The rockets are on the "mediocrity treadmill"

Do you have any evidence that Robinson, Kirilenko, and Boozer weren't actually injured? You are saying that we should lose on purpose or fake injuries right?

Also, you said Heat earlier. I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that a team with Brian Grant and Eddie Jones as your only good players was going to win, and that they "tanked". As you said, they were going to lose no matter what.

 

Spurs got lucky that the one year that David Robinson got seriously hurt, the #1 pick was Tim Duncan and they won the lotto despite having only the 3rd worst record (and about a 16% chance of winning). Had they gotten even the 2nd pick, they could have ended with Keith Van Horn. Had Robinson gotten hurt another year, they could have ended up with, say, Elton Brand, Kenyon Martin, or perhaps even Kwame Brown, Shawn Bradley, etc.

That said, there are certainly times where a team should look to the future and essentially abandon the current season-- The Bobcats, for example, are right to trade Gerald Wallace. I don't think the Rockets are there right now.

 

The fadeaway.

 

Avery Johnson got his minutes reduced to less than 30 mpg in the last month of the season for every game, unless the Spurs were in a blowout loss.

Heat were a good organization. You may laugh, but they had the 3rd best defense in the league and 2 spots behind the 8th seed, before they went into full tank mode in 2003. They were in a temporary situation with an ill Mourning and waiting for the cap relief from his expiring contract. They had still won 50 wins and 36 wins. Zo was their best player but had a kidney disorder. Eventually, his salary expired and they used the cap space to sign Odom in the year they got Wade.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIA/2002.html

 

You don't rebuild when you're already a young and above average team. Both of those describe the Rockets right now. If we were as good as we are right now, but most of our players were aging veterans, it would be the right move to sell players off and rebuild. But right now what are we going to do? Trade young players for other young players?

??

It's not like anybody is going to give us the first overall pick in the draft for anything we have on the roster. And no, you can't just bench guys who deserve playing time. That's their career you're talking about. It would be very unethical.

 

I didnt say "never recover", I didnt say Tanking = Automatic 7 years minimum in the cellar. I said to get a OVERNIGHT FRANCHISE CHANGING SAVIOR (in hopes of contending for a title) it depends on how deep the draft is and where the lottery ball lands. Yes you can get a quality player that improves the team better than it was before. But you can also do that through trade IF the right deal comes along as well.

Its about level of expectations and just going over the general approach.

Where we both agree, you gotta be a GOOD organization BEFORE even entering the lottery (whether its lottery through tanking or by true sucking). And IN lotto>>NO lotto. Just you gotta be smart+lotto lucky to get Kevin Durant. And you gotta be REALLY SMART when the next best is Mike Conley, Jeff Green and Yi Jianlian on the board.

The Rockets tanked to get Yao Ming. But the luck of the lottery put them at #1. If the Rockets got the #5 pick, would they have the smarts to draft Amare Stoudemire who went #9? The Spurs got Tim Duncan at #1. But they could have easily gotten #3 pick and had Chauncey Billups (improvement, not franchise changer) or Antonio Daniels (non-improvement) instead.

So YES its better to tank to even GET in the sweepstakes and come out with a nice consolation prize. And those high draft picks also help in getting better trades. It just depends on your expectations of what "turnaround" is I guess.

 

Well if we're gonna do comparisons we might as well compare the same front office people...

Les Alexander-2
Mark Cuban- 0

 

Well our young guys I really like.

Goran Dragic
Chase Budinger
Patrick Patterson

Goran is pretty young and can develop even more to an outstanding point guard at hissize and skill set. If he already isnt with starting type minutes. Which would be hard to come by with Lowry here. I think Morey trade a Brooks Lowry situation for another later similar situation with Lowry and Dragic. Patterson I dont know how good he can be but he is already solid. Budinger has enough talent to be a smaller Rudy Gay. Yes i do believe that when i say it.


