Culture of winning or tank?

[KqWIN]

The first part is simply not true, at least in the way that I think we normally use "random" (certainly in the way I'm trying to use it). Randomness is a feature of probability. You can't predict the next outcome or any single outcome after that, so it is random in that sense. But it's also mathematical in the sense that over many outcomes (a long period of time in terms of the NBA lottery) patterns can be predicted with a fairly high likelihood.

Of course the probability is higher to get a "good" outcome with a lower finish. (But the top (by far, I'd argue) outcomes in the example I gave went to teams that finished in positions 7 & 8 (Ja and Zion)). So in the limited history we have so far with the current lottery odds, it hasn't helped all that much to finish as first or second worst. If you want to take a 100-year sample (maybe even a 50-year sample), then yeah, it will probably be better for the teams that finish 1st and 2nd worst. But I don't think it's worth the wait of keeping our team bad that long to find out. The likelihood of this higher probability being helpful in any singular draft is not very high.

The whole point I'm trying to make is that the odds are simply not so good even for the best-odds result to reliably use that strategy as the central strategy for team-building.

You’re right on all of this.The unfortunate reality is that there is no benefit to not tanking in the NBA. So however marginal the gains are for a single year, there are no gains for winning 20 games versus 30 games. In theory you should have more to begin with at 30 games. But it really depends on what’s delivering you those 30 games in terms of what that means for the future.

Generally, tanking is an often overrated strategy in my opinion. But the obsession of tanking is just a symptom of how fans have started to view the NBA. The NBA is not a league that lives on day to day competition. People don’t care about day to day competition, the only thing that matters is the future and the larger context. Winning games does not matter unless it means something for tomorrow.

I do feel like people buy into tanking because there is feeling that the team is working towards a title…even if they are disregarding the extremely low probability and unreliability of that strategy.

OTOH, I don’t really buy into the negative effects of tanking. I don’t think a culture is created when you win 30 games versus 20. If you win 30 games on the backs of vets who won’t be here in a couple years, you are worse off than the team that wins 20 on the backs of young players who are talented but simply not experienced enough and/or not ever going to be good enough. This is true independent of the draft incentive.

Also….More wins =\= better culture. You can win the maximum amount of games, have everyone happy, and it still be a negative basketball culture IMO. The most recent version of the Jazz was a perfect example. Trust team had its ups and downs, and there was constant talk about whether or not the players were best buds. Truth is, I don’t think the buddy buddy stuff mattered. I think the reason they failed is because they built bad habits during the regular season that set them up to fail in the preseason. This was true when they were best buds and had the best record and also when they were passive aggressively throwing jabs at each other in the media. The noise didn’t matter….what mattered is that they built a rigid brand of basketball that could not compete in the playoffs and did not have the ability to divert from their habits. You can obviously build bad habits from being in a situation where wins don’t matter, but that can also happen when trying to maximize wins.

 

[hgb]

The Bojan trade nets us no pick, yet Ainge still made that trade. Explain that to me @MT Steve

The fact that we traded him for a very solid vet doesn't exactly scream tanking, does it? 2 games in, it's pretty obvious that KO is helping us win games (as Bojan also surely would've done, but we got younger, saved money and we've got Kelly next year if we want to).

 

[idiot]

You’re right on all of this.The unfortunate reality is that there is no benefit to not tanking in the NBA. So however marginal the gains are for a single year, there are no gains for winning 20 games versus 30 games. In theory you should have more to begin with at 30 games. But it really depends on what’s delivering you those 30 games in terms of what that means for the future.

Generally, tanking is an often overrated strategy in my opinion. But the obsession of tanking is just a symptom of how fans have started to view the NBA. The NBA is not a league that lives on day to day competition. People don’t care about day to day competition, the only thing that matters is the future and the larger context. Winning games does not matter unless it means something for tomorrow.

I do feel like people buy into tanking because there is feeling that the team is working towards a title…even if they are disregarding the extremely low probability and unreliability of that strategy.

