I agree with you about the Thunder, but they are just about the only team I can think of that has really been built successfully entirely on a youth movement. What about all the others? Of course teams can improve and become contenders after losing for many years. Problem is it typically requires stars to align.
Tanking guarantees nothing. I don't care if it's worked a couple times in the past. It's foolish to put all your eggs in one basket. The basket, in this case, being the 2011 lottery. This involves us literally losing on purpose (which is problematic in the first place), and not only do I agree it creates a losing culture within your organization but it's also mathematically challenging. At 25-29 with close to a third of the season left, it's way too late to consider any desperate approaches like this. Bottom line: people need to realize our #1 draft pick talent is going to come in the form of a trade or via the 2012 free agent class. All it would have taken to get Bosh or Carmelo was the desire from their end to play in Houston. Guess what? Done deal. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. The point is THAT is how a team in our situation is going to land their superstar or franchise player. The Bosh and Melo situations occurred in just this past year alone and there will be other opportunities in the future.
This is a gross misrepresentation of my position. Nowhere did I state that we should put all our eggs in one basket. By all means, pursue high-value acquisitions via trade, free agency, and SnT. We shouldn't neglect any avenues. I'm saying we need to do so with a clear understanding of the limitations of these options. It's unlikely that teams will trade us their superstars because we don't have high-value prospects to give them in return. It's unlikely that free agent superstars will choose to come to Houston in the absence of other stars because all we can offer them is the same max contract as everyone else and Houston is not a major media market that gets you big endorsement deals. I also don't think the team should 'tank' in the sense that we should actively work to lose on purpose, like throwing the ball away on every offensive possession or something. We should instead recognize that this team is not a contender and prioritize player development instead of winning games this season. Patterson, Williams, Hill, and Ish should each play 20 minutes per game. Because of their inexperience, it's likely that we will lose more games than we would if we played the hell out of Battier, Scola, Lowry, and Martin. But your young studs don't turn into contributors by sitting on the bench. They need in-game reps to develop. And if the consequence of this is that we pick at 9 or 10 instead of 14 when we miss the playoffs, I can live with that. I'll concede that a winning team is more attractive to free agents than a loser. But we're talking the difference between 35 wins and 45, not 20 and 55. Our record may be better, but it's not good enough to make a difference.
The Celtics were a 2nd to last 24-58 prior to the KG trade, but they lost the lottery that year and ended up with the 5th pick, and their record was that bad partially because Pierce only played 47 games due to injury. If they were tanking on purpose, they lost out getting the worst possible pick they could end up with at 5. Pierce was the 10th overall pick the year he was drafted so they didn't have to tank to get him. I don't think Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff, Sebastian Telfair, a 2009 first round draft pick (top three protected) and a return of Minnesota's conditional first round draft pick previously obtained in the Ricky Davis-Wally Szczerbiak trade were better than what the Rockets could offer a team now if a similar situation came up to the KG deal. Also at the time Boston had a reputation as a city that many black athletes didn't exactly find appealing more so than Houston where lots of NBA players have offseason homes and no state income tax. Teams that didn't tank prior to winning it all: The Lakers were 53-29 prior to trading for the rights to draft Kobe and getting Shaq. They were 42-40 prior to trading for Gasol. The Heat went 36-46 prior to drafting Dwade, 42-40 prior to trading for Shaq and 47-35 prior to getting Lebron and Bosh. The worst record the Pistons had prior to their championship in 03-04, was going 32-50, 2 years prior in 00-01, and they were 42-40 the year before that. The year the Spurs "tanked" to get Duncan, both Sean Elliott and David Robinson were out with injuries. Their injury misfortunes just happened to luck out for them in the Duncan draft and both of those injured players were able to make full recoveries the next season, but that and the Celtics are the closest you can find to a team "tanking" and it leading to championships in recent