Tanking Is NOT The Answer

But we were in the finals after Hakeem's second year. From 86-95 we made it to 3 of the 10 NBA finals with Hakeem and won two of them. If that's not success from tanking then I don't know what it is. If Ralph stays healthy MJ might be that guy with all the talent and only 1 or 2 rings.

 

I don't know how to respond except with 'No, they're not.' Look at the Hawks, the Blazers, the Pacers, or the Nuggets. They're all in similar situations to what you're describing. None of them are contenders. None of them will be until they rebuild. The Decision changed the paradigm. Stars are not going to voluntarily go to Atlanta, Portland, Indianapolis, Denver (or Houston) by themselves. They want to to play together in flashy destination cities.

To have a winning roster, you need to spend at or near the salary cap, which means you don't have enough to sign a free agent outright, and to trade for one, you'd have to deplete the roster to the point where you're not going to be adding significant wins (assuming you can even find a team willing to trade you a superstar for 16ppg players making 8 million a year)

The stars just aren't coming. The way to get a multi-star championship foundation is the way the Thunder did it - suck for a few years and draft smartly. The sooner Les realizes this, the sooner we can contend again.

And by the way, it's darn hard to keep salary cap flexibility while simultaneously ending roster churn.

 

The problem with your argument is one of the teams you mentioned. Denver.
They did the whole "suck bad" thing and ended up with Carmello Anthony for their trouble.
They built their team around him - but before they were ever a contender he was gone.
So now they're back to 'rebuilding' - and in year 2 of that process.

Portland represents the same failure of building through the draft - but from another angle. Their 'foundation blocks' of high picks (Aldridge, Oden, Roy) has fallen apart due to injury. Even stinking and getting lucky with your picks doesn't guarantee anything.

Not sure why you mentioned Atlanta? Surely they represent a strong argument against tanking? Years of being pathetic and a net growth of nothing. Eventually they acquire Joe Johnson and become a pretty decent team - but a flurry of poor personnel moves moves leaves them in limbo.

OKC is the exception, and not the rule - and as yet they are 5 years into a rebuilding plan and may or may not be contenders.

Bottom line: if nobody is ever going to want to come and play here, then nobody will come and stay here. If you're that pessimistic about the state of your team, change teams? Go support the Lakers, they always find marquee FAs.

 

Good thing Morey is doing the job and not you! Flexibility is what he's all about.

And for all the doom prophets, let's not forget that in the first year of rebuilding 'post Yao' he secured a trade for Pau Gasol (irrelevant of people's preferences, a championship winning star), and had a deal in place to sign Nene.

Rebuilding CAN be done from our current position.

 

When has this ever happened? And even if it did, what makes people believe this is a better course of action when the overwhelming majority of championships are won with at least one star having been drafted by the team.

A better idea would be to hope one of our current guys (like Lowry)develops into a star player. That's really the only thing that would put us in a position to have another star player specifically want to come here. There's a reason why you don't hear about Dwight wanting to go to the Pacers, or the Sixers or other solid teams without stars.

 

What do all of these players have in common?

Celtics - Pierce
Bulls - Jordan, Pippen
Lakers - Kobe
Heat - Wade
Mavericks - Dirk

They were all rookies acquired on draft day - either by selecting them outright or trading for them. My point being, it seems far more important to have leverage on draft day than to have big money to spend in free agency.

Simply put, you have to hit a homerun in the draft, regardless of how you position yourself to do so. Tanking just gives you the best odds.

 

Thank you. People act like tanking always ends up working. We could end up sucking for years. Tanking is not full proof.

 

Not to mention for the Celtics, it was trading a but load of young talent and 2 first rounders for Garnett, and trading the 5th pick for Allen.

Do we have to tank? No
Does it improve our chances? Yes

 

No, there are not two ways to build a champion - not if you count the last 30 years of history. Your Pacers example is hypothetical. "probably". That's your only case for a contender in 30 years? And this Pacers group currently is no where near a contender.

The fact is, the team we have no is not nor ever will be a contender. A bunch of role players will never be. And the odds of a 15th pick turning things around are so minuscule that it isn't even worth discussing. And superstar free agents go where there are other superstars, not to a place with a bunch of role players.

The only way the Rockets can become a contender is to trade away Scola and Martin for draft picks. Don't tank, just do that. And we will get a high draft pick and can play to win to our hearts content. That's the way to do it.

But it must be done soon before we are stuck too far in the middle o fthe pack.

 

I reiterate. The Thunder is a terrible example of how you should rebuild. They sucked just enough to lose their franchise from Seattle SuperSonics. Be careful what you wish for.

 

If a championship was guaranteed, NBA has been dead long time ago.

Even with Dream, it was hard to win.

Then we need to tank twice to get more.

