Around the same time, Greg Popovich sent all of his stars home before a prime time game, and no one fully understood the long term vision of that either.

Now tanking and load management are the prime suspects when it comes to the competitive imbalance of the regular season.

Everyone understood wha he was doing. Idk why y’all try and act like he was a genius

I’ve yet to see a single person on this sub that actually understood what Hinkie did back then. Comparing the current tanking to Hinkie is an insult to him. He didn’t bench or shut down players for the sake of losing. He took on bad contracts for assets and sold high on assets of his own. At no point did he ever field a team with the intention of losing, all of those Sixers teams got on the floor trying to win. They were just ass, they lost so much because of a lack of talent.

When Hinkie was with the Sixers, this guise of devloping was already dead.

Intentional Tanking took off for the 09-12 drafts.

Everyone knew what he was trying to do he just also kept drafting borderline crippled people with no jumpers in the top 5

Sixers just simply had a VERY bad team, they didn’t need to do any of these shenanigans that these new teams are doing

Game stayed the same, just got more fierce

See this is wrong. hinkie saw a math problem. If you are garbage for 4 years you’re probabilistically going to get 1 number one pick. 

The league fixed his math problem by changing the lottery odds. Now you need more than 7 years of being the worst team in the league to have the same probabilistic chance. 

So instead of having planned controlled short term tanking you have teams racing to the bottom, falling to the 4th or 5th pick, feeling woe, then doing the same thing over again despite the fact they don’t have a good chance to get a top pick. 

There’s a difference between trading players to acquire assets vs just benching good players.

The Sixers had no good players they were benching. 

Watching the Sixers was genuinely more interesting than half of the games on a given night right now with 10 teams tanking. 

It’s bizarre to me that people can’t see it’s so much worse. 

Don’t worry, no one remembers youse guys exist.

But actually though any insight on why Tre Johnson has played minutes in the low 20s the entire season? It’s never made sense to me

It’s true that tanking has existed for many decades, but what Amin is saying is you used to be able to tank while still playing your young core guys because you still weren’t going to win many, if any, games that way. But tanking has gotten so competitive and sophisticated that teams won’t even play some of their core young guys for risk of “winning.”

They wouldn’t be playoff teams, but they’d definitely be winning more than they are now. It’s just that the “competition” for a high pick is so fierce; you can’t afford a 23-59 season.

This would be helped by the proposal to have a minimum number of wins (20, 25, whatever), below which the odds are flat.

But you also develop young guys outside the core. If the Wizards had everyone playing they wouldn’t have found a guy like Julian Reese or Will Riley wouldnt be getting offensive reps

If “they wouldn’t be winning games anyway” then what’s the problem? The results are the same.

Interesting idea, but the problem then becomes what happens when there’s both? You’re a legitimately bad team that also gets beat up that year. 

That’s my biggest issue with people that complain about stuff like this

In my experience almost the entire team fanbase doesn’t care about tanking or support it. People outside of those fanbases aren’t going to be watching these games for the most part. The criticism makes it seem like most fans are watching all 1231 games and not the reality that most people are watching a handful of national TV games or some amount of the team they follow.

Isnt his point simply questioning the reason behind benching young players who need minutes to develop ?

In that regard he is absolute right i dont why you fixate on other points when the main issue is been questioned-development.

I m seeing young lottery picks playing under 25min or having mysterious injuries/illness just to skip random games and pop up healthy to play another game.

We all know teams use analytics to pick and choose what is “right” for players but at what point does it fuck up their development?

You only grow through playing, Luka doesnt pop out of nowhere with his skills and IQ, he started early against grown men and developed.

Amin is right, we might not see the early effects of this type of “tanking” but it is going to lead to alot of things whether its injuries/development related topics of american born players.

Just like the rest of the complainers.

I wouldn’t watch for the Wizards but I’ll usually flip on league pass for certain players or teams.

My annoyance is it’s not even worth watching when these players/teams are playing the wizards right now.

Yeah going to be super helpful for when they are starting on the Beijing Tigers.

They’re end of bench players; you can make a strong argument that their long term development doesn’t matter because they’re completely replaceable.

Regardless, just sending players out to play with no defined roles, structure, or stakes isn’t all that valuable. There’s a difference between an opportunity for a young player to spread their wings and a just messing around on the court. They aren’t learning any specific skills running with lineups which make no sense in games the team isn’t even trying to win. In almost every skilled profession, the most effective teaching isn’t letting learners do whatever they want. They’re more likely to develop bad/incorrect habits that way.

Yes and no. You kinda do have to question the logic of basically tanking the development of the couple promising players you have in favor of getting another good young player.

I feel like there is a way to lose and still play these guys.

Hurting the development of your own players is really dumb

Teams are putting their thumb on the scale and losing without shame for three different crapshoots; the lottery- landing in an ideal spot; the draft itself- picking the right player; and being good enough the player sticks around through his prime.

To the last point, in the last 20 years only 5 players drafted in the top 5 have actually won a championship with the team they were drafted by. Only 3 if you discount players drafted with other teams picks, hence they weren’t tanked for.

Like just go be bad. There’s no reason to only be winning games in the teens.

I kinda get it to be fair, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.

The Jazz for example have had a lot of legit injuries and illnesses this year. But we’ve also exaggerated too, and did last year as well. So you lose the benefit of the doubt at some point