history. Other recent lottery teams with mediocre records that were not close to what the worst in the league this year is likely to be: Derrick Rose was picked 1st after the Bulls had a 33-49 record the year before. Kevin Durrant was picked 2nd and the Thunder had a 31-51 record the year before. Lots of all stars are picked outside the top 3: Chris Paul 4th Chris Bosh 4th Dwayne Wade 5th Ray Allen 5th Kevin Garnett 5th Dirk Nowitzki 6th Brandon Roy 6th Amare Stoudemire 9th Tracy McGrady 9th Paul Pierce 10th Joe Johnson 10th Kobe Bryant 13th Steve Nash 15th Tony Parker 28th Gilbert Arenas 31st Manu Ginóbili 57th I'm sure there are quite a few I have left out. Top 5 picks are very risky to count on: Of the top 5 players picked in the last 12 years, it appears only DWade and Pau Gasol have won championships, and Gasol obviously didn't do it with the Grizzlies. By my count in the last 12 years Lebron, Devin Harris, Kenyon Martin and Dwight Howard are the only other top 5 picks to have made it to the Finals and they lost, and only Lebron and Howard were franchise players for their team in that group. For every near last place finish that gets a team Lebron, Dwade, Rose or Dwight Howard (Franchis level players who haven't won championships yet) there are a dozen teams that end up with Thabeet, Adam Morrison, Greg Oden, Emeka Okafor, Kwayme Brown, Andrew Bogut, Shaun Livingston, Jay Williams, Darko Milicic, Shelden Williams, Tyrus Thomas, Drew Gooden, Eddy Curry, Elton Brand, Steve Francis, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, Mike Dunleavy, Marcus Fizer, Stromile Swift, Kenyon Martin, Raef LaFrentz, Darius Miles, Tyson Chandler or Raymond Felton. Some of these guys have had good NBA careers, even been all stars for stretches, and some may improve down the road, but they aren't franchise level players. Even if you get one of the better players in that list, are you really excited about tanking a season away to get the first over all pick and get Elton Brand, Kenyon Martin, Steve Francis, Tyson Chandler or Andrew Bogut? Speaking of Francis the Rockets went 31-19 in the lockout shortened season prior to trading for him and 28-54 prior to picking Yao Ming. Sure being bad increases your chances of getting the top pick, but getting the top pick hasn't lead to many championships for most of the teams picking there over the last 12 years.
yes! start of fresh next year clean slate. Change the entire staff including the cleaning crew. Also bring back Calvin (the pimp) Murphy. Thanks, Fan since my DOB :grin:
A better word for tank is rebuilding. Morey said that you can not tank becuase you have a contract with the ticket holders to win the games rather than losing the games. But you can tell the fans that we are in the mode of rebuilding, they should understand. I hope the rockets are not going to follow Texans, they are the mediocre every year, but the owner will tell the fans that they can win big next year, and simply keep his coach for his purpose.
I mean this respectfully, but this isn't at all about you nor was I responding to you in particular. Tanking is tanking. You're trying to lose. Sure, you can dress it up with the notion that you're merely "developing talent" but at the end of the day you're choosing not to make winning basketball games a priority. Clearly, I have a problem with that. I'd have LESS of a problem with this ridiculous notion if we weren't already 25-29, thus leaving the idea of us even sniffing the top five in a draft lottery up to nothing more than chance. Err...a low probability chance, I should say. And, yes, our tanking plan would require us putting all our eggs in one basket. Unless our plan is to suck for multiple drafts thereby stacking up top five talents with the idea that eventually one of them will pan out, we are placing all our emphasis upon striking gold in THIS draft alone. If that's the main purpose of your tanking plan then you are, indeed, placing all your eggs in one basket. No smart owner in our position (middle of the pack) is going to endorse a tanking plan. It does create a losing culture and stigma within the organization that will undoubtedly affect player behavior/performance, ticket sales and other outside variables that people forget to consider.
great post, i guess you would agree that we need better than a 14th pick to increase our chances, since the percentage of ppl on your list that were drafted 14th or worse is pretty low.
Clippers did not tank, they sucked. There are two types of rebuilding teams in NBA: Good management+ losing = a chance to win. Portland, Celtics, Thunders, Spurs, Rockets, magic, Miami,... Bad management + losing = losing repeatedly. Clippers, TWolves, Warriors, and too many eastern teams.... Rockets have top notch management team. If you want to win, you lose now. It will be a huge waste not to tank.