OTOH, I don’t really buy into the negative effects of tanking. I don’t think a culture is created when you win 30 games versus 20. If you win 30 games on the backs of vets who won’t be here in a couple years, you are worse off than the team that wins 20 on the backs of young players who are talented but simply not experienced enough and/or not ever going to be good enough. This is true independent of the draft incentive.

Also….More wins =\= better culture. You can win the maximum amount of games, have everyone happy, and it still be a negative basketball culture IMO. The most recent version of the Jazz was a perfect example. Trust team had its ups and downs, and there was constant talk about whether or not the players were best buds. Truth is, I don’t think the buddy buddy stuff mattered. I think the reason they failed is because they built bad habits during the regular season that set them up to fail in the preseason. This was true when they were best buds and had the best record and also when they were passive aggressively throwing jabs at each other in the media. The noise didn’t matter….what mattered is that they built a rigid brand of basketball that could not compete in the playoffs and did not have the ability to divert from their habits. You can obviously build bad habits from being in a situation where wins don’t matter, but that can also happen when trying to maximize wins.

Agree on a lot of things here:

• not enough benefit in the NBA for non-playoff team wins
• not enough on the day-to-day rewards of winning (though hard to know how to fix this with an 82-game schedule)
• the overrating of tanking by NBA fandom/media

I also am with you that winning is not the same as culture, though I think there is some relationship there. I do think culture matters (though agree culture isn't the same as getting along off the court). But culture is fragile -- it has a limited shelf life in many instances, and I tend to think that the Jazz needed a break-up in part for cultural reasons. I'll only partially agree with you on the idea of rigid style of play (though I will say that along with the cultural elements it proved the Jazz's downfall). But I don't want to get into a Quin/DL/etc. argument.

I'll probably also disagree partially on the vets vs. young guys argument. But this will probably be the ongoing themes of Jazzfanz this year, so there will be plenty of time later to go into that.

 

[Miggs]

I know culture is important but the tank is far more important. Elite players is what wins rings. No elite player will ever sign in Utah unless drafted by Utah. We need to tank to get that elite player. He won’t have to be drafted in the top two (Wemby, Scoot) necessarily but we likely need a top 5-7 pick, and if we don’t get one, we will need to be extremely lucky that whoever we draft at #10 (hypothetically) hits and becomes ala Kawhi or whoever else.

Again, this isn’t to say culture isn’t hugely important. It is. But right now, tanking, far and away is more important. And that’s why the signing of someone like Olynyk baffled me.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

The first part is simply not true, at least in the way that I think we normally use "random" (certainly in the way I'm trying to use it). Randomness is a feature of probability. You can't predict the next outcome or any single outcome after that, so it is random in that sense. But it's also mathematical in the sense that over many outcomes (a long period of time in terms of the NBA lottery) patterns can be predicted with a fairly high likelihood.

Of course the probability is higher to get a "good" outcome with a lower finish. (But the top (by far, I'd argue) outcomes in the example I gave went to teams that finished in positions 7 & 8 (Ja and Zion)). So in the limited history we have so far with the current lottery odds, it hasn't helped all that much to finish as first or second worst. If you want to take a 100-year sample (maybe even a 50-year sample), then yeah, it will probably be better for the teams that finish 1st and 2nd worst. But I don't think it's worth the wait of keeping our team bad that long to find out. The likelihood of this higher probability being helpful in any singular draft is not very high.

The whole point I'm trying to make is that the odds are simply not so good even for the best-odds result to reliably use that strategy as the central strategy for team-building.

