This is cool idc

Bryan Colangelo interacted with fans all the time, and you guys made fun of him!

Must be boring only having to scout 1-4

“Thanks and try and be a little nicer on X.” LOL

I’m of the mindset that tanking is genuinely fine for the most part.

Spent the last 15yrs of my life watching the pistons being too good to lose and too bad to win. Kings fans have watched the same shit.

Ain’t no way those teams would’ve gotten better then a 7th seed because no one wanted to come there and getting assets to even make big trades is hard when the picks you get through drafting often aren’t going to be high that often anyway.

Shit in that time span for Detroit we only drafted higher then 5 once (for Cade), we got the 5th pick 3x in a row right after him (even when we were the worse team record wise 2 of those) and before Cade we only had one draft pick turn into a star player (Andre Drummond).

People hate tanking but like… for a lot of teams it’s really the only way out aside from developing young players, and even developing said young players really may not work out.

that’s my president

KPs FO is top 5 in the league. Maybe even top 3.

Something needs to be done with pick protections. Imo it might be worse than the actual tanking since it enables even worse tanking

There’s a way to tank naturally and ethically. Play the young players, but if they play well and win, so be it. What Utah did by sitting players in a game they were winning is criminal. They should be fined, because like Perk said, that’s not tanking, it’s throwing. And it really leads to a culture of losers anyway, so whatever.

I feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills this entire season, hearing how tanking is a huge crisis that has to be fixed immediately. No one ever gives a crap about some Wizards/Kings/Jazz (or this year, Pacers) game in Febuary. EVER. That game is not getting on national TV. No one on an ESPN panel or Inside the NBA is going to spend one second longer than they have to on it. If the dregs of the NBA were playing hard and playing all their guys, no fan would give one single crap. They care a lot when Lebron or Steph or Giannis sit for “rest”, sure. That’s what the 65 game minimum is for, and that’s been quite a mixed bag so far.

Before the ‘24 playoffs, no one ever talked about the Pacers playing hard and trying to win. Not when there were Lakers and Knicks games to talk about instead. But sit Pascal for a back to back when he’s in the top 25 in minutes played this season and it’s a “crisis”? Abolish the draft? Come on. Say what you mean. The gamblers are pissed.

Here’s the thing that I feel like goes ignored with the tanking debate, which is how much the conversation about the grind of the schedule goes hand in hand.

Yes, tanking sucks if you paid to see players play competitively.

But what also sucks is injuries and that a much more competitive league night to night means more load management and likely more injuries.

Tanking may suck in principle, but in terms of the debate around shortening the schedule, it’s an indirect way that the grind and wear and tear gets reduced.

It often feels like these two “issues” get talked about in isolation but not together.

This one hit me:

«  X user - “Mediocrity is the worst possible place to be as a sports fan. Being bad for a time for the sake of a real shot at a title? Would happily take that over being a play-in/first round exit year in and year out”

KP - “I agree. Thanks” »

Unfortunately, Pat and Spo would rather be eternal play in competitors than going for a full on rebuild/reset/tank

I think the proposition is false. Tanking in the current environment is obviously desirable, even if it means the game product is terrible for fans. If you have a chance at getting Wemby and cap space and young players on his timeline and great free agents and all it costs you is being bad for a few years, obviously most fans would support that.

I think the current discussion around tanking is, is it in the league’s best interests to so heavily incentivize losing that teams actively try to avoid winning.

Fans support tanking because it’s the best of the available options. We should try to find solutions that make it less desirable.

That’s my GM right there!

It’s wild that a team executive can openly talk about intentionally losing games

Based on these quotes you’d never guess that this team was one win away from a title.

All this shitting on the Jazz, just for people to realize that not only are fans okay with tanking, but they demand it and shit on their teams for not tanking hard enough.

Time to realize it’s not the evil old Jazz FO (currently 6th in draft odds btw) intentionally shitting on the experience of a game you don’t even watch just to spite you.

The Pacers really shouldn’t draw any heat for tanking imo. I dont hate tanking all that much tbqh, but I will admit it’s a bad look when a team is at it for some years. Indy is coming off a Finals appearance and their engine and all 4 wheels got injured for this entire season in game 7. I dont think it’s much of a longshot to see Indiana dominating the East for the next few seasons if the lottery Gods look out for them this May.

