From ESPN Van Gundy says........ On the strategy of losing to get better: "We would never accept a player not trying hard. But we accept teams not trying hard. We accept owners telling GMs to tell coaches not to win. We're fine with that. But can you imagine if a coach ever instructed a player "hey, I don't want you to try hard tonight so we lose." We invent this term called "tanking" when it's really cheating the fans, altering competition and I'm not OK with that. ... It's altering the outcome. It really is. It undermines the very idea of competition." On how the Bobcats became the worst team ever: "Listen. Rich Cho in his sleep could pick better players than they had this year. But that's not the plan. Michael Jordan's plan is to be bad. To get as bad as possible. To try to hit a home run in the lottery and get good at the cheapest price. A lot of NBA owners agree with him. And they'll totally disagree with what the Houston Rockets try to do, which is to be as good as they can possibly be every year while making sound, prudent decisions. They're ridiculed for that, like that is some horrible thing to actually do, which is try. ... That's how sick it is now."
You do what you have to do to get better unfortunately. It's a very counter-intuitive process, but unless the process is changed, this is the manner in which the process will continue to be done to potentially try and get franchise players.
It's definitely warrants a degree of respect for what the Rockets are doing compared to a team that is purposely trying to tank. It really is a shame that that is the mentality of the league now but I'll have to agree with some that this was a year to take advantage of that with it being shortened.
For what it's worth, I totally agree with Van Gundy. I watch basketball because I love the game. Tanking is not a part of the game. And I can't support my home team doing it.
Well then...this sort of puts an asterik by our 34 wins and makes our accomplishments (or lack thereof) seem less than impressive if everybody else (bottom feeders) is trying to tank and we were the only ones trying to win some games. Should have just went with the flow of things instead of just running around in circles.
He's absolutely right. The NBA needs to come up with a system where the worst team isn't rewarded with the best picks for being terrible. It's really easy to be terrible. In my opinion a team like the Rockets that actually tries to be good should have the highest picks.
