Recently there has been chatter about "Tanking" or "rebuilding" because we are a mediocre team, and since we'll never win the championship with our current core, we should trade them off for draft picks and instead hope for a high draft pick. This is the worst idea I've ever heard and I will list out all the reasons why. 1. Daryl Morey will never willingly make moves to make the team worse. So any tanking decisions will have to come from the owner, I guarantee you that if Les ever asked Morey to tank, he would quit on the spot, and most likely get a job with another team. When teams lose, the coach gets fired first and the GM is never far behind. Morey would never risk his reputation on a tank job. 2. Losing decreases the value of all the players on your roster. You know how we were able to do all those fantastic trades in the past 3 years? Cos the team is winning and other teams like players who contribute to winning teams. 3. Losing breeds a culture of irresponsibility that makes developing young players doubly hard. Look at all the loser teams in the league and you'll see the similarities, lottery talent all over the place but a loser culture, players with loser attitudes, bad chemistry. It becomes really difficult to get out of. 4. It becomes impossible to hire a decent coach, good coaches do not want to go to teams that are losing, so you can only end up hiring coaches that are fired from other teams. 5. Valuable veteran players who have good attitude, and winning culture, do not want to sign with loser teams. This makes it triply hard to turn a loser franchise around. 6. Referees will screw you with no second thought. Ever wonder why the lakers and celtics get all the calls? Winners always get the refs calls. Loser teams always end up on the wrong side of the ref's whistle, and once these biases are built up, it takes years for them to wear off. 7. Fanbase loses interest, all those people calling for tanking, the majority of you will never watch the rockets again if we become the twolves or the grizzlies. 8. Giving minutes to young players who have not earned it breed a sense of entitlement in that player that is counterproductive to winning basketball and also sows discord in the locker room. Feel free to add your own reasons.
i think tanking is an indication of bandwagon fans. basically they dont care about the team while theyre struggling, theyre only there to celebrate when they win it all. real fans shouldnt be able to stand the team losing one game and celebrate each 'meaningless' win.
12. I can only think of two examples where tanking brought a team back to prominence. 1. Rockets pick of Hakeem in '84 (which the league immediately changed the lottery rules) 2. Spurs pick of Tim Duncan. Other than that, I can't think of any other modern examples where a team tanked and it actually led the team to any sort of sustained success.
You guys missed 9- 9. Cleveland Cavaliers 14. Clippers (well, I guess that wasn't on purpose, lol) 15. New Jersey Nets Seriously though: 16. Tanking is an uncontrolled, high-risk gamble- you're putting the fate of your team in something you can't control
Oh, the 1983 Chicago Bulls(pre-rule change), 2002 Miami Heat and 2003 Orlando Magic might disagree with you. Saying that, the point of tanking is long gone. Morey has said it won't happen and even if we suck in Jan, Feb is a month where the team can rebound. We are either going to be a 5th or 6th seed and make some noise in the playoffs or be stuck with the 13th or 14th pick in the draft...just reality at this point.
Miami sucked for years before drafting Wade. I wouldn't classify that as "tanking". True, while Orlando was a play-off team prior to 2003 with McGrady, they started the 2003 season 1-19!!!! No team sets out to tank right at the outset. That team just sucked. Maybe you can say they tanked the rest of the season after a 1-19 start but that's a stretch, IMO. But maybe I could concede that one if pressed given that they were playoff teams before and after that season.
Miami was a playoff team in 2000-2001, "YEARS" is a stretch, and won 36 games the following year. TMAC's last season in Orlando was the definition of tanking, yea they sucked but McGrady was sat down with a "back injury" the last dozen or so games HOPING to get the number one pick. Point being, tanking is a word I HATE to use but it does work just not all the time. If you have a good organization then it works but bad organizations like the Kings, Warriors and Clippers seem to screw it up.
Tanking is like trying to win a championship. when you tank and get a top pick, the chances that your pick will be a superstar is the same as the chances of winning a championship. so it's like chances of getting a superstar in the draft divided by chances of winning a championship our chances become even lower if we're thinking championship.
You have to actually have talent in order to tank. OKC/SEA hasn't had talent since Gary Payton played there.
