Why doesn’t everyone just have a generational star born in the same state as their otherwise-moribund franchise, causing that star to make an emotional return in free agency to a franchise that received three #1 picks in four seasons? Are they stupid?

Yeah this is an underappreciated piece of the difficulty in building a contender in a small market.

Grizz went after both Bridges and Anunoby with 4+ FRP offers but both players said they didn’t want to play in Memphis.

Teams like NO, Sac, Memphis can’t even trade for talent because they will refuse to re-sign/extend or just flat out say they won’t play (Memphis had this w Iggy for example).

Pretty much the only option is the draft.

Please don’t lump the pistons and spurs together. Spurs were gifted moving up in the lottery to top 4 picks. Pistons moved up once (from 2 to 1) for Cade then immediately dropped to 5 three years in a row.

They are not the same.

Please don’t lump my glorious Hornets in with these teams. We were genuinely garbage, not pretending to be garbage

It worked for them, it hasn’t worked for a lot of teams.

Kings have been in the mud for like 20 years. Wizards half that times. Pels have been in this state for a while. Utah has been in a few years. Nets have been a mess for a few years. Bulls have been whatever for a while. A lot of orgs suck at the top—also can’t draft, can’t scout, etc.

Can’t fix stupid. I play fantasy football with the equivalent and some guys can’t even get lucky they’re such bad owners.

Tanking wasn’t a real problem that casual fans cared about.

Flopping is a much bigger issue to the average casual fan and Silver just does nothing about it.

I don’t care about tanking but the anti-Silver shtick everybodies rolling with makes no sense anymore

is silver doing a good job? lol. Maybe for the owners, but not for the fans

The Pistons and Bulls didn’t tank, you guys don’t even know what tanking is

The draft lottery unironically makes tanking worse despite supposedly being designed to dissuade it.

You need a top 5 pick to increase your chances of getting the guy to build around. Competent FOs are essential but for small markets the only way to acquire a superstar is to draft one with a high pick.

The Bulls have maybe tanked 1 year in the last 20

The Pistons are finally back into relevancy and 2 of their major pièces were earned through tanking.

I would also argue that Charlotte have not tanked that much and 3 of their best players were earned thanks to years they decided to tank .

Tanking is not everything, but an impatient FO going for it before having the pieces can do just as much, if not more, damage

Funnily enough the Knicks were rewarded with a new mindset after the draft flops and KD/Kyrie saying “nah” and going to Brooklyn instead and it has them in the finals.

Hitting on ONE draft pick in basketball is literally ¹⁄₅ of your starting line-up, and a prolific scorer can account for over 33% of a team’s offensive output on a regular basis. That’s why tanking is so important in the NBA.

TC did not trade KAT because of some media idiot trying to bully the wolves into trading him.

The Kat situation was entirely because the Wolves traded for Gobert and one season later with 0 warning they implemented the 2nd apron rules, which would have crippled the Wolves. Now teams like OKC and Spurs are set up perfectly for this new era, while other teams like the Wolves and Nuggets were punished for trying to build the best roster they could under the old set of rules. Kats contract is massive, and the reason it works with the Knicks is Brunson is criminally underpaid relative to how good he is. Hopefully Kat will be another Wolves great, that moves on and wins another championship elsewhere. Just sucks cause everyone will clown on the Wolves, when half of the ones clowning were clowning on Kat for being corny.

In a lot of ways the NBA and Silver himself has incentivised this race to the bottom with multiple teams tanking, because with the new 2nd apron rules, building through the draft is really the only way to build a championship core.

Look at the Cavs. The second they lost in the eastern finals. The media was talking about blowing up the team.

The Kings

Donald Sterling era Clippers didn’t want stars. Didn’t want to pay coaches after they were fired. All about keeping costs low and avoiding any sort of luxury tax. If you spend the absolute minimum as an owner you don’t have to worry about winning. You can just print money.

It’s one strategy to team building, and it’s very efficient, but it’s not the only one. Look at the Knicks and Pacers, neither team have tanked for their Finals teams.

Because Silver is more worried about having a competitive league than giving the worst teams a better chance. We’ve seen time and again the worst teams problems is not the draft but management. A good GM will find a way to get their team at least out of the absolute bottom (who will be penalized).

