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Culture of winning or tank?

Win or tank?

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If winning is driven by the players that will be here in 2-3 years then winning a little extra is okay. If it’s driven by Mike, KO, JC, etc then the future “culture” benefits will be minimal and pale in comparison of reducing our chances at a couple superstars and drastically reducing our chance at landing an all star this draft. It still can get done at 7 or 8 and it’s true we have a non zero chance at moving up but the cultural benefits are fleeting.

The other benefit of a tear down/tank is not only improving your own draft equity but cashing in on good vets for draft assets or additional future flexibility. The draft pick market has dried a bit it seems (at least for firsts). Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to acquire a bunch of seconds and some additional cap space for next year. If we get 20 games in and it’s all we can get for Mike/JC/KO then we should consider it strongly.

The other benefit is development time. While having vets guide the young guys is nice… nothing will help their development more than regular playing time and opportunities. They can get gifted too many minutes sometimes… but Ochai languishing in the G league is tough. He’s a 3 and D guy and that league is so different… not sure he develops the habits he needs to there.

Unless it’s Kessler, Lauri, Vando, Sexton, and Ochai leading us to 35 wins it is counterproductive imo.
 
MT Steve said:
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.


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.


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.


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.
Click to expand...

Ya agree to disagree. We could have traded donovan and rudy for good young players. Or good vets. Instead we traded our all stars for other teams castoffs. Players that no one wanted. Players that bounced around the league. Players whose previous teams weren’t playing much because they werent good enough to get minutes.
That is an attempt to be bad. Turns out that the castoffs can play or the coaching is amazing or we are surprising teams. We are winning. Looking simply at the donovan, rudy, oneal, and bogey trades on paper though we werent trying to build a roster to win games this season. Literally no one in the media around the country thought we were trying to win based on the trades we made. Quite the opposite. Jazz fans were either pissed that we were tanking or happy that we were tanking before the season started.
No one was like “i love these trades we made. We are going to win so many games this season now!”
What did vegas have the jazz winning prior to the season? How many games have we been favored in so far?
This roster was assembled with the expectation of many many losses. By design.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
fishonjazz said:
Ya agree to disagree. We could have traded donovan and rudy for good young players. Or good vets. Instead we traded our all stars for other teams castoffs. Players that no one wanted. Players that bounced around the league. Players whose previous teams weren’t playing much because they werent good enough to get minutes.
That is an attempt to be bad. Turns out that the castoffs can play or the coaching is amazing or we are surprising teams. We are winning. Looking simply at the donovan, rudy, oneal, and bogey trades on paper though we werent trying to build a roster to win games this season. Literally no one in the media around the country thought we were trying to win based on the trades we made. Quite the opposite. Jazz fans were either pissed that we were tanking or happy that we were tanking before the season started.
No one was like “i love these trades we made. We are going to win so many games this season now!”
What did vegas have the jazz winning prior to the season? How many games have we been favored in so far?
This roster was assembled with the expectation of many many losses. By design.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
Click to expand...
This.
 
Winning a good number of games VS winning a championship are 2 different things. (We were #1 in the League and we saw what happened to that team).

Then I think we need to ask ourselves "Do we need a Top 10 talent on the team to win an NBA Championship?"

With the exception of the 2004 Pistons I think the answer to that is "Yes". (Even Toronto needed Kawhi)

Then the next question is "How would the Jazz go and grab a Top 10 talent?"

We ain't gonna get it through FA I don't think.. Trading would be extremely difficult (look at what TWolves gave up for Gobert.. Cavs for Donovan and they're not even top 10 players)

That's why people say we need to build through the draft. (and being really bad for a few seasons intentionally)
 
fishonjazz said:
Ya agree to disagree. We could have traded donovan and rudy for good young players. Or good vets. Instead we traded our all stars for other teams castoffs. Players that no one wanted. Players that bounced around the league. Players whose previous teams weren’t playing much because they werent good enough to get minutes.
That is an attempt to be bad. Turns out that the castoffs can play or the coaching is amazing or we are surprising teams. We are winning. Looking simply at the donovan, rudy, oneal, and bogey trades on paper though we werent trying to build a roster to win games this season. Literally no one in the media around the country thought we were trying to win based on the trades we made. Quite the opposite. Jazz fans were either pissed that we were tanking or happy that we were tanking before the season started.
No one was like “i love these trades we made. We are going to win so many games this season now!”
What did vegas have the jazz winning prior to the season? How many games have we been favored in so far?
This roster was assembled with the expectation of many many losses. By design.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
Click to expand...