What are the odds we ever win a title… it’s not great… we are on team ****ing 49 and have won how many? Should we just fold due to the low probability? Should we just try to win as much as we can each year regardless of draft position? What is the reliable strategy that works so often in your text book? Guess what… every road leads to failure. So yes tanking has a low probability of working but it’s likely the most reliable way to regularly net superstar talent. It isn’t random that the best nba players are MUCH more likely to be drafted in the top 5… a single outcome may be unpredictable but that doesn’t mean it’s less reliable than other strategies. Any single outcome is generally unpredictable but I wouldn’t call it random… we don’t have to get 1 or 2 in this draft. Top 3 guys right now feel very likely to be great players. We are headed for the rough drafting range of 6-9 where it’s much more “random”.

There is math and probability wrapped into “tanking” that calling it random ignores.

 

[fishonjazz]

No, and I explained that in the exact post you got that quote from.

I think ainge tried to intentionally make the team bad to make our pick better this season. So does literally everyone who commentates and writes about the nba nationally and locally.
The jazz won 2 games that they weren’t supposed to win. That wasnt the plan.
I have enjoyed the wins and im fine with more winning but that wasnt the plan. The moves made did not indicate an attempt to win as many games as possible. This is pretty obvious.


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[fishonjazz]

. Ainge thinks the way Olynyk plays is better for the development of the younger players on our new roster.

I notice you used the term “better for the development of the younger players” rather than “ainge thinks olynyk will help us get more wins”


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[fishonjazz]

I think you just don't know what tanking means and for some reason consider it synonymous with rebuilding.

Part of rebuilding is getting draft picks and having those draft picks be as good of picks as possible. Draft picks don’t help you win as you cant put them into a game. Rebuilding, especially rebuilding the way we did (trading all our best players) is synonymous with tanking.

We could have rebuilt around our all stars still in their primes and traded away bogey, royce, clarkson, and conley for a rebuild that keeps us looking like a competitive team that wants to win and that would be a rebuild that is not synonymous with tanking.


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[fishonjazz]

You’re right on all of this.The unfortunate reality is that there is no benefit to not tanking in the NBA. So however marginal the gains are for a single year, there are no gains for winning 20 games versus 30 games. In theory you should have more to begin with at 30 games. But it really depends on what’s delivering you those 30 games in terms of what that means for the future.

Generally, tanking is an often overrated strategy in my opinion. But the obsession of tanking is just a symptom of how fans have started to view the NBA. The NBA is not a league that lives on day to day competition. People don’t care about day to day competition, the only thing that matters is the future and the larger context. Winning games does not matter unless it means something for tomorrow.

I do feel like people buy into tanking because there is feeling that the team is working towards a title…even if they are disregarding the extremely low probability and unreliability of that strategy.

OTOH, I don’t really buy into the negative effects of tanking. I don’t think a culture is created when you win 30 games versus 20. If you win 30 games on the backs of vets who won’t be here in a couple years, you are worse off than the team that wins 20 on the backs of young players who are talented but simply not experienced enough and/or not ever going to be good enough. This is true independent of the draft incentive.

Also….More wins =\= better culture. You can win the maximum amount of games, have everyone happy, and it still be a negative basketball culture IMO. The most recent version of the Jazz was a perfect example. Trust team had its ups and downs, and there was constant talk about whether or not the players were best buds. Truth is, I don’t think the buddy buddy stuff mattered. I think the reason they failed is because they built bad habits during the regular season that set them up to fail in the preseason. This was true when they were best buds and had the best record and also when they were passive aggressively throwing jabs at each other in the media. The noise didn’t matter….what mattered is that they built a rigid brand of basketball that could not compete in the playoffs and did not have the ability to divert from their habits. You can obviously build bad habits from being in a situation where wins don’t matter, but that can also happen when trying to maximize wins.

Great post


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[fishonjazz]

The fact that we traded him for a very solid vet doesn't exactly scream tanking, does it? 2 games in, it's pretty obvious that KO is helping us win games (as Bojan also surely would've done, but we got younger, saved money and we've got Kelly next year if we want to).

This is true but only because we won 2 games we weren’t supposed to win. I dont think DA made that trade because he thought KO was going to win us bunch of games this year. He doesnt care about wins this season. Im betting he is smart enough to know that winning 33 games doesnt help the franchise anymore than winning 23 games. In fact its quite the opposite.