Case in point: Kings were gifted Luka and Hali. Instead decided to build the Sacramento Bulls.

I do think the worst teams will struggle even more now though. Sucks for their fanbase.

And we will likely see some gamesmanship going on in the play-in range towards the end of the season. But I guess thats better than taking for the season.

Teams already stay at the bottom for a long time

Yes - draft lotteries in general are dumb and do nothing except hurt parity.

You don’t get the issue with not having every team try to win every game? Roster construction is one thing - it’s fine if teams want to blow it up, get young players and picks, and build for the future. But when teams are actively trying to lose games instead of win them, that’s a huge issue for the competitive integrity of the league.

How long did the 76ers tank for though and look at what happened to them, it could absolutely work for you but it could also backfire massively

Yeah I find it kind of funny when people lump us in with the teams that did long-term extended tanks. We only missed the playoffs for 3 years and one of those we lost in the play-in. The PG trade and a couple good late picks is really what built the team.

We only tanked for two years and the only time we moved up/had good lottery luck was Chet lol. Rockets have had like four top 5 picks since the turn of the decade and are still mediocre and the Spurs have the most incredible luck in the entire league. One thing I wish Silver would understand is that teams tank because it’s the easiest way to find a future franchise player, and when they get screwed in the lottery, the tank intensifies. Teams like Dallas and SA last year should never have been able to get the 1st and 2nd pick. Flattening the original lottery odds in 2019 was the real mistake.

Tanking isn’t actually that good of a strategy.

This! So much. Such survivorship bias about the times it actually works (b/c yes drafting a future All-NBA guy is exciting), but it doesn’t work consistently. It’s just straight up hard to predict draft pick talent, not to mention health. It’s a gamble and most teams don’t win.

The knicks are an ethical unicorn of a team build. I guess maybe the pistons too… were they tanking or just that fucking bad?

Technically the Knicks got OG but trading RJ who they tanked for

It’s not like that at all, because in a real lottery, your chances of winning are infinitesimal, and in the NBA lottery the spurs and thunder took advantage of, they had a very high chance of a top pick if they tanked.

Flopping creates a heel to cheer against. OKC just doing their part to increase ratings.

I don’t even want to watch games period when I see flopping. Its an awful brand of basketball. I agree that it sucks when times are pulling their starters in the 4th quarter when they’re winning to tank but if you’re just bad you’re just bad. If a team is bad enough to tank then fans of that team know they shouldn’t expect a great product that season, but if they get the top pick like the Spurs did with Wemby then you can build yourself out of the gutter.

Had a lot to do with Wemby

Yes it does

Flopping absolutely destroys any respect for the game. There’s a difference between selling contact and flopping and the latter is what makes people dislike the product on the court

I would argue it does.

It’s hacking the rules. It’s exploiting the spirit of the rule which is there to protect the integrity of the game. It feels disingenuous and feels like when a team gets a major advantage from flipping it feels like they aren’t earning that advantage.

It’s akin to your little brother beating you at a fighting game by button mashing one button over and over.

Now I don’t blame the players at all. They’re always going to push the boundaries of the rules to get their numbers. They have enormous financial incentive to push the rules. It’s the leagues fault.

Well, it kinda does.

Ask the average fan what they think is the worst aspect of pro basketball today.  I guarantee you’d get 10x as many “flopping” answers compared to tanking.  I don’t even think tanking would crack the top 5. 

That’s where I’m at too. There’s always been like 4-6 actively trying to be terrible to get better picks, but for some reason, this year it’s the worst thing in the world

This all really came to a head when Will Hardy sat Lauri and JJJ for the fourth quarter twice. Doesn’t matter that JJJ was injured and just wanted to play for the home crowd before having surgery. Doesn’t matter that we ended up winning one of the games anyways. That seemed to be the scapegoat the sports betting companies were looking for.

And in other leagues when the season is over you also rest starters near the end of the season when there’s nothing to play for

Fucking thank you! This is not a new phenomenon, Adam, fuck’s sake.

saying “just chet and Caruso” is a lot

I think the line was crossed when it transitioned from the front office to on court play

So does NHL