I certainly hope we get as high a draft pick as possible and am not suggesting that there is something great about getting 2nd round steals just for the sake of it. But you raise an interesting point. It's perhaps a difficult line to draw, but I do think it's fine to say that winning doesn't have to be our #1 focus. On the other hand, the problem I have is if we are asking players to "tank" games or not play hard, or to ask coaches to make decisions during the game designed to purposely lose. It may be splitting hairs, but I just think the high draft position can come as a by product of resting vets and trying out players to see who we should keep next year - not as a result of asking people to play to lose so that we'll get that better pick. And yeah, some teams probably really want the draft pick and act like they're testing out their rookies when they really want the draft pick. Whatever the case, the one thing I think is wrong is to ask the players themselves to tank games. I know not everyone here is doing that, but more are doing it than I would've thought.
What you are claiming is the opposite of what people here are advocating. On the court, of course you want your players giving it 100%. I don't want guys out there playing to lose, that would cheapen the sport and the team. That's not what tanking is. What we're asking for is simply a shift in concentration by the coaching staff and the management from winning a championship this year (which is now impossible) to winning a championship in the future. An injury by your star player in a meaningless game would be counterproductive to our future, so a non-contender might rest them more or sit them all together. The young bench players on the team meanwhile might benefit during the rest of the season from increased playing time, and perhaps even emerge as potential contributors on an improved squad next season. And, of course, a better lottery pick can make a real difference in the competitiveness of next season's squad.
I know that there are plenty of people that share your view, and I actually think I basically do as well. So you may be right - I went back and reread the posts thinking "are they rooting for players not to play hard or for the team to be managed a little differently"? And possibly the majority is doing as you say. BUT, there are also some comments that probably made me assume that a lot of the "tanking" talk reflected a call for players to play less than 100%, and maybe I gave those comments too much weight. For example: "The Rockets need to play with the heart, intensity and determination to lose this game. I say fire JVG is he wins this sucker." Note that the comment is about "playing", not about managing or coaching. In any event, I realize I don't have the "heart" to argue about this with fellow Rockets fans because I spend too much time arguing with my Lakers-fans friend about who has "better" fans. Obviously I think we do. So perhaps I am getting a little soapbox-ish because I feel adamant about living up to the bloated standards that I've set for us relative to them! And I certainly don't like taking the opposite side of Clutch, who does a great service in providing the best fansite of any sporting team I've ever seen, bar none. (Even my Lakers-fan friends concede this.)
Nobody will tell you to tank, you just play young players more, play Yao and Howard less. Let get the result by the playing. I do not think JVG will do that, he will try to win every game for his job or his face. Some posters just like JVG.
Minnesota is tanking the rest of the season. They are sitting Ricky Davis and Kevin Garnett until next year.
i commented on that in the kings game thread...we need to sit Ming in response with a mysterious fever! the funny thing is the bastards still got the better of the Hawks
C'mon mate be positive, we have a shot a #1 pick We got lucky when we got the first be pick which turned out to be Ming (something like a 13% chance) why not again? our chances will probably be higher this time around!!!
