The goal is to win a championship, right? I think we'd all agree that losing in the Finals is better than not getting there, but ultimately very unsatisfying. But everyone keeps pointing to the Spurs' success in having tanked to get TD, and to the Rockets' success in having tanked to get Hakeem. But what about all the other champions from the past 3 decades? Which season did the Lakers tank to get their SIX+ titles? Which season did the Pistons tank to get their titles? The Celtics? And, of course, who got the last laugh when the Bulls with their SIX titles got "out-tanked" by Houston and Portland? Or is it only Texas teams that have to resort to tanking, while the rest of America can win titles the good old fashioned way? Wait, now that I think about it - has anyone here ever highlighted a non-Texas team that tanked their way to a title? Look, quite obviously tanking increases your odds by some amount, but at the end of the day, it's a mentality most prevalent among teams that are constantly in the lottery. I think what's disconcerting is this idea that the drumbeat in Houston has grown so loudly with the Texans and the Rockets, so there's this feeling that we're acting like a perenially loserville city - which we thought we had left behind us in the mid 90s. I know that's not the sentiment behind the more logically thinking pro-tankers such as yourself and the many on these boards, but the challenge you have is that a lot of more emotional and less rationale people often join your chorus and elicit reactions from people who don't like the whining. I respect your view and find it understandable, and of course I am perfectly happy if we get a very high draft pick. I guess I just have an easier time relating to the view that the outcome of tanking is sufficiently imprecise that it's not worth the negativity that gets created, in part when more emotional and less logical tankers (unlike yourself) start criticizing players for making plays. I don't really know the breakdown of anti- vs pro-tank among fans, but people who play and manage pro sports must be more anti-tank in general, I think, because otherwise you'd see more blatant tanking. I just think it's part of the DNA makeup of people who are sufficiently competitive in sports to make it to that level. Why wouldn't you just forfeit games outright if Reggie Bush or LeBron were in your grasp and another team was clearly playing to lose? There are always methods to lose more effectively that pro teams don't pursue. Why not? Wouldn't that suggest that tanking is something that fans do, but that most professionals don't? (The "most" is key; I have no doubt that some organizations do contemplate tanking, I just think that, on average, they're not the ones winning titles anyway.)
Actually, this reminds me of a real-life event. Do you remember the summer Olympics where a track athlete hurt himself and kept going? I think it was a pulled hamstring, but I forget now. I can't remember which year, but the image of him hobbling across the finish line long after everyone else was done is something I remember well. The fans loved it. The media ate it up. But I truly believe that he did it for himself, not for the fans or the media. I might be wrong, but I really believe he did that for himself, because that's who he is.
Also - doesn't this example imply that an NBA player should NEVER dive for a loose ball when his team is eliminated from the playoffs? Because winning the small victory (getting the ball) risks injury and thereby threatens the bigger goal (staying healthy for a run at a championship in later years). Isn't this just a short step away from suggesting that it's smarter for an individual player to sometimes hold back to protect himself from injury if a game is out of reach?
When Grizzs get eliminated by Mavs and watch Clippers play in the final, they will ask themselves "WTF did we win those last fews games in regular season for?" I didn't expect Lakers to beat Suns, but as it is proven many times, luck favors those who look for it. Clippers cleaverly avoided match up against Mavs and Spurs, and with a bit of luck, they might get their chance to play in the WCF. Home court avantage in the first 2 rounds of playoff worth a lot more than the so called winning mentality. I think all of us debating want our team to win. Some want the team win long time and some don't have that sight.
How can honor in sports be different from honor in real life? Especially when sports is a part of real life. I think you are making a distinction without a difference. Please define "honor" then. Are deceptions honorable? Should the pump fake, the crossover, and the dream shake be illegal? At what level does a trick become dishonorable? Regarding the winning of meaningless games: have you heard the term "Pyrrhic victory"? We have a pyrrhic victory when the cost of winning is catastrophic. If the Rockets win a meaningless game but Yao suffers a career-ending injury, which adjective best describes the coach: (1) honorable; (2) blameless; or (3) stupid?