 

First of all, let me apologize for my poor explanation. I didn't bring up Denver, Portland, Indiana, or Atlanta as examples of teams that successfully tanked, I brought them up as examples of teams that are in Houston's current situation - good teams with no way of improving enough to beat the great teams ahead of them.

Their good records and 'winning cultures' don't make them attractive to free agents, even if they had the cap space to sign them, and they're drafting too late to get the kind of quality assets they'd need to trade for an established star without gutting their rosters.

This a non sequitur. Injuries can happen to free agents or trade acquisitions just as easily, but nobody thinks this means we shouldn't trade or sign free agents. Nor is anyone saying that tanking guarantees anything. We're only saying that it is the most reliable route for a team like the Rockets to become a contender.

But let's parse your earlier statement. If either Roy or Oden were healthy, Portland would be a contender and they would be talked about with OKC as a team that followed the course we're suggesting for the Rockets. The Blazers are an example of a team that tanked successfully, only to be sunk by circumstances outside their control.

This is uncalled-for. Whatever you think about the efficacy of the method, the pro-tank crowd is advocating it because we sincerely believe it's the best way to make the Rockets great again.

 

Tanking is not an option because we are not bad enough to tank properly. Its not something they do of free will. The roster should be bad enough to tank and its not. They will stay right around where they always do. Which is neither good or bad. Definitely not good long term though.

 

I think it all depends? If one is given 5 years of liberty to draft midway and acquire FAs, then a team could easily depth enough to move on a 'star' when the time arises (for example: Martin/Scola/ Dragic for Gasol - left us with a core of solid talent, + capability to sign a near max FA)

The bigger problem is settling for sub par talent (is Joe Johnson really the guy to max out and build around?)

I think the pont the 'tankers' are missing is that IN THE FIRST YEAR POST YAO ERA Morey arranged a trade to bring in a superstar and a sidekick to play alongside a boatload of young talent. We can rage against the veto all we want, but it happened. However I think it's fallacious to think that it is now impossible for Morey to do something similar in the future (during this year or at seasons end). Other teams are constantly reassessing their positions, and to hit the 'big move' requires flexible talented pieces (or a stack of expirings - you know who you are Flynbeet)
The salient point here is that Morey did this 5 years quicker than OKC did by bringing in Durant. Damn that veto!

Not a comment on tanking - it was clearly a statement about your belief in a FA never wanting to come to Houston. If you think the destination is that undesirable, then surely you must concede that anyone we'd be fortunate enough to draft would bolt given the first chance.
Either it is NOT a terrible location or it is. The number of "names" that we've been graced with over the past 20 years says (to me anyway) that it might not be LALa or NYK land, but it ain't Cleveland!!

 

Pau Gasol is not a superstar. Not even close. And Nene is not Robin.

Gasol is a very good center, but he isn't even the best big man on his team right now. Seriously, he's putting up 16/9 and high percentage shooting. That's great, but not superstar by any means. Kobe is a superstar. Dirk is a star. Right now the only "superstar" center is Dwight. You can build a team around Dwight. But Gasol? Nope nope nope.

 

meh - Gasol loafs offensively when he can. If Kobe goes down Gasol will score 20+ per game until he comes back. That aside, 9 rpg with 2.5 assists and 1.5 blocks are very nice numbers for a PF.

I think you can build around Gasol - the key is to have another decent to good big man to put next to him to keep him 'fresh' for the whole season (Nene).

Either way - whether you can or cannot build around Gasol is a fair argument - clearly Morey felt that he could, so he spent that month organising the trade.

 

if you dont like the word tank, just think of it as strategically positioning yourself for top talent.

 

All the great big man who contend and teams are built around....Duncan, Olajuwon, Ewing, Howard - all were dominant on both ends of the court. Rebounding, blocks, scoring. Their presence was heavily felt. You could go to them in crunch situations.

Gasol is just not there. He's great on offense, but not sure if I would say Dominant. You don't have to double team him if you have a good defender (tall). And on D he is rarely intimidating.

Shaq was the only exception of a guy who was not a defensive guy who you built around. But he was so unstoppable at the offensive end it didn't matter.

I see Gasol in a similar category as Amare. Both very good scoring big men. But I wouldn't build a team around either.

And as for the 2nd big man argument - not sure about that either. Gasol as Bynum and Gasol really faded in last year playoffs when the pressure was on.

The only reason I am sad the trade got axed was because we are stuck with both Scola and Martin. It would have been nice to have switched them for Gasol. I do not think we would have gotten Nene anyway.

 

Stop with the "no guarantees" stuff. There's no guarantees that any strategy is going to work. Nothing is completely safe.

But continuing to roll out the train of mediocrity is the safest way to continue being mediocre in the NBA. Our own GM is own record saying it's easier to rebuild when you stink.