I like this. Personally, I think that tanking is far from the biggest problem in the league…

If a team wants to tank, then the decision should be between the fans and the organization. But if they’re both ok with it then I don’t really see the problem.

X user - “Mediocrity is the worst possible place to be as a sports fan. Being bad for a time for the sake of a real shot at a title? Would happily take that over being a play-in/first round exit year in and year out”

KP - “I agree. Thanks”

Sighs

Damn from the title I thought this would be a shitstorm, but it’s all cordial and reasonable.

The incentive structure is all wrong. Losing should not be rewarded so heavily and winning should provide tangible benefits for teams, not just nebulous concepts like “culture change” or “development” or “winning mentality”.

I’ve seen some great suggestions in this sub over the past few days which re-align the incentive structure. They’re a bit more complicated and most casual fans wont be able to tell what pick their team will be getting, but the flattened odds and the lottery system already leave everyone guessing right up until the fucking Mavericks are selected for the first pick anyway.

Of the pro tanking crowd how many are still paying to go to the games?

Fucking love this guy and hope he stays here forever

At the end of the day these are competitive businesses and the players are employees.

They are going to do what they feel maximizes ROI, not what they think is most ethically appropriate.

Personally I am fine with the trade offs currently.

The new rules have created the conditions for more parity between glamour markets and small markets than ever before, and way the CBA values building through the draft, it creates a dynamic where glamour markets will pay picks to acquire high cost talent which allows small markets to build pipelines of talent like OKC, Detroit, SAS, etc. The cost for that is tanking.

But it’s not all terrible.

having 6 or so tanking teams a year helps deal with another habitual problem in the NBA: injuries and load management.

Tanking teams also do provide a convenient schedule opportunity to offset load management to while preserving your players against the better teams.

Even if they come up with a solution to tanking, you are likely going to see more load management, a reduction in parity again, and over the long term see an even more feast and famine league.

… Would happily take that over being a play-in/first round exit year in and year out”

Who would want to do that. 

Fans hate tanking. Unless it’s a team that you like, and then you acknowledge that it’s a necessary evil.

I don’t love that tanking exists, but there’s this weird dichotomy of NBA fans. Superfans like to say it’s a crisis because tanking means you don’t get to see the players you wanted to see when you (checks notes) tune in to a national broadcast to watch the Utah Jazz in mid-February (?), but… I don’t think that’s really all that big an issue for the average fan. The average fan is either gonna watch the game or not, it’s not super dependent on whether or not Lauri Markkanen is gonna play the fourth quarter. It’s more like an anecdote that gets trotted out to justify the anger. But the average fan of a team wants the team to get better so they can contend. It’s like how superfans get mad about the new media rights deal because it makes it harder for them to see ALL THE GAMES, but the average fan is just happy because now there are some games available on the services they already subscribe to (and the viewership numbers bear this out).

I’m interested to see what the league does about tanking, but I do feel like there are two NBA audiences. And only one of them really cares all that much.

There’s a whole set of fans, many of them your die-hards, who don’t mind watching a rebuild. When done right, the payoff is second to none.

Watching the Sixers tank and start “the process”, I found to be fascinating. For me, the process worked up until they got Jimmy Butler. That was what the process was supposed to lead to, building a team of young talent, nailing a couple of lottery picks and getting a big splash third star. They lost game 7 on that wacky Kawhi bounce and then picked Simmons over Butler when they realized they had to choose. The process died and that rebuild ultimately failed.

But it was still fun to me.

I feel like the fans of the teams also want them to tank so who is negatively impacted?

KP and Chad are the GOATs

I think the C’s show how its done. Other than Jaylen they don’t really have a super star, just a lot of great players and an amazing coach that wants to win.

I think if teams are honest about it is much easier to get behind and believe in

Different when you’re tanking as a rebuild strategy vs tanking to take advantage of a single lost season. Not judging the Pacers in the slightest, but it’s a different situation than the Nets, for example.

Intentional tanking is fine and I think most fans support it, when fans tune out is when you have no intention of tanking and your team just sucks ass with no future.

I think American thinking has become so warped because rewarding losing is basically what they’ve known their entire lives. In the NFL and MLB, you can get away with it due to specific reasons.