So?? I dont know? We have to see what these guys do with minutes. Courtney Lee is a solid veteran who is also young. Kevin Martin is not old. Only Scola is older veteran type of the starters now. I like our team and we could a few players to be a middle of the pack playoff team. We could draft and get lucky in the middle of the round. It has happened. We could lose some depth and trade for a Superstar which would make us a upper team but not top team because we lost depth perhaps. Depends on deals and luck from here on out.

 

Its kinda a chicken or egg thing - What forms mediocrity: just being in the lottery, or the actual franchise sucking to be in the lottery?

Half the teams in the lottery is in itself INDICATIVE that those franchises are ALWAYS bad. Which is of course is why they're in the lottery. They're the ones that give "lottery team" the bad name.

But not every lotto team is created equal. It doesnt extend mediocrity if you INTENTIONALLY tank already having a decent team to work with, and being a good franchise who knows how to draft. If Kobe and Pau were out the whole year and Lakers tanked, you'd be very worried that the quality run Lakers would capitalize on that for the long haul. They're not anything close to their next door neighbor the Clippers.

The issue is, like you said, in thinking drafting in the lottery is easy like online shopping at Amazon.com or something. There's mechanisms in place that intentionally give off uncertainty where its purposely not a sure thing. All you know is you'll get better. It depends on how MUCH better you want to be and how "real" you want to keep it.

And as we saw with the Brandon Roy draft, drafting isnt a sure thing and one draft spot difference is a difference between a BIG JUMP and incremental improvement. All you can do in your control is suck as BAD as possible while retaining the good parts of your team (aka: development).

 

Not even going to dignify the idea of tanking by reading the OP. How did this thread get four stars? Yuck.

Tanking is a kind of cheating and it is definitely poor sportsmanship.

Who wants to win that way?

I gave this thread one star because that was the least I could give and then I peed on it.

 

Y'all wanna be the Pacers? Cool. Let's do it.

 

I get what you saying but half the teams who think they are getting that stud didn't do their homework and suffered because of it. Meanwhile, they passed on a guy they could build around and he's an all-star.

 

Miller, Scola, Martin and Yao Ming are not that young for NBA players. Our stars are older and have reached their ceiling. They aren't even close to passing the first round. Our young players have room to grow, but they aren't high ceiling high lottery picks, except Thabeet. Thabeet's ceiling is high but only as a defensive player.

Rockets are right in the middle for average team age, not young and not old.

http://www.nba.com/rockets/roster/

Brad Miller 34
Yao Ming 30
Scola 30
Martin 28

Compared to the rest of the league, before the Battier trade, The Rockets were not one of the younger teams. The chart is sorted by oldest in descending order.

It's no surprise that the Thunder, Grizzlies and Timberwolves are the youngest teams, while the Rockets are around the middle.

Spoiler

 

Friggin' Scola and Martin...all trying hard and stuff. What a couple of morons! Holding us down. They really piss me off..

 

While i certainly dont disagree with you? Right now there is nothing we can do about it. The trade deadline has passed and we are already heading for the 14th pick in the draft. So now is time to look forward to this teams playoff run currently and then what to do next season, next draft, next trade time, next free agency. I hope you are still as adamant about our team by then. Then that passion can be put to good use again.

 

Yo the next two years who we tanking to get?

Kyrie "the toe" Irving? haaaaaaaaaaaa

 

this is why i never understood why stern punished a ****ty celtics team for purposely tanking the season in early 2000, but stern did nothing when the mid 90s spurs blatantly and openly tanked the season after david robinson was hurt. there were many terrible teams that year that needed that number one pick alot more than the spurs. (like the mitch richmond and a bunch of sorry role players kings, the raptors, grizzlies, and you already know the clippers with brent barry, lamond murray and loy vaught being the only good players on that team at the time.) spurs honestly didnt need that no 1 pick cause they were a 500 team the preivious year before robinson got hurt. its almost like david stern gave the spurs a no 1 draft pick to a 500 team.