I can promise you that I'm not arguing that the Jazz tried to be good this season.

I don't know how else I can explain it man. We just have a different definition of tanking.
 
ONE LOVE said:
Winning a good number of games VS winning a championship are 2 different things. (We were #1 in the League and we saw what happened to that team).

Then I think we need to ask ourselves "Do we need a Top 10 talent on the team to win an NBA Championship?"

With the exception of the 2004 Pistons I think the answer to that is "Yes". (Even Toronto needed Kawhi)

Then the next question is "How would the Jazz go and grab a Top 10 talent?"

We ain't gonna get it through FA I don't think.. Trading would be extremely difficult (look at what TWolves gave up for Gobert.. Cavs for Donovan and they're not even top 10 players)

That's why people say we need to build through the draft. (and being really bad for a few seasons intentionally)
Click to expand...
Once the decisions to trade O’Neale and Gobert were made, I was all in on the tank. I personally thought that DA would tear the foundation down to the studs. . . and then burn that down too. But only if it could happen before the season started.

I think you have to roll with who you have - unless the Jazz get an offer they can’t refuse. IMO, the Jazz should still be sellers and look to move everyone on a 2 year contract (except Vando - I’ve come around to keeping him as a long-term piece). . . Conley, Clarkson, Beasley, Olynyk, Gay and THT should all still be on the trading block. Draft assets and young players to build around Markkanen, Sexton, Agbaji, Kessler and Vando.

With that said. . . Will Hardy is a keeper. It’ll be fascinating to see if he can mold this “Island of Misfit Toys” into a playoff team after trading away 4/5 starters (including 2 All Stars) from last season.
 
Last edited:
MT Steve said:
I can promise you that I'm not arguing that the Jazz tried to be good this season.

I don't know how else I can explain it man. We just have a different definition of tanking.
Click to expand...

Let me put it this way. Before this season started EVERYONE said we were tanking. Some people were happy about it. Some were upset about it. Some were right in the middle. But everyone said we were tanking. If you are honest with yourself i bet you even said we were tanking after the trades we made.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Avery said:
I guess Wemby won’t be looking at SLC real estate.
Click to expand...
Oh well there goes our best case scenario 14% chance at fame and glory. But in all fairness, in light of the tragic Chet Holmgren injury, people are being unrealistically optimistic if they don’t consider the possibility of him being the biggest first pick disappointment since Greg Oden. Or how about #2 overall Sam Bowie?
 
fishonjazz said:
Let me put it this way. Before this season started EVERYONE said we were tanking. Some people were happy about it. Some were upset about it. Some were right in the middle. But everyone said we were tanking. If you are honest with yourself i bet you even said we were tanking after the trades we made.


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
Click to expand...
Everyone? Ainge, Smith, Zanick, and Hardy all said we were not tanking. That they would be competitive while being flexible. I agree with what MT Steve is saying. Where you guys are hung up is on definition. The Jazz are in a rebuild. The definition of a rebuild is Playing there best players and trying to complete and see were the group takes them and if there are keepers that you can continue to rebuild with.
The definition of tanking is dumping all your Vets and good players rolling out young guys that have no chance to complete and then sitting guys that are helping you win so that you loose even more. Then hoping you loose enough multiple years in a row to get really high picks.
Ainge has never really ranked. Just rebuilt. So I’m sure that is still his plan here
 
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Every team will say they are not tanking even if it's obvious they are
Adam Silver and the NBA are always lurking and listening :) :) :)
 
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