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Official '15-16 NBA Season Thread: THEY WON ONE FOR THE LAND

Harrison Barnes is so lame.

I saw a graphic last night that called Thompson "Klayton". Is that a thing now?
 
P4nthers11 said:
This is just asinine. You have to realize this, right? It literally does not make sense. Wouldn't a participation trophy mentality for losers support the kind of step-by-step team-building that most often results in mediocrity and early play-off exits in the NBA? That way the team can sell the fans every year that this year is going to somehow be different and when they inevitably lose in the first round they can pat themselves on the back and say they tried. Assets doesn't shift the focus from winning. Winning is the ultimate goal. Tanking isn't losing for the sake of losing. I can understand people questioning the morality or gamesmanship of being noncompetitive for multiple consecutive years in the hope of increasing the odds of building a contender, but you are out of your mind if you think tanking teams don't actually want to win one day considering how much this costs in the short term.
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For tanking (not just one year for one specific draft pick, but to the extent the Sixers are doing it) to work, you have to hit on basically every draft pick during the tank period. If you don't, the guys you pick at the beginning of the slide are going to walk before you ever actually get any good, because nobody wants to lose in epic fashion for their entire career. So tanking as a strategy assumes that you are going to be good at actually selecting the players. Which the vast majority of NBA teams clearly are not (and if they were for any consistent period of time, they wouldn't be in a position to tank). Tank supporters look at OKC as their model, but OKC didn't really tank, they just made a few good draft picks in row, particularly because the teams in front of them made bad picks. If Memphis took Harden over fucking Thabeet, or the Heat took Westbrook over Beasley, or the Blazers took Durant over Oden, would anyone be admiring OKC? No. The solution is to draft well, not simply try to improve your draft pick just for the sake of improving it. You can build just as good a team with fringe lottery guys as you can with top picks if you make the right picks. Because once you have the foundation in place and a semi-winning culture, you can attract a top-level FA as the missing piece (assuming you haven't picked one of your own in that fringe lottery spot through good evaluation). The Sixers' strategy just makes them everyone else's AAA development team that they can then poach players from once Philly has gone through the expense and effort of determining whether or not they are any good.
 
All perfectly reasonable critiques of tanking that have nothing to do with what you originally said.
 
Has a multi year tank ever worked? The only example I can think of is the Cavs trading multiple former #1 picks.

There are several different models of success but the best is just getting the best player available wherever you draft.
 
Yeah, one way in which Hinkie's #assets strategy is a lot different than his mentor Morey's is that Morey did it without a multi-year tanking strategy, and the roster Morey inherited was nowhere near as bad as the one Hinkie inherited. That, coupled with Morey just being better at it than Hinkie casts the Sixers #process into question.

I think drafting broken centers with sky high ceilings and never-playing-an-NBA-game floors in successive years is questionable.
 
TownieDeac said:
All perfectly reasonable critiques of tanking that have nothing to do with what you originally said.
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Oh, it most certainly does. The tank is just a long con by the GM/owner. They know they suck at drafting and aren't going to actually improve by going about it a normal way. So they come up with this fabricated methodology to dupe fans into thinking that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is all a diversion / excuse / justification for the losing that was going to happen anyway. Packaged as a #process to con the fans into keeping interest.

Advanced stats are very similar, the only difference is that the fans are conning themselves instead of forcing the team to do it for them. By focusing on the fabricated stats, the fans are trying to justify the losing to themselves. "We may not win many games, but we got dat PER and WAR! Those OWGs that root for winning teams without those #metrics are just fooling themselves, its all smoke and mirrors because the #stats don't support the wins, so they'll come back to the norm sooner or later and then the last laugh is on them! Suckers!" And if your metric du jour don't support that position, just come up with another calculation method that does. It's all just a diversion from the actual losing of games to keep interest, which is exactly what tanking is. If you root for an actual winning team, the absolute last thing that matters is how somebody adds/subtracts/multiplies/divides their raw stats.
 
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The Cavs, Warriors, Thunder, Clippers, and Wizards all got to where they are today by sucking for years. And those teams picked dudes like Anthony Bennett, Jan Vesely, Ekpe Udoh with high lottery picks and still got good, because that's what happens when you suck for years, you get lots of cracks at it.

Hinkie's problem is he wasn't happy with just being half-heartedly shitty like these other teams. He had to get greedy and maximize his chances every single year. And that might be his downfall. Throwing a fucking joke on the court every night instead of a typical shitty team that no one gives a fuck about for half a decade.
 
I'd be pretty salty if I were a Hornets fan with a ceiling of first round playoff exit for the foreseeable decades too, 2&2.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Oh, it most certainly does. The tank is just a long con by the GM/owner. They know they suck at drafting and aren't going to actually improve by going about it a normal way. So they come up with this fabricated methodology to dupe fans into thinking that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is all a diversion / excuse / justification for the losing that was going to happen anyway. Packaged as a #process to con the fans into keeping interest.

Advanced stats are very similar, the only difference is that the fans are conning themselves instead of forcing the team to do it for them. By focusing on the fabricated stats, the fans are trying to justify the losing to themselves. "We may not win many games, but we got dat PER and WAR! Those OWGs that root for winning teams without those #metrics are just fooling themselves, its all smoke and mirrors because the #stats don't support the wins, so they'll come back to the norm sooner or later and then the last laugh is on them! Suckers!" And if your metric du jour don't support that position, just come up with another calculation method that does. It's all just a diversion from the actual losing of games to keep interest, which is exactly what tanking is. If you root for an actual winning team, the absolute last thing that matters is how somebody adds/subtracts/multiplies/divides their raw stats.
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Every time I think 2&2 has posted the dumbest thing he will ever post, he posts something dumber. There may not actually be a bottom for him to hit.
 
ESPN Stats & Info ‏@ESPNStatsInfo 12h12 hours ago
Timofey Mozgov in 7 minutes tonight: 0 Pts, 0 Reb, 0 Blk, 0 Ast, 0 Stl, 0 Fouls and 0-0 FG #clubtrillion
 
ChrisPaul3 said:
The Cavs, Warriors, Thunder, Clippers, and Wizards all got to where they are today by sucking for years. And those teams picked dudes like Anthony Bennett, Jan Vesely, Ekpe Udoh with high lottery picks and still got good, because that's what happens when you suck for years, you get lots of cracks at it.

Hinkie's problem is he wasn't happy with just being half-heartedly shitty like these other teams. He had to get greedy and maximize his chances every single year. And that might be his downfall. Throwing a fucking joke on the court every night instead of a typical shitty team that no one gives a fuck about for half a decade.
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Eh, not really. The Cavs got to where they are because LeBron happened to be born a few miles away. The Clippers are where they are primarily because of a trade that was inexplicably denied to the Lakers. Both of those are #luck more than anything. The Warriors picked Curry at #7, Thompson at #11, and Draymond Green in the 2nd round; that isn't due to tanking, it is due to good talent evaluation. Agree that the Thunder and Wizards sucked for years, but they also haven't actually won anything of significance.
 
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