It's ok to be a middling team if you have young talent with upside and cap flexibility (OKC for example). Dallas is a middling team whether they know it or not, they are saddled with overpaid veterans and are not good enough to win a ring. It really all depends on how our players perform at this point.
Yes,I know that. I added Thabeet's name as part of the young players who may be able to be a part of a package to move up in the draft. It's a tricky decision,because there aren't any can't miss players in the upcoming draft. It's still worth exploring though. I don't want to part with Patterson and Lee,but DM should look into any chance to improve the team.
Yeah this draft is going to be horrible, 2000-like, I don't think you want to give up anything of value move up this year. I say the best move Morey could make is signing a guy like Dalembert or Nene to a front-loaded contract so we maintain flexibility for 2102 and we can see if everyone is right, that this team is a center away from being 50+ win team (which I believe is the case). That will also raise the trade value of our guys and maybe be the deciding factor for signing 2012 FAs.
Sacramento Kings, after a successful run in the Adelman era, fell into hard times and has not recovered yet. They still had the same GM, Geoff Petrie.
Just like this current draft class is so horrible? No one...including you, knows how good or bad a draft is going to be.
I'm sure the front office-types and scouts have some idea, at least compared to what the average fans know. They do spend a lot of time and money trying to figure such things out. In any case, one can't just look at a team's record to determine whether they are "stuck in the middle" or has an opportunity to move up. ESPN's Hollinger and Chad Ford had this "future index" feature done last year, ranking a team's potential to be good over the upcoming years. The Rockets, I think, were in the top 10 while the Bobcats, whose records were similar to Houston's, were ranked dead last (and trailing the 2nd worst team, the Wolves, by a ton).
Atalanta after letting Steve Smith and Mookie go. Golden State after getting rid of Webber and Mullin.
It's not hard to tell who's going to be a superstar and who isn't. I'm not saying this draft will have no surprisingly good NBA players but superstars aren't that hard to scout. And superstars are what everyone is clamoring about aren't they?
And even still it is difficult for them to actually know. I just hate the thought of fans suggesting teams shouldn't focus on the upcoming draft because it's going to be weak etc. Sometimes a weak draft only means a top heavy draft, a draft where the first few players are good and the rest suck, they don't mean a 2000 draft which was historically horrible. I agree with the 2nd part of your post though.
Three or four years ago, I would have agreed with you. It was more common for stars to go to second-tier markets like Houston in free agency or sign-and-trades, and the super-team concept was not yet in vogue. I don't know that this is the case, and we will see what the new CBA brings, but my feeling is that the Superfriends represent the new paradigm. I believe that the very best players are going to prioritize a glamorous locale and the chance to play with other stars in their free agency decisions. I can't see many studs choosing to go into a situation where they're the only star on their team, no matter how good the role players surrounding them are, knowing that they're going to be facing teams of Lebron, Wade, and Bosh or Melo, Paul, and Stoudemire, especially in a non-glamorous city like Houston. I also don't think being a marginal playoff team gives you much help in terms of attracting the stars. Utah, Denver, Portland, and Detroit have all been frequent playoff teams in recent times, but they're not destinations for the stars. That's the reason I favor a draft-based strategy. Because your draftees have no choice but to play for you, if you can get a couple of high-value prospects you can either develop them yourself or trade them for existing stars like the Nets did, forming the kind of nucleus that will be attractive to other stars. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand your point about the risks of tanking and the uncertain prospects of success. I just don't know what other avenues are available to us.
Idk about that. Stockton was picked 16th, Dirk 9th, Nash 15th, McGrady 9th. Those guys were superstars in their primes, now if you want to talk about All-stars than there are many to be had throughout the entire draft, I don't think a rebuilding team should ever look past the upcoming draft. No matter how weak it looks.
Rockets have one big thing going for them though-the flexibility of Yao's contract. No way we resign him to anything close to his current salary, so you can plus Yao and an upper-level, almost-superstar (someone like Caron Butler, Tayshaun Prince, Zach Randolph---a guy that will sign for a solid 8-12 mill a year) to the equation for next year.
It really doesn't even have anything to do with how many stars may come out. The point is that this draft class has been scouted pretty well and people see it as a bad draft. So it's a crapshoot. Teams have no reason to believe they'll have a better chance at landing a star at 5 than at 15. Being a GM is all about risk/reward and that ratio is horrible in regards to this draft, that's all I'm saying.
Nets and Knicks weren't tanking. After Nets lost Kidd and Knicks lost Ewing to old age, they weren't going to have a winning record, whether they tanked or not. They were never able to make the playoffs without Kidd or Ewing. Their guys weren't as talented as Kidd, Ewing, Robinson. Good teams like the Spurs, who had David Robinson and Bowen. They could still get in the playoffs, even without the draft for Duncan after Robinson was injured. They tanked temporarily and got better. Bowen and Robinson had already proven they could get to the playoffs without Duncan. The Utah Jazz had their longtime coach Sloan, and would always be in the playoffs or on the cusp of the playoffs. Even if they never got Williams, coach Jerry Sloan could have had them winning 40-45 games a season with Kirilenko, Okur and Boozer.
The roster and coach that was winning was gone. That's an example of a good team going bad not a good team tanking. It was a totally different team, after Weber, Peja, Bibby, and Adelman got injured or left. They weren't acting bad temporarily. They didn't have the same players that got them the playoff wins in the first place.
These people still don't get it -- tanking more likely extends your time on the mediocrity treadmill. Look at the history of the top three pics in the draft every year for the past 20 years. How many turned out to be the franchise player who took the team to the promised land? Look how many of the players picked later -- Wade, Kobe -- or signed later - - Gasol or Garnett -- ended up being that player. A more comprehensive plan of drafting well, making opportune trades and strong signings is a better approach than this oversimplified "magic bullet" strategy of dumping talent to get high draft picks.