Worst case scenario for a team with a perceived lack of talent, if they play hard they might f*** around and win. Securing a #1 pick doesn't prevent injuries, busts, bad coaching, or bad culture. Silas' team is doing exactly what they need to do; agreed.
Undrafted. If he were a #1 pick that had simply failed at his first location the narrative would be that he's finally getting it. Everyone is just cautious, waiting to see if this is real. I think it is, the difficulty of the shots he hits are insane. I could see if he was just hitting threes and finishing lobs, that's what I thought we'd get from him...but he's doing a lot more than that.
Yeah maybe if the Rockets and a roster like OKC's they would be tanking. Not that tanking does anything anymore to secure a Top 4 pick with the new lottery system.
Hey, i've certainly come around. I do see him as a franchise player. When you watch him, it's plain to see that he still has room to grow and that the sky is the limit. He really is a special player. But i guess i'm greedy, i want more. I think we need another young building block to set us up for the future. It's hard to find one without going into the draft lotto. I get that we got lucky in FA with Wood, but i'm a big believer in the draft. Just look this year's contending teams. Look at Milwaukee. Look at Boston. Look at the 76ers. And Golden State during their dynasty. Unless you are LA and can simply attract the best free agents (or disgruntled players) and create your own super team, at some point you need to rebuild through the draft to win a championship. Morey tried to thread the needle and avoid full rebuild; he came close, but he's the only one that i'm aware of that was actually able to build a virtual championship team without building around a drafted franchise player. I mean even Miami had to draft Wade to get their titles. But look, i like this team. i like watching this team. Tanking won't get us a pick this year. So i'm happy to watch the development. Just hope we find a way to dip into that draft talent pool in 2022 and 2023.
Good thing we will have our picks the next two years. Hopefully we can maximize our returns. After than OKC owns us again and we own Brooklyn
I always love you dude but this stat is straight ... There is no analysis in it, no correlation. We would sell the house for over half of those players. Also, the majority of those years have been dominated by the Bulls, Lakers, Spurs, LBJ, and GSW (closer to what we should do). The point of getting young players is asset accumulation and maximizing cap efficiency to put you in position to succeed. You assume these players just changed teams for free and had no value at the time. If we get two straight top 4 picks whose to say that we use both of them. They are HIGHLY VALUABLE. FA will come around again and we could quickly be in amazing shape with the ability to grow further with great assets that weren't squandered like Morey and TF did. Rebuild vs retool means a lot of things and doesn't mean 76ers for 4 years...even though that worked and was sabotaged. If we are going to retool that to me means keeping Dipo and trading Tucker, Exum and other detritus for a player like Aaron Gordon or some other front court player that brings a bunch of positives with youth. You always have to assess what you are right now and what is your plan. Our core will not be here after next year, its too damn old. We can do something about it now or stay on the treadmill. This current team will win 40 games and ensure most future Rockets teams also win 40 games. If you want to sign up for that then you can. We have a 25 year old budding star and need to align our younger assets with other younger guys developing. The fear of superteams in big markets is THE LAKERS. All others tie to LBJ. What have the Knicks, Nets, Clippers, Heat actually won? They also happened to be tied up at the moment along with the Lakers when 2022 FA hits. Those teams have also exhausted almost ALL of their assets to get where they are. The Nets play no D and are likely to have more problems. If Harden, Durant, and Irving don't win by the end of next year do you think ANY are staying and do you think they care about the carnage they leave in their wake? Two or three stars are going to team up again to play kingmaker and everyone is a FA again Harden, Durant, Leonard, Butler, and so on and will want to align against the other superteams. They want a situation they can control without squandered assets and no potential to get help. Very quickly this team could look drastically different with a brighter future. We need to be the Ainge Celtics. He just couldn't pull off his FA targets but drafted brilliantly. If they had gotten AD?
Lets see if we still have Tucker and Dipo by the trade deadline, even Gordon is playing close to his 2017 6th man of the year level. What happens if we trade two or all 3?