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[fishonjazz]

I know culture is important but the tank is far more important. Elite players is what wins rings. No elite player will ever sign in Utah unless drafted by Utah. We need to tank to get that elite player. He won’t have to be drafted in the top two (Wemby, Scoot) necessarily but we likely need a top 5-7 pick, and if we don’t get one, we will need to be extremely lucky that whoever we draft at #10 (hypothetically) hits and becomes ala Kawhi or whoever else.

Again, this isn’t to say culture isn’t hugely important. It is. But right now, tanking, far and away is more important. And that’s why the signing of someone like Olynyk baffled me.

Ya i mean is the culture way better if we win 30 games rather than 23 games?
At the end of a 30 win season are all the players popping champagne and celebrating those extra 7 wins? I doubt it.

And tanking wont always work. In fact most of the time it wont work. Many many busts from top picks.
But if i asked anyone, including anti tankers, if they would sacrifice 7 wins this season because it would mean we get to draft lebron next year instead of derozan or someone then i bet they would sacrifice those 7 wins and take lebron despite the hit our “culture” would take from those extra losses.
In a season when we are going to lose more games than we win regardless of anything else, you might as well give yourself the best chance at a lebron type player. If it fails and you dont get that player then are you really any worse off than if you won a few more games but still sucked? I dont think so.

Having said all that, i got caught up in the first two games to the point that i have have this hope that we are really good and might make the playoffs. If thats the case then screw the tank.

Basically, if we arent going to be good then lets be really bad. But if we are going to be good then lets be as good as possible and win all the games.

These first two games have really turned things upside down and made things interesting for sure.


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[MTS]

I think ainge tried to intentionally make the team bad to make our pick better this season. So does literally everyone who commentates and writes about the nba nationally and locally.
The jazz won 2 games that they weren’t supposed to win. That wasnt the plan.
I have enjoyed the wins and im fine with more winning but that wasnt the plan. The moves made did not indicate an attempt to win as many games as possible. This is pretty obvious.

The Mitchell/Gobert trades were done for the purpose of acquiring young talent and a ton of other teams draft picks. Does it make us worse short-term? Yes. Was that the exclusive purpose of the trade? Obviously not.

I notice you used the term “better for the development of the younger players” rather than “ainge thinks olynyk will help us get more wins”

Just because a move isn't done to get us more wins in the short-term does not mean it's automatically for tanking purposes. As I said before, I think Ainge does this trade even if the Jazz do not own their own 2023 pick.

Part of rebuilding is getting draft picks and having those draft picks be as good of picks as possible. Draft picks don’t help you win as you cant put them into a game. Rebuilding, especially rebuilding the way we did (trading all our best players) is synonymous with tanking.

I think you and One Love just don't understand what tanking means.

Tanking is when you deliberately make your team worse for the sake of making your own draft picks better. Trading all of your best players for other teams picks is not that. Rebuilding is absolutely not synonymous with trading. Ainge rebuilt the Celtics twice. Neither time did he rely on making the Celtics as bad as possible to get a better draft pick. Did he make the Celtics worse in the short-term during the rebuild? Yes. He made them deliberately worse in order to get other teams picks. And THOSE picks were what supercharged the Celtics rebuild.

We could have rebuilt around our all stars still in their primes and traded away bogey, royce, clarkson, and conley for a rebuild that keeps us looking like a competitive team that wants to win and that would be a rebuild that is not synonymous with tanking.

That would have been another strategy, but once again, and here's the thing I think you and One Love keep not getting: Just because a trade makes your team worse in the short-run doesn't mean it was made for the purpose of making your own draft pick better (ie tanking).

A good exercise is to ask yourself if all the moves the Jazz made this offseason make complete sense even IF the Jazz didn't own their own 2023 pick. I think they absolutely do and would still be completely on board with all of them.