the Bulls are in a very unique situation where the front office has no connections to the majority of the roster, the draft next year is looking very good, AND the Bulls will have around 50-60 million dollars in cap space.

They could essentially tank for half a season, get one high pick and have traded vets for additional picks/young players, AND then sign free agents to supplement the new core. They could be an entirely different team next year.

[cjbulls]

You're purposefully narrowing the definition of tanking, I've made this clear already.

I provided a definition for the discussion in the OP, and have made pretty clear examples of it in the OP. I don't know what more I could say over and over again to get it through. If you completely disagree with that definition, then fair enough, stop using the same stat over and over again.

I covered why your definition is bad, but you ignored it. You’ve also said things like Sacramento and Chicago weren’t tanking, when they clearly have.

Even the Butler trade which I wouldn’t call tanking, would be tanking under your definition

My definition is one that is used around the league. Don't participate would be my suggestion, because arguing the definition of tanking isn't the purpose of this thread.

So which is it, were the Bulls tanking with the Butler trade or is your definition wrong? These are both your quotes.

First, let's discuss what tanking is. Tanking is a deliberate attempt by a front office to have their team perform poorly, in the hopes of getting a higher draft pick, draft compensation, maybe younger players they believe in over the vets that currently help them win. Losing deliberately in the short term in the hopes of winning in the long term.

Maybe not 20 win teams, but Chicago, Sacramento, Orlando are all teams that haven't actually tanked, and have even signed veteran free agents or tried to build with cap space. And it hasn't worked out,

[Chicago-Bull-E]

I covered why your definition is bad, but you ignored it. You’ve also said things like Sacramento and Chicago weren’t tanking, when they clearly have.

Even the Butler trade which I wouldn’t call tanking, would be tanking under your definition

My definition is one that is used around the league. Don't participate would be my suggestion, because arguing the definition of tanking isn't the purpose of this thread.

So which is it, were the Bulls tanking with the Butler trade or is your definition wrong? These are both your quotes.

First, let's discuss what tanking is. Tanking is a deliberate attempt by a front office to have their team perform poorly, in the hopes of getting a higher draft pick, draft compensation, maybe younger players they believe in over the vets that currently help them win. Losing deliberately in the short term in the hopes of winning in the long term.

Maybe not 20 win teams, but Chicago, Sacramento, Orlando are all teams that haven't actually tanked, and have even signed veteran free agents or tried to build with cap space. And it hasn't worked out,

I guess my timeline for the Bulls wasn't clear, I didn't mention the Butler trade. The Bulls traded two young players (Portis + Parker) for OPJ, a veteran. They then signed two veterans to large contracts (Sato and Young). Over the last couple years, they absolutely haven't tanked. They've actually done what many here had advocated, and it's failed.

If you want to go further back, of course there have been times where they've tanked. I didn't mean the Bulls have never tanked in the last 20 years.

[cjbulls]

My definition is one that is used around the league. Don't participate would be my suggestion, because arguing the definition of tanking isn't the purpose of this thread.

So which is it, were the Bulls tanking with the Butler trade or is your definition wrong? These are both your quotes.

First, let's discuss what tanking is. Tanking is a deliberate attempt by a front office to have their team perform poorly, in the hopes of getting a higher draft pick, draft compensation, maybe younger players they believe in over the vets that currently help them win. Losing deliberately in the short term in the hopes of winning in the long term.

Maybe not 20 win teams, but Chicago, Sacramento, Orlando are all teams that haven't actually tanked, and have even signed veteran free agents or tried to build with cap space. And it hasn't worked out,

I guess my timeline for the Bulls wasn't clear, I didn't mention the Butler trade. The Bulls traded two young players (Portis + Parker) for OPJ, a veteran. They then signed two veterans to large contracts (Sato and Young). Over the last couple years, they absolutely haven't tanked. They've actually done what many here had advocated, and it's failed.

If you want to go further back, of course there have been times where they've tanked. I didn't mean the Bulls have never tanked in the last 20 years.

That was 3 years ago, not 20. The whole roster is built on a strategy stemming from that Butler trade.