Losing != Winning in the future. You don't build winning teams by building a losing culture to get high picks. You build teams that win by finding undervalued players and bringing them into a culture that wants to win. This has been hashed out, over and over again, and the evidence is literally every single year when the bad teams continue to have good lottery position, and continue to suck, year after year. The idea that losing a lot ultimately results in winning often is not rooted in reality, and the results of our experiment with bad culture are going to be a smack in the head to the young smart people that believe in tanking. The older tankers are already hopeless, so hopefully they just leave. The sooner we trade Wood, the better, regardless of return. The team loves KPJ and his story. Even though he makes headlines, I think watching him try to overcome his struggles is actually a good thing for Green and Sengun. We'll see i guess.
Doing what we're doing is literally how you become Orlando. Let's compare it with a team who've been insanely successful: The Warriors. They finished 10th in the conference to draft Curry, they then played hard and tried to be competitive but fell short through lack of talent ultimately finishing 12th with a 36-46 record and drafted Klay with the 11th pick. They again tried to compete whilst shifting from Ellis to Curry as the focus, and fell short ultimately finishing 13th and drafted Harrison Barnes with the 7th pick and Draymond with the 35th pick. 2 years later they won it all. So do tell me, how exactly is tanking better than trying to compete with what you have and drafting where you land? History disagrees with you.
The Spurs are the future!!!! Whoops! The idea that you can just retool and just uncover gems only one year removed from trading your franchise player is just not very likely. All this coach Carter nonsense about losing culture is just a cover for people who can’t accept the rockets are rebuilding and it’s not going to be a quick turn around. Teams like the Grizzles are the best case scenario for a rebuild. It’s been a freaking year since we traded Harden.
The problem I have with this is that you agree with tankers on the goal - you have to get a perennial MVP all-NBA type guy, and then also at least one other guy who is maybe not MVP level but still an all star. There's really no other way to win a championship. But you're suggesting that it's actually easier to find these guys outside the lottery? You'll have a better time finding them in the 10-20 range instead of with a top 3 pick? If you want to look at very recent history, then yeah, I guess you could argue that. Curry, Kawhi, Giannis, Kobe, Dirk were all drafted in that range outside the lottery. But you also have guys like KD, Lebron, DWade, Tim Duncan, and if you go a bit further back, Jordan, Hakeem, Shaq who were top lotto picks. At the end of the day that's all it really comes down to, you don't win unless you have "that guy". I don't think the warriors "not tanking" and "competing" had anything to do with it, it was just that they found Klay/Dray/Curry. Unless you're arguing that those guys are easier to find outside the lotto, I don't think the two are related.
Don't put words into my mouth, I never said any of the things you're projecting on to me. My point is that you don't build a successful team by deliberately losing and creating a cycle of terrible play and bad habits. I'm saying that the best way to create a WINNING team is to compete as hard as you can, all the time, regardless of how shitty your roster is and drafting wherever it is that you land and developing those players into winners, within your competitive culture. All you do by deliberately losing is create a team of perpetual losers.
That still doesn’t explain how you get a superstar…. The Spurs have tried your way since Kawhi left and have gotten literally nowhere. Sounds like thoughts and prayers….
Oh, so you can't read at all "DEVELOP YOUR PLAYERS WITHIN YOUR WINNING CULTURE." Why is it that the competitive teams seem to get lots of "steals" in the daft, yet the teams who've sucked over and over and over always seem to get busts? What an absolutely bizarre coincidence /s
I did read it…. We aren’t competitive and yet we drafted and stole Sengun and JC. Maybe lists some teams that have succeed with your method?
That's not the argument, at least not mine. What I've been saying is that we already have a #2 pick which is supposed to be a franchise type player. It's too early to tell whether Green is the guy. That's why I am saying IF he and this bunch of young players could lift the worst team in the league to a middling team, then he or some other guy must be that superstar in the making. If that's the case, we already had the pieces in place to compete in a few years when they would be even better. Don't forget we also have a truck load of picks from the Nets. Their window of being good is not going to be more than a couple of years. Anyway, this is looking like a moot argument. We aren't going to be any good this season and will land a pretty high draft pick. What bothers me is that some fans actually root for their failure in order to get that pick. Don't they want these kids to be good? We should instead root for Brooklyn's down fall. Why tank yourself when someone else could tank for you?
What about Luca? Mavs were in the right place at the right time when Luca was picked and traded with a high draft pick.
Golden State. I don't think I need to list any more, now it's your turn. List the teams that have continuously finished dead last in the league who've had the success of the Warriors. I'll wait.
These kids are trying to be good and this is the record…. If the kids were good then it’s obvious we had a very excellent draft and our ahead of schedule… but we ain’t. It seems like you and yours can’t accept that we aren’t very good and are further away. I know this team isn’t good and I understand the best way forward is a high draft to develop or trade.
Lol. GSW was a joke of franchise until they drafted well with high draft picks and drafted well in the later round. GSW created a winning culture after they drafted Curry and Klay, not before. Try again.
