thelead wrote:Xatticus wrote:thelead wrote:It literally started just last year though...
After the trade deadline...
That's the sad thing. We were actually trying to win for all those years.
We tried it 'their' way unsuccessfully for, at least, half a decade... and now complain about one year of trying the other way.
I would argue the only sincere effort to win in the past decade was when Clifford was the coach. Hennigan spent at least 3 years playing young, depleted lineups while hoping for lottery luck after trading Dwight. Is that not tanking? They won 20, 23, and 25 games, and he got the #2 pick (Oladipo), #4 (Gordon), and #5 (Hezonja). They were one of the worst teams in the league during that stretch. He didn't hold out healthy players the way Weltman does, but they were pretty awful anyway, as evidenced by the 2, 4 and 5 picks. And, teams with better records than the Magic got top-3 picks during that period, just like last season. "Tanking properly" can't be defined by whether your ping-pong ball pops up. We tanked harder than Cleveland and Toronto last season, and they got top-4 picks and we didn't. OKC tanked harder than us, and got the #6 pick.
The ultimate question is this: is the harm you do to your team and your young players' development by intentionally losing worth the increased odds of getting a higher pick, when your odds under the new system are not significantly better than teams below you? We're talking percentage points. So is it worth Franz, WCJ and Fultz sitting on the bench in a tie game on the road last night instead of gaining late-game experience and trying to close out a road opponent with a winning record? Did they develop by watching Iggy, Dowtin and Schofield fumble the game away? Did the team get better?
There is very little (if any) evidence that intentionally losing in this form -- where the coach is trying to secure losses in-game -- is a successful method for building a winning team.