I think you missed an important part in the hypothetical Olympic games example, the rules reward lagging behind after the outcome is decided, and the reward for lagging behind can influence how much an athlete can advance in the next Olympics. Finishing meaningless games strong hurts while lagging behind helps. That's how it is in the example and in the NBA. What the athletes in your examples did are respectable, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement to keep going. It's perfectly acceptable if he goes out of the race due to injuries. We are talking about neccessity of tanking here, not about the optional respectability. Also, I think it would be open for judgement if he keeps going despite injuries if the worsening of that injury may threaten his career. You see, the difference is the attachment of the additional context that may change people's view, from respectability to stupidity. ------------------------------------------------------ I think it's up to the players to decide if they want to play hard or not when a game is meaningless or out of reach. It's up to the coach to decide tanking or not and how to do it by his substitution and arrnagements. For example, all the coaches and players accept the common practice of sitting out starters when a game is out of reach, to protect the starters from injuries, to rest them for games in future, to develop young talents... all in all, winning is secondary in those meaningless minutes. Furthermore, the NBA regular season can be viewed as a gigantic game and apply the same rathionale. If you are anti-tanking meaningless regular season games, I guess you'll be infuriated next time when JVG rest the starters in the final minutes of a lopsided game. Maybe you'll show your middle finger to Yao and T-Mac who's resting on the bench because they don't have your beloved "winning mentality" in their DNAs. Shaq half a$$es through a regular season and turn it up in the playoffs. Nobody is saying he's not a winner. All the great players turn it up in the playoffs and keep themselves from burning out in the regular season. Hakeem always turn it up a few notches in the playoffs. Barkley treats preseason games as jokes. If you think winners have to go all out all the time, that's not the truth. Maybe the USSR doesn't have your so called winning mentality genes in their DNAs, no winner's fire in their breath, but they eventually destroyed over 500 divisions of Nazi Germany army and banished them. How did they do it? They copied the same tanking strategy by losing battles on purpose, drew the enemies in, spread them out and increased their logistic difficulties while the USSR factories had time to relocate and expand, pumping out tanks and war planes for the accumulation of resources. The USSR would probably have falled to Nazi Germany if they thought as you guys did, scratching out every possible win under all circumstances. The point is not to make military affairs equivalent to basketball, but to illustrate a point regarding winning. Winning is about strategy, about ACCUMULATING and ALLOCATING resources to put oneself in a winning position, even by the means of temporary losing. This rule is ageless and its examples abundant in history. What does the above tell us? Different games have different levels of importance. Resources should be allocated accordingly, as the great players did, differentiating between garbage games, importance games and critical games. Or as all the coaches and players did, differentating between important game minutes and meaningless game minutes. For critical games to make the playoffs, I might rush T-Mac back at the risk of hurting his back, under the permission of doctors. For meaningless games like the preseason games or no playoffs regular season games, he'd better sit out to rest his back. If it's game 7 in the finals, I'd applaud T-Mac playing through back spasms. It's very simple. Meaningful wins, sweet. Meaningless wins, tasteless. Hopefully these can narrow the gap between us.
Sorry to double post. Since I'll go travel in the next few days, and I'm not sure if I'll have the time and means to find internet connection, I figured I'd better say whatever I have left on this issue. First, I don't think honor or whatever is associated with losing meaningless games with strategic benefits to gain, while winning these meaningless games depleting strategic benefits. Second, I don't think honor or pride is always associated with winning mentality. The best example off the top of my head is Micheal Jordan, one of the most competitive winners of all time. It's said by who else but our very own JVG though, that Jordan is a con man who treats the young players on other teams as his best friends off the court, so they let off their guards and Jordan could eat them alive on the court. It's certainly a dishonorable way to win, but if true, who can say the MJ is not a winner? Of course, it's best to win in a honorable way, but it doesn't mean winning meaningless games is honorable, or vice versa.