They finished 10th, 12th and 13th and actively tried to win games. They didn't remotely try and tank, and you don't get to rewrite history. You try again, which team that tanked multiple years has the success of Golden State? I'm still waiting.
https://theathletic.com/3064221/202...alen-green-and-rest-of-houstons-young-roster/ Sam Vecenie: In terms of evaluating the rookies, you mentioned Green first, so let’s start there. I don’t think Green has been an effective NBA player thus far, but I also don’t really care because the Rockets are bad, and the contextual matters laid out above are real hindrances. The flashes have been there. I think that it’s two separate things — saying that Green has been an ineffective NBA player as a rookie and saying that he’s a bust. I absolutely, unequivocally still believe in Green long-term for reasons I’ll lay out as I write this. But let’s explain why I don’t think he’s been an impactful NBA player in the first half of his season. First, I don’t love his shot selection and general decision-making, which isn’t all that surprising for a teenager playing at the NBA level who has been given all of the freedom in the world. I don’t think he’s a good enough shooter or quite polished enough with his footwork at this stage of his development to take some of the shots he takes. He seems to get sped up and misses a lot of shots at the rim even after he’s turned the corner. That leads to some real inefficiency. That’s why we see some of the inconsistency we’ve seen from him so far. When he’s feeling it and the shot is falling, great! When he’s not, it looks bad. On top of that, I also don’t think he’s a particularly effective passer yet, missing reads pretty regularly that are open to his teammates. These are the kind of things that lead to losses and poor offense. The bigger problems come on defense, though. I think he’s been pretty horrible on that end. He misses rotations and doesn’t seem to really see what’s happening out there. His recognition and awareness are bad. I don’t think he navigates screens well because he’s skinny and seems to have not been taught all that much about how to technically get around screens and play in screen coverages. Again, Houston is a pretty abysmal defensive team as it is, and I think that makes it even harder on him. I’m not at the games like you are, and maybe you could speak better to this, but the communication seems questionable to me just given the lack of cohesion. Wood’s effort has been hit or miss. Alperen Sengun isn’t good on that end despite the deflections. I know there has been a narrative that Porter has been better on defense, and I think his effort on the ball and getting around screens certainly has improved. But his off-ball lapses often end up being pretty crippling. I think the only two guys I would say I feel confident with on defense are Eric Gordon and Jae’Sean Tate. But again, that lack of recognition from Green has been really poor. Here’s the good news, though: All of Green’s flaws to this point? They’re totally fixable with experience and work! I think, as a scouting community, we often underestimate the ability of shooters who are already good when they enter the league to get even better. It’s not just projecting “which non-shooters have a chance to get to passable, or which passable shooters could reach above average?” Guys who are good shooters entering the league, like Green, also get better. The problem for Green right now is that it’s almost impossible to make a living in the NBA taking the quality of shot that he takes. You have to not just be a good shooter, but an utterly elite one. As Green gets this rookie experience and takes it into the lab with him this offseason, and goes from being 19 years old to 20, and from 20 years old to 24, he’s going to drastically improve. The elite athletic tools aren’t changing, barring injury. But his polish and skill level will. It’s why we see many of the elite-level wing/guard creators across the NBA struggle with efficiency a bit in their rookie seasons. Zach LaVine was similar. Devin Booker was similar. Anthony Edwards last year was similar. And it’s a similar boat with all of those guys as passers, too. As they become more effective scoring weapons and defenses have to pay even more attention to them, passes to teammates open up even more. On top of that, they get more comfortable with the speed of the game. How much he improves on the defensive end will be wholly dependent upon how much effort he improves to learning about the reads on that end, because he has every athletic tool to be fine. I’d even argue that all of Edwards, Booker, and LaVine have improved within the last year on that end, and they’re all at different stages of their development. Defensive improvement isn’t really linear for these guys — it’s often more of a light going off — so it’s harder to project that. But I say all of this to say I’m still a pretty firm believer that Jalen Green is going to be a fairly efficient, 25-point, five-assist-per-game guy at some point in his career. Nothing I’ve seen this year really worries me on that evaluation, even if I don’t think he’s been a particularly effective NBA player thus far. The timeline for these guys tends to be a bit longer, because the margin for error in their games is more minimal. Kelly Iko: I agree with you on where he is right now. He was never expected to be a finished product at 19, and he’s going to be just fine in this league. His defense right now is bad and definitely needs work, but he was also defending high school players not too long ago. I think at least some percentage of the shot selection stuff comes down to being a young guy trying to figure it out amidst a really bad team, lineup inconsistencies, his own health, etc. It’s been a wacky year already. Do you think improvement will come (at least defensively) by him getting bigger and stronger? Vecenie: Yeah, getting bigger and stronger will definitely help. But to me, the biggest leaps will come with experience and just recognizing what opposing teams are trying to do. Also, I think having a better defensive culture around him — one that is based around communication and leadership — will help. I think it’s why Theis got such a long leash early this year. They needed an adult out there on the back line to help not only with the results, but with the development of their young players. Unfortunately, the adverse effects on offense were just too great to stomach.
Sorry dude, not trying to put any words in your mouth, I guess I misunderstood your post. Just trying to understand the warriors comparison. I don't think anyone is deliberately losing, not the rockets anyway, they're just a bad team.
And they didn’t lose their franchise player before only going to the playoffs like three times in 20 years. They created their culture after drafting Curry, not before. There was no winning culture in GSW, like there was with the Spurs. Spurs are doing exactly what you want and look at the results.
