Everybody just wants the lottery ticket to being world beaters immediately with none of the growing pains.

So many Spurs fans are insufferable with this shit. We’re literally a year removed from being a lottery team and so many of us are acting like its their birthright to win a ring this year. They were ready to be anointed the moment Wemby was drafted. Literally zero appreciation or enjoyment for the journey or the experience of getting better and ascending to the top. Mfers don’t even want to watch basketball, they just want to brag about their superior team.

The timberwolves would be nowhere close to competing if they didn’t get the #1 pick in 2020 after winning 19 games.

Silver’s changes are going to lead to more teams stuck like the Wolves were between the KG years and the Gobert trade years, with a terrible team for a long stretch. While this addresses tanking, it does so by punishing team that just plain suck, and while I admit that watching a team tank is worse than watching a team just suck (at least they are trying to win), tanking at least has shown to last for less time, I can’t think of a team that intentionally tanked for more than a few years, and sometimes teams get lucky and only tank one year (cough Spurs twice in a row cough).

Genuinely bad teams have been stuck in purgatory for much, much longer than that( Wolves from the start of their existence to the Gobert trade outside of the KG years, the Grizzlies from Vancouver to Memphis until only a few years ago, Bobcats for almost 20 years until this past year, Pistons until recently had a long stretch, Bucks had like a 20 year stretch).

Yes, tanking makes it so there are more genuinely bad teams playing at a particular time than others, but the reason why it is being viewed as such a big problem compared to teams just sucking is a mix og teh NBA having gabling issues, and tanking’s connection to gambling, and also that tanking has become more widespread in recent years, and also more widespread in recent years is the NBA media being social media, hot take, and overly click-baity and negtive focused, so the thing that is becoming a bigger, more prominent issue happens when bigger, more prominent issues are being presented as a much bigger problem than they actually are, and you get all of this focus on stopping tanking at all costs like tanking is the biggest problem in the league

The 2 biggest issues facing the league are gambling issues (and that is the real reason why Silver has focused on anti tanking measures, as he is trying to deal with a gambling issue subtly and without having to admit that Gambling is a problem) and players just getting hurt more so players can’t play as many games not because of sitting or rest, but because their bodies are not holding up like they used to and how this is leading to a higher number of stars either missing the playoffs due to injury or playing hurt (I know this has always happened, but there is plenty of evidence that this is happening more frequently and at a higher rate now than in the past), these are the 2 biggest issues).

Finding a way to disincentivize tanking, like eliminating a max contract ac a concept so a team can offer a tar as much as they want on a contract, and allow for bad teams without a star to be able to out pay for free agent stars compared to teams that already have at least one star, right now because of the max, teams without a star can’t pay more to attract star free agents, so unless they are from a franchise that has other reasons they can attract free agents (Lakers, Knicks, Celtics, Heat, and Clippers for the most part, teams with a mix of some of the following: massive media markets that have additional marketing opportunities to pay above the max, excellent weather, NBA history behind them that players who are students of the history of the game appreciate, and for the Heat, the mix of weather and Florida having no income taxes matters). If you are not from those franchises (and maybe on or two more), then your only way to get a star unless you are obscenely lucky (and no, thunder with SGA don’t count here, since they got that from having PG, who was a star, and they got PG because they had Westbrook at the time (and he was a star then), and got him in trade).

So if your only option to get a star is the draft, then you optimize for the draft. If you give teams the ability to actually get stars in free agency (like the NFL and Hockey does, MLB is a bad example with there being no salary cap so there is not a mechanism preventing a few teas from getting all of the good free agents year over year, yet even there you get small market teams singing stars more frequent than in the NBA due to not having a Max cap on players) then they don’t tank so hard, because it is hard to attract free agent stars on a team trying to tank, so teams will go for a mixed strategy instead of optimizing for the draft. Players are competitive and hate to loose, so a team who gets a star then intentionally tanks would hav the star try to force a trade out, and not allow for the team to try to get a good deal back in return.

Especially in this new era of your best player simply not being enough and needing 8 players minimum that can stay on the court in the playoffs. Most teams losing cuz of their worst players not wining because of their best players.

For a long time people talked about the Spurs fleecing the Hawks in the DJM trade. Even the “hapless” Hawks have managed to make those picks mostly irrelevant.

I’m not hating on Carter Bryant at all and think he’ll be great. But if thats the center piece to take a big swing, I think its ultimately worth it.