Holy cow, personal foul! Misquoting me for the purpose of refuting me with a truism that no one would disagree with? Nowhere in my post did I say that honor in sports is different from honor in "real life." My post said (and still says) that honor means a different thing in sports than in "family and war." Interestingly, in misquoting me, your response suggests that, purposefully or not, your first instinct was to equate family and war with "real life" and assume that that's what I had in fact written. You are a clever one. First you say that "honor is a more difficult concept than you may think," and that your "intent here is not to judge, but to say that honor is not at all a simple concept," and THEN you ask ME to "please define 'honor.'" In other words, AFTER I agreed with you that honor is a difficult concept, you ask ME to define what is, as you say, not at all a simple concept. Goodness, I can only imagine what you might've asked of me if I had actually DISagreed with you. What I DID say is that honor means different things to different people. Can we at least agree on that? "Pyrrhic victory" - great phrase. Bulls fans have used it to describe the Rockets' success in tanking their way to the #1 pick, Hakeem Olajuwon, leaving them stuck with Jordan at #3. (Possibly, Saints fans are now using it to describe the Texans' successful signing of Mario Williams after the Texans' successful tanking effort.) In your example, I am going to give you the classic economist's response: "it depends." If Yao was injured at tip-off in a game that was "meaningless" because the Rockets were the #2 seed and couldn't move up to #1, but JVG wanted to get him 10 minutes to keep him fresh, then the answer would be (4) unlucky. If it were in a game like this year, when the Rockets were out of contention and he were playing his 40th minute, the answer would be "(3) stupid." Ok, I have one question for you: Name one team not from Texas that has ever won an NBA title that can be directly attributed to successful tanking? As for your references to the honor of cluster bombing or shooting people in the back, the reason I tried to separate this conversation about sports from one about war is that I just think making war metaphors is not the greatest thing to do at a time when real soldiers are getting killed, and people seem more willing to talk about a career-ending injury to Yao as a "catastrophe" but don't readily use the same word to describe the loss of one soldier's life. I'm not here to judge - just say that making war metaphors takes us in a direction where perspective can get unwittingly undermined, where adjectives like "honor" and "catastrophe" mean one thing in sports and a very different but arguably more meaningful thing in a real war where people die. I've never fought in a war so I can't comment on what that's like. If you have, then I salute you and thank you for your service. The reason I appreciated Red Glare's perspective is that he can actually speak about the experience and perhaps knows how different from sports it really is, and how a lot of the analogies thrown about do or don't apply. The thing is, I think we agree. I said winning a "meaningless" game is honorable for the players who put forth the effot. I think you would agree with that, yes? I said nothing about the coach, other than that it would be stupid if he overplayed Yao and Yao had a career ending injury. I think we agree on that, too, yes?
By the way, my apologies for the long post. I should've been more terse. Yet another great word, and fortunately a little less complicated a concept.
Have a great time traveling. I agree no one can say MJ is not a winner - in fact I think he is now listed as a 5th definition under the word in the official English dictionary. But I also know that reasonable people may consider some aspects of his game less than honorable - just ask Bill Cartwright. That said, he would certainly be considered an expert on how to win an NBA championship, in which case, if we throw honor out of the equation, he'd have a compelling opinion on how to get there with or without honor, right? Don't you think MJ would NEVER go along with the tanking approach? Just not in his DNA. (Though, on the other hand, he was a more effective as a player than as a coach or in management; but that's partly because he was the only one diving for loose balls at his age on a squad where the younger guys didn't play as hard as him, and he just couldn't relate.) In fact, I would speculate that, honorable or not, Bird, Magic, and MJ would all be anti-tankers. (On the other hand, other anti-tankers who never won titles would possibly include Barkley and Malone.) Sorry, it's a cheap shot - you can't answer my silly questions by me because you're traveling, so just have fun and enjoy. Maybe we'll get the next Amare with our crappy draft pick and this can all be moot and we'll all drink beer together and argue about what the meaning of "honor" is.
Grizz on the other hand, fought for "honor" at the end of the regular season, only to earn a sweep in the 1st round. Chances are Clippers will beat Lakers to advance to WCF. Spurs and Mavs will wear down each other in a 6-7 game series to give Clippers a decent shot in the finals. Will you rather be Grizz fans instead of Clippers fans now?