But in the NBA the issue is way more flagrant, and everyone has got to realise unless you materially separate W-L record to draft order, you are incentivising teams to lose on purpose. It is the right decision as a rebuilding franchise.

It really only comes down to how shameless you can be.

IMO the leagues got to have a think about just flattening the odds, across all teams. Make all other necessary machinations to allow teams to develop and build naturally, and most importantly reward good management and punish bad ones.

Just be glad that you aren’t being replaced by Colangelo, KP.

If I Did It: Confessions of a Tanker

It’s so great to see a communicative and open front office. Mine can’t answer basic question like why did they trade for 8 guards or just fully lies to fans and denies their tanking when it’s totally obvious

Lmao the NBA has been talking about the same issues for almost 15 years. Flopping, tanking, free agency, refs, ratings, etc.

Literally nothing has changed.

That last X user got Pritch Slapped lol.

The NBA does not care about anything until it hits their bottom line. Once the money stops flowing, they’ll make changes. Until then, these little adjustments don’t really do anything.

As long as there’s an incentive to lose, teams will lose. If they want to prevent that, start a 2nd league, introduce promotion/relegation, reduce salaries and profits for those in the 2nd tier, and get rid of the draft.

Shout out to everyone blindly assuming they know what will happen in the draft and who will actually be good. You’re most definitely wrong! 

Pat Riley needs to do the same

I feel very fortunate to have KP and Chad Buchanan at the helm of our FO. They’ve always seemed to play it pretty level with the fans and, from my outside perspective, have fostered a pretty supportive environment throughout the org.

Those with broadcast rights are unhappy enough about players not playing games that the NBA thinks they’re about to lose a lot of revenue if something isn’t done. This has been a long time coming, and the NBA only has themselves to blame for creating the ruleset and incentives that have given us this mess.

Damn, I love KP. He’s a real one.

All I see is a bunch of fans happy to bend over for a shiny draft pick.

Generally I think that if a veteran team is not top 3-4 in the conference then you need to blow it up and tank. Maybe there are some exceptions but you don’t want to be a middling team

And with current landscape of CBA, free agency to get stars for bad teams are nothing but a pipe dream, even any marketable team cannot do drastic FA signing due to tight cap situation and the only way they can get better was through tanking.

All I know is I got Zubac and Siakam on my fantasy team and I’m in first place but will prob get eliminated bc those guys are on a team that is in full tank mode. 

“Mediocrity is the worst possible place to be as a sports fan. Being bad for a time for the sake of a real shot at a title? Would happily take that over being a play-in/first round exit year in and year out”

Oh, someone knows the ins-and-outs of Minnesota sports history?

We’ve only had two speeds:

1. Maximize your rosters so you stay vaguely decent enough for the continual first-round exit. (The Vikings/Wild method)

2. Stumble backwards into a single star player then build your team branding and identity around them for a decade until they retire. (the Twins/Timberwolves/Vikings method)

These methods are often interchangeable or simultaneous. The second method has yielded us two World Series wins in baseball in ‘87 & ‘91 and numerous ring-less jerseys added to the rafters.

This was a great gesture. Tanking and building a consensus that it’s acceptable is a cat you can’t put back in the bag and the fans are gonna lose big time. This is about getting the guy you can leverage to force the city to build a new stadium with fewer seats and increasing the value of the team. NBA fans consenting to enshittify the league is peak online discourse. Don’t believe for a second that these guys won’t take your implied consent on tanking then put the games you actually want to see on essentially ppv

Imagine this in any other league. Embarrassing. 

1. Eliminate lottery
2. Create a simple formula that rewards wins and punishes $ spent on roster
3. Award picks in order determined by formula!

We have eliminated tanking and redeemed the draft’s purpose of helping out the lower spending teams.

For the formula, you want it to work out so that a play in caliber team that spends 5th least in the league gets the #1 pick over the worst team in the league even if the worst team spends the least. So just enough influence from wins that you know you need to avoid the bottom if you want that #1 pick.

Putting out a lineup you don’t expect to go very far with the tradeoff being a top pick is fine. Those players still go all out. that’s what people want to see.

Fans don’t want to see a team rest their star players in a very winnable game.