Its just up to these organizations to pivot if they fail. Hawks have done so brilliantly because there’s always another sucker. Looking at you Pelicans! TWICE!!!

Even in the Clippers PG trade, the picks which everyone at the time were so alarmed about being unprotected, turned into the 18th, 12th, 26th, and 12th picks. Worse than the clippers would’ve hoped, but it’s not like they gave up stupidly high value picks. Thunder hitting on Jdub at 12th has them looking like total clowns, but they were far more likely to draft a guy that’s currently barely in the league.

Honestly the single most valuable thing you can do with a pick is trade it. Sure sometimes you’re the Nets and end up trading away Tatum and Brown but that trade is considered one of the worst ever because that’s so rare. Look at the Paul George trade. The picks the Clippers traded ended up being #18, #12, #26, #15, #24, and #12. The two lottery picks were definitely painful, particularly because one of them became Jalen Williams but I don’t think the Clippers are particularly upset they lost out on Tre Mann, Dillon Jones, Thomas Sorber, or Nique Clifford

Honestly, I’ve only been on here for the last couple years. Finally let myself get sucked into social media shit about the Wolves. Bad idea.

I hope for it too, and I’m not even a wolves fan. It just makes sense. You guys have the most travel season after season. It needs to happen. I worry, however, the Memphis will move to Nashville around the time if expansion and then they’ll get moved to the East instead.

The fact that for once, nobody is talking about it…

Wizards and bulls already got one.

2 uncs, 1 almost unc, and 2 young uns. That’s a good ratio.

Randle is almost certainly going to a third team. One of Phoenix, Detroit, Portland or Charlotte

Edit: thought this was the r/timberwolves thread, my bad. No one deserves to have to watch Randle play basketball

Would be thrilled to have him if they can get a pick or two for Kyrie, rehab Randle a bit, and then flip him

Randall Flagg

All know is Randle Flagg is an evil bastard from the Stephen King novel “The Stand” so therefore i’m against it

Mavs have no control of their own pick until 2030, they can’t tank anymore and need to be a playoff team

the entire reason for lottery reform was so that it makes sense to go out and get guys who can help you to 41 wins. he’s not a superstar but he certainly isnt a tank commander

Hornets own the Mavs pick which is top 2 protected, they have no incentive to tank.

He will not get us a Giannis package, but there is also 0 reason for us to trade him unless we get a good offer.

Fans love him, players love him, and most importantly plays the position of need for us (point guard), while Randle plays a position we do not need at all (since we have Coop).

Just because Kyrie is coming off an ACL doesn’t mean we will just gift him to another team while making ourselves worse.

Dont think any reasonable fan expects that but they’re also not taking back guys in their 30s making $35M who fit poorly on the roster and the 28th pick.

Which is exactly why we may as well keep him, at least until the deadline to see if his value will rise. Absolutely no sense trading him for pennies on the dollar. Especially not for Julius fucking Randle who’s just about the worst fit next to Cooper Flagg I could think of.

Mavs have no incentive to trade him for nothing though. He fits the team well and is exactly what we need

Giannis himself would be fine, he was dropping an efficient 27 a game with John Henson at centre when he was 22 and Gobert is significantly more helpful as a screen setter than Henson was. The need for him to play with a floor spacing 5 is really overblown.

It can make things tougher for everyone else for sure, though for all his screen setting faults Giannis does tend to do pretty well commanding attention off-ball through the threat of him cutting when he’s playing in a scheme that demands it. The issue there is probably that the Wolves don’t have a passer good enough to consistently hit him on those cuts so it’s not as much of a threat for the defence as it could be. It also makes lineups without Gobert a shitload better, Giannis and Naz Reid cover each other really well in a way that Randle really doesn’t.

I think it could work well enough, though I wouldn’t expect the offence to be amazing. A McDaniels/Giannis/Gobert defensive front court is disgusting, and OKC/Spurs aren’t exactly rolling out all-time offences either. Just killing teams with defence.

Jon Horst isn’t Nico. We already turned down packages as good or better than anything the Wolves could offer this season, and I don’t think he has the weird fixation with Julius Randle that Nico did with AD.

I’m so glad we didn’t get him tbh

You shouldnt want him. Maybe teams shouldnt try KD without a PG for a third team in a row.

Yeah I don’t think he’s that much of an improvement over Randle in the moody department.

They’re getting AJ. Not too much of a reason to keep AD

If it sends Randle to a third team and also gives us back Mike Conley for a retirement tour, I’ll take that deal.