Is that a real rule in the Olympics? I honestly don't know. If it's just a made-up example to illustrate your point, then it part of why it makes for a good example is that you've tailored it to fit your conclusion. If it is a real rule, then I must say I don't understand the Olympics anymore because it seems kind of bizarre. As for the USSR example, I think it's best, as you suggest, not to make military affairs equivalent to basketball. I really don't think one's view on tanking games says anything about one's approach to war. Even in war, there are lines that some but not all people think are inappropriate to cross. For example, what if a people decide that their best chance for "accumulating and allocating resources to put oneself in a winning position" is to engage in suicide missions against a more well armed foe? Would you condone that? What if a team decides that the best means for getting a #1 pick is to forfeit games because another tanking team is losing more aggresively than they are? Would you condone that? Now, I am not at all suggesting that someone who says you should forfeit games would also be pro terrorism. But this is why, as you noted, it's problematic to use military examples to support a sports argument - because the moral implications of one's view are vastly different in each arena. Besides, I've never fought in a war, and I think the only people who can really comment on that credibly are people like Red Glare, so anything I say would be ivory tower anyway. My questions, for when you return from what I hope is a pleasant time traveling: 1. If the playoffs are out of reach and Houston's scrubs were playing unusually well and winning an occasional game while another tanking team was losing more games, would you be in favor of instructing the players to play left handed only and with one-eye closed so as to guarantee the loss? Put another way, is there ANY limit on what you would do to lose the final games? 2. What would be a good actual example from the business world (or anything that's not a military one) that shows how tanking is the most effective way to succeed, and is done with absolutely no sheepishness? (Note that I am trying to avoid any reference to "honor." )
Thanks bud, I'm just happy to be here debating this stuff with fellow fans, rather than sitting over in some far away desert. The rest of this is a little off topic, so readers beware. The question you raise on how and why people's persepctives differ is an interesting one to me, and one I've given a lot of thought to over the years. The personality type of your major friend is ubiquitous in the military, and I had to wonder-- was this an attribute instilled in a person through the act of service, or was a particular sense of honor something people have within them, inherently? My personal belief is that people behave the way they are raised, and that includes their feelings on what is right, and what is honorable. I don't think that having a code of conduct or taking an oath, or wearing a uniform makes someone honorable. If this were the case, then those disgraceful pictures of troops torturing and humiliating POWs would never have existed. The troops responsible for those actions were not honorable people, though they wore the vestments of an honorable profession. In contrast, I've known people who never served a single day in any military branch or other municipal service and yet are possesed of higher moral fiber and a stronger sense of honor than I would ever dare claim. No, I think what instills a sense of honor and integrity in people is their family and friends, not the act of service. I do think that there are very many people that serve in the military that are of high integrity with a strong sense of honor and duty, but I believe that those attributes are what drew them to service in the first place, rather than the service drawing the attributes out of the individual. My feeling is that people with strong convictions about "right" action, and a very direct and straightforward sense of honor, don't think that it is a difficult concept at all. One of my favorite simple criteria for distinguising honorable action from dishonorable was this: would you be doing what you are doing if you were being watched by someone who's opinion of you mattered? People tend to do a lot of dishonorable things when they think they can get away with it. I'll attempt to tie this back into basketball, although I still don't think the "battle is to war as game is to season" analogy holds water on any but the most superficial "Idiot's Guide to Sun-Tzu" manner. For the pro-tankers, a conondrum using the simple criteria I related in the preceding paragraph: if your own son was in a boxing match, and after the first couple of rounds it was obvious there was no way he could win, would you tell him to go down and stay down to avoid possible injury or death so that he may fight another day? Or would you do your job, and coach him the best that you could, while tending his cuts and hoping for the best? If you told him to go down early and stay down, would you be embarassed to admit this on public television? There is no right or wrong answer, it is a question of values, and what is right for you may not be right for the next guy. For me, tanking a single game is something I would be ashamed to ask anyone to do, and would not do myself, even if it all but guaranteed me a chance at a championship "in the future".
Hmm. I favor the Lakers. I like Kobe's winning mindset, and think that it will spread to the rest of the Lakers like wildfire. Though the Clippers have more cumulative talent, I think that in the end, the winning mentality will prevail. Should be interesting. As far as which team I'd rather be a fan of, I'll stick with the Rockets, though I admire the Grizzlies for entering the playoffs without fear.
When my mind turns to honor, I reflect of military honor, honor to man and of personal honor, honor to God. In the case of honor to man I think of the millions of mindless men, brainwashed by honor, killing millions of others and then in turn giving their own lives to the millions brainwashed by their so called enemy.This honor has been used for countless generations to achieve the desires of the few. A few because in the end only a few are the so called victors. Then in turn over the centuries their victory becomes for naught as the so called enemy becomes stronger and a new honor repeats the cycle all over again. This honor is only valid when it is used in conjunction with personal honor and the Honor to God. God allows us freedom of choice, to accept or refute the so called honor of man. In this way as sentient beings we judge an honorable way to live following the code given to us by God. This does not mean that we become dishonorable when we choose our path to the ultimate goal. For example loosing games, when winning only produces a fruitless future. The Rockets were knocked out of the playoffs and tanking for a better position in the Draft. I would view such an action as using the gifts of God for a positive result and a clear indication that the mind of the Rockets Management is using Common Sense.
Well, that was no question. But if you have to choose between being a fan of Clippers and a fan of Grizz right now, what's your choice? I think Suns will put up a final fight and drag this series to at least game 6. Clippers will have home court advantage, more rest time before round 2.