I actually did provide analysis. Once upon a time you drafted an older superstar who was ready to win immediately, and was likely yours for his entire career. Pushing all your eggs in that basket made sense. Now you draft a 20 year old who joins a bad team and isn't ready to improve it. Then wants out not long after he's gotten good enough leaving you a small window. Tanking in the modern NBA simply hasn't yielded results, and star talent harder to judge than ever.
Tanking does work. It works for smart organizations that have top notch scouting departments and the ability to make solid management decisions. People watch teams like the Kings, Wolves, Knicks, Hornets, Pistons, etc. tank year after year without anything to show for it and instantly jump to the conclusion that tanking doesn’t work. When in reality, the reason it hasn’t worked for them has more to do with a combination of the player those teams drafted, the lack of coaching, the lack of player development, roster construction, etc. For instance, look at the Hornets: — Drafted MKG #2 overall (over Beal, Lillard) — Drafted Cody f***ing Zeller #4 overall (over McCollum, Giannis, Gobert) — Noah Vonleh #9 overall — Frank Kaminsky #9 overrall Like, good lord. None of those dudes have even sniffed an all-star team once. Absolute busts. Meanwhile, here’s what tanking does for smart organizations: — Portland got Lillard, McCollum — Memphis got Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson — Dallas got Luka Doncic — Boston got Tatum and Brown — Sixers got Embiid, Simmons — Warriors got Steph, Klay — Phoenix got Booker, Ayton — New Orleans got Zion — Chicago got Coby White, Patrick Williams Tanking doesn’t guarantee a championship. What it does do however, is give a franchise cornerstone pieces that allows them to contend for a 5-7 year window. What an organization does from there is what determines the outcome.
That's true but there were 8 titles won during that span by Jordan and Hakeem who were both top 3. And if you expand it to 5 there are 3 Heat titles with Wade. Plus you have teams like the big 3 Celtics and last year's Lakers that got stars by trading top 5 picks. And if you stretch it out to 7 you get 3 Warriors titles. The Lakers and Mavs are the only franchises over that time period to win without either drafting in the top 7 or trading a pick in the top 7 to get an available star. And the Mavs did it with Dirk at 9. Over that time period having a top 5 pick or getting lucky in the top 10 has been the way to win a title.
Not really.... Your analysis is essentially "why bother because everyone will leave you"..... We didn't draft harden and where's he at now? Here's my analysis.... young talent is still concentrated at the top of the draft and you can't rely on drafting or FA alone.
This. Any smart organization uses high draft picks, FA, and prudent organizational management to go from bottom feeder to playoff team.
If the Rockets don’t have a bottom 4 record at the end of this year, they’ve failed. Even a bottom 7 record gives them a chance of getting a lottery pick. Of course, the organization is a train wreck so will probably screw up the obvious route in front of it.
We really going to bump this thread every time we lose? After watching this team since Harden left it should at the very least be clear they are not tanking and they are too good to tank. 1 loss in 7 games definitely isn't going to change that.
I think it's a reach to call some of those franchise cornerstone pieces at this point. 4 of those teams haven't even made the playoffs yet, so not sure how that's evidence that tanking works. Furthermore, several of those pieces were more mid-to-late round lotto picks, so not sure how much you can attribute those draft picks to "tanking." All this really shows is that over time (like 10 years) there are good players who enter the draft through the top 13 lottery picks, which I don't think is disputed. Not sure if it really gives context to the success rate on teams that went all out on tanking vs those who failed. It also doesn't show how many iterations of tank some of those teams went through before they got a potential franchise player. The Suns are 10 years and counting without playoffs.
I don't get how some teams getting lucky with their picks makes tanking a successful strategy. It's like when the Rockets took Morris over Leonard. The Morris twins were studs at Kansas; it was a solid move even though it didn't work out. Getting to pick earlier does give you a marginal advantage but there's still a lot of chance.