First of all, apologies. I thought you were responding to my post and I responded under that assumption. Where we disagree is that I don't see this as an all-in move. My guess is we'll win about 35 games, give or take 5, no matter what we do. Giving the young guys significant tick will probably cost us 3-4 games from where we would have finished. Once you get past the outliers of suckitude like the Cavs, the lottery teams are fairly tightly clustered, and that many games can make a significant difference. As one of the posters above showed, you don't need to be top-3 to get a stud. Finding one in the top 10 is quite common. But let's assume a worst-case scenario. Let's assume our 11th pick is a complete bust and our young players are frozen in development, getting no better than they are now. What have we lost? We're a mildly sub-par team in either scenario. I don't buy the 'losing culture' argument for a minute, given the innumerable examples of formerly tepid teams who acquire a stud or two and proceed to experience playoff success, but even so, the delta we're talking about isn't going to matter much in two seasons. On the flip side, if we get a pick in the 8-12 range, we have a better chance of picking up a player we could use or flip in a trade, and one of our two young players may turn out to be studs. Given that it doesn't cost us much, I see no reason not to play the kids.
Tanking is completely pointless to me no matter how you dress it up. Let's say we're the 14th best team in the draft lottery again. Do you realize there's a 1.2% difference between the odds the 14 (0.5%) and 9 (1.7%) seeds have of winning the draft lottery? So if I were to follow your logic and just play the younger guys in favor of trying to use the trade deadline to inject some talent/size/spark into this group and maybe make the playoffs, we're supposed to essentially give up hope so we can maybe mathematically improve our overall chances of winning the draft lottery by even a single percentile? I'm sorry but I just can't agree with that dubious approach. And I used the 9-14 range as sort of best case scenario for your 'go younger' approach. Assuming that strategy costs us 3-5 games (as you suggested) on top of where we're projected to finish I can't see us finishing any lower than 9th overall.
The Spurs did tank to get Duncan. The Spurs could have brought David Robinson back that year after injury but they kept him out. Therefore, the Spurs did tank to get Tim Duncan, which was the right thing to do. Whats the point of finishing 8th and then getting bounced in the 1st round again. Its all about championships!
There is alot of luck involved though on picking the right player, or there even being a right player in any particular draft regardless of when you draft or how good your GM is. Obviously picking higher gives you more chances, but you can have a middle of the pack lottery team and get lucky with the lottery to win the first pick. Or have the worst record and get unlucky and pick 4th. Maybe you get lucky in the lottery and get a Dwight Howard, or maybe you end up with a year like 2000 when the top 10 looks like this and there is no franchise player no matter how good a GM you have picking #1: Kenyon Martin Stromile Swift Darius Miles Marcus Fizer Mike Miller DerMarr Johnson Chris Mihm Jamal Crawford Joel Pryzbilla Keyon Dooling The Heat, Lakers and Pistons had records on par or better than what the Rockets' are likely to have, in the seasons leading up to winning it all. Even the Rockets were 10 years removed from their tanking to get Dream before they actually won a championship. Over the past 12 years since the 1998 draft, DWade is the only top 5 pick who won a championship with the team he was drafted by and the Heat was 36-46 the year before he was drafted. Even if you hit the jackpot like the Cavs did with Lebron, he may leave you before you win a championship. See Bosh, Lebron, Chris Paul, Carmello, Deron Williams, Stoudemire, Pau Gasol, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Tracy McGrady, and Shaq leaving Orlando just for starters on modern era players who left, were traded, or are are rumored to want to leave the team that drafted them before winning championships, even when some of them were in competitive situations already. Considering how many stars have left in free agency or been traded from their original teams, it's not unreasonable for Morey to think eventually we will get a shot at a star too.
You cannot say with absolute certainty that the Spurs tanked...I mean come on. That is purely speculation on your part...unless you can tell me that Pop is your uncle's best friend and confidant and he broke his sworn oath of silence after having a few too many brews and spilled the beans by telling you and now you're telling the world here.
