Simple question. Now that we know where we are as a team, would you prefer to tank or "battle for that 6th spot and a chance to play OKC instead of GSW/SAS? If we tank we pick up our own first rounder back to go along with the Detroit first rounder. If we don't tank the best we can hope for is possibly a #5 seed and a series against the Clippers again. And to do that we've got to make up 7 games on Memphis with 27 games to go. In other words, Memphis would have to collapse. Not likely. So what would you do? Tank or grind out a low seed?
Logically I know that they can't win this year no matter what happens so I'd like them to just outright miss the playoffs, but at the same time, it would do well for my psyche as a fan and my faith in certain players to see them pull together and go on a run even if it ultimately falls short. If they tank the season that probably means Harden "gives up" or shows worse effort than he has this season and that would be pretty disheartening going forward. Not to mention that I think a total collapse hurts our sales pitch to a free agent.
Yeah, because tanking sends a great message to potential free agents and our own players. I'm sure Harden will want to stay around if we tank when his contract is up. It's a slim chance we get KD as is but tanking would surely squash that tiny chance away.
Well we can't have JB go tell the players to play like s*** on purpose. What we can do is give more time to younger guys like KJ, Trez, and (if he comes back this year) Dekker. Let's also sign a young guy to fill out the roster and give him some minutes. We can lower Harden's and Ariza's minutes per game (which we need to do anyway IMO). We can rest Dwight liberally. We can try new defensive schemes/concepts in-game. I'm tempted to say we could give more minutes to Lawson, but he's just sucked so bad that I don't think more minutes is the solution for him. I have no idea what is. He just needs to find his balls again. So doing those things would be effectively tanking in my eyes. And I'd be OK with doing that. BTW... What are our protections on that first round pick we sent to Denver beyond this year? I know it's lottery protected this year, but what about after that? I don't want to lose our 2017 first round pick since that's supposed to be a strong draft.
If that's the argument then isn't KD gone from OKC anyways since they missed the playoffs last season? I don't think this idea that if we miss the playoffs we become unattractive to KD has much merit. These players are smart. They know James is here. It's just like Miami with Wade all over again. They sucked but they were the destination for Lebron/Bosh because Wade was already in place. I think the possible difference-maker for KD may be the coach and what we do with Howard.
Morey admitted to as much with the trading our our best scorer off the bench and willingness to buy out Lawson.
Your point is somewhat moot because even if we try hard to tank we would not be bad enough. The rebuilding mode would start next year or 2 years from now.
Nope tanking wont make a difference. Get into the playoffs hope Detroit narrowly miss the playoffs. Give Denver our pick. Work with the capspace that we will have. Tanking wont do any good for us.
What good would a playoff push do in the eyes of prospective free agents if the majority of our "core" won't be here. "Hey KD, so we managed to make the 5th seed last year in somehow upset the Clippers before getting swept by GS thanks in part to Dwight, TJones, Terry, Lawson, and Josh Smith. Unfortunately we don't have any of those guys anymore, nor do we have the same coach. But hey, we've got Harden, Ariza, Bev, and Corey Brewer!"
I'm not going to be totally offended by missing the playoffs - but at the same time, the upside of tanking is really, really low if you only start in March. You shut down Harden for the rest of the year and you move up, what, three or four draft spots? (I don't think the value of keeping/losing the draft pick is nearly as important to the future as finding a workable system for a Harden/Howard core.) If I'm the coach, I am not tanking, but I am doing a crapton of experimenting to try and find something that will work with this team going forward. If that means starting KJ McDaniels at the 4 or Harden at the 1 just to see what happens, so be it.
Grind to the playoffs! Don't know what to expect from the team but JB needs to start trusting his bench more and playing players coming off the bench with consistent know your role minutes.
Yes, of course they should tank. Let's be realistic. Durant ain't coming here this summer. Neither is any other big name free agent. There's a very good chance Dwight walks. And we're likely letting T-Jones go for nothing as well since giving him 8 figures a year is insane. So that leaves only one possible way to rebuild this roster: the draft. It's kinda hard to do that though if you lose your first round pick(and possibly 2nd rounder as well) because you insisted on barely sneaking into the playoffs only to get your ass handed to you by the Warriors or Spurs. Rack up the losses, hold onto your pick, maybe get as high as 11 or 12 in the lottery(barring a miraculous ping pong ball bounce), hopefully get lucky with the Detroit pick from the D-Mo deal, and then start from there.
No matter how dysfunctional this team is, a team with James Harden and Dwight Howard can't be bad enough to tank (which is why it would have been great to get rid of Dwight).
They're in a **** situation. If they tank Harden leaves and they're right back to square 1, if they don't they most likely end up spinning their wheels as a 3-6 seed with no real chance of contending for years to come.
JB said a while back that players have to earn his minutes and that's why Brewer gets 35min a game JB looks clueless when he's on the court. The fact that people like him have a job in the NBA is a bad reflection itself on the league