Maybe it's a minority, but there are at least a few people here who have implied that players shouldn't play too hard. I'm glad the majority of us agree that it's wrongheaded to blame the players. But in any event, if you want us to tank and we're failing at it (winning too many games), I think your beef is with Rockets management, not JVG. The decision to de-emphasize winning has to come from the top. JVG is paid to coach for wins, and particularly because he's a former basketball player himself and a fierce competitor in personality, it's awkward for him to coach to lose. Moreover, it's not, say, Pat Riley, where he's been given the power and autonomy in the organizational hierarchy to make the decision that they should lose all the remaining games to secure a higher draft position. (At least I don't think so - someone correct me if I'm wrong.) So we should expect him to coach for wins unless management instructs him to dial it back. And if they instruct him to sit the stars and play the bench and JVG doesn't do that, then he should be fired for insubordination. If he isn't fired, then your beef is with management because the only logical conclusion is that either (1) they didn't make it clear enough to JVG that he should sit the vets and "not worry so much about winning," or (2) they don't have the courage to fire him for disobeying a direct order. It sounds like we all agree that players should give 100% when they step on the floor, so it's not their job to guarantee the loss. It's just an awkward tightrope if you ask JVG to shoulder that responsibility. That is a strategic organizational-future-type decision - it's management's job to make that call. Suppose Chuck Hayes is grabbing offensive rebounds left and right, ruining our chance to lose. Should JVG bench him? If he does, it sends a very odd message to a young player trying to make next year's team, and to the rest of the team, vets included. If it's accepted that the goal is to lose, then management needs to give clear instructions to JVG and to the player's that losing is the new goal, so that JVG won't lose the players' respect when he starts making really bizarre decisions on who plays and who comes out. I have my own critiques of JVG, but winning too many of these remaining games is not won of them - I just think that's management's job to set the organizational mandate, not his. It's kind of a little dance, because we want to lose, but we don't want to make it TOO obvious that we're trying to lose, because it would "look bad" if we (or any team) were overly blatant about it. So while I agree that resting starters is a perfectly reasonable or good thing because there are justifiable reasons to do that aside from losing, there are limits we still don't demand in our quest for losses because exceeding those limits have no justification other than losing, and we'd worry about how it would "look." For example, we could up the ante relative to Minnesota by resting the starters AND having all of our guys work on their left handed shooting and dribbling, but why don't we do that? Because it would look bad, right? But if losing games really means THAT much to our draft position and thus our team's future, why the heck do we care about how it "looks" to anyone else, especially since we know theyr'e really trying to do the exact same thing? I've actually toyed with this question: why not have draft order (and in the case of basketball, the lottery odds), be established by the order in which a team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, not by the record at the end of the season? Some of the purposeful losing might just get shifted to earlier in the season among the worst teams instead of later. But at least it lets players and coaches just play ball at the end of the season instead of having to worry about fans getting on their case for waiting until the last few games of the season to win ballgames. I started thinking about this when the weeks leading up to the Texans / 49ers game were so chock full of "don't be an idiot, lose this game" threats by both teams' fans.
Yeah, please forgive me that. They've had my number for the last decade, but I still always have my favorite, most reliable and effective comeback: "What's Ralph Sampson doing these days?"
and who'd want to pay good $$ to see a game where one, or possibly both teams are blatantly tanking... but forget those people, lets lose anyway. i dont really care who's fault it is, or who we should "blame". Just drop ball games.
I can see us nosing *ahead* of Orlando and Seattle to claim the #9 spot. If we lose to the Wolves at home we have a chance of ending up in a tie for the #8 spot with them. I don't see us catching the Celtics or Warriors.
I don't see us losing to the wolves with them benching Garnett and Ricky Davis for the rest of the season for nagging injuries. They are tanking more than we are.
NBA is a professional sport, you can not tank. Only thing you can do is to play for this year or next year by playing young players more. Tanking thing is just a joking for some people, but you can do something without giving up hard plays and professionism for next year.
funksoultrader, you've revitalized some of my faith in our fans, our city, and even our society. furthermore, it seems that there is more of a grey line than first apparent between those that cheer "tank" and those that say "don't tank." So, I will only say that looking to the future is one thing, and making "Losing ever game left" the "mission critical" is another. As with anything, opinions vary here on how to do either of the above, but my guess is that the average consensus on this is somewhere in between, obviously. Whatever we do, let's hope they do it with honor and dignity, and let the chips and the kharma fall where they may. I didn't see the game yesterday (first one I've missed in a long long time) so maybe this is easier to say than it would be if I had, but it wouldn't change my view.... which is... whoever is on this team, coaching, playing or otherwise, better be giving it their all. This doesn't mean WIN AT ALL COSTS, it just means have some pride in who you are, do your best, and the rest will shake out the way it is meant to shake out. War Kharma.
I'm coming late to this thread but I really think tanking is a bad idea for many reasons. Losing breeds losing. You hear coaches and players always talking about developing a tradition of winning so why would you want to deliberately start a tradition of losing. There's no guarentee of getting a top pick. Remember when we got Yao. I don't recall us being the worst in the league and in this upcoming draft there isn't a no-brainer superstar pick like a Yao or Tim Duncan. Finally. I'm thinking of catching the Rox play at TC on 4/19 and I don't want to waste my money watching a team tank.
