2024-2025 Tank Race

[idiot]

I think the quality of the draft class = stakes.

Some people only focus on the #1 pick in which case its just about amassing as manny lotto balls as possible to hopefully swing for that guy. I dont think any FO in the league thinks about it like that. Thats just fans getting hyped about "a guy"... but the mathematics dont really work for your favor here so the overall strategy has to be broader.

Imo you need to look at the top 5 to see if its worth it. This years top 5 are all better looking prospects than last years top 1.

Man, I would look at it rather differently.

Comparison to last year's (or any other year's) draft quality has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. That comparison to last year only has relevance to the overall decision to tank (which was made long ago, and nobody expects us to go back on now).

The stakes I'm referring to have to do with the difference that a win now and then (at approximately the rate we've been collecting them this season) will make. Those marginal wins (unless we suddenly change our patterns of winning -- which again, no one anticipates) make close to absolutely zero difference for whether we get Flagg, Bailey, Harper, or Edgecombe (assuming these are the top 4). At most they make a difference in regard to whether we get our choice of Kasparas, Fears, or Tre Johnson (or whoever else you think are top 5-7). (I guess this is something of a reward, but hardly anything to get all hot and bothered about, in my mind).

We have people acting as if "the stakes" are that getting a win once in a while is going to prevent us from getting Flagg (or Harper, or Bailey, or Edgecombe). But this is just not true. At this point, it's just the uncontrollable way that the odds play out that will prevent us from getting those top picks. We already have the top odds for those guys. It's very unlikely that we drop in more than very marginal ways from those top odds, even if we don't shut Lauri down for the rest of the year.

 

[KqWIN]

Man, I would look at it rather differently.

Comparison to last year's (or any other year's) draft quality has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. That comparison to last year only has relevance to the overall decision to tank (which was made long ago, and nobody expects us to go back on now).

The stakes I'm referring to have to do with the difference that a win now and then (at approximately the rate we've been collecting them this season) will make. Those marginal wins (unless we suddenly change our patterns of winning -- which again, no one anticipates) make close to absolutely zero difference for whether we get Flagg, Bailey, Harper, or Edgecombe (assuming these are the top 4). At most they make a difference in regard to whether we get our choice of Kasparas, Fears, or Tre Johnson (or whoever else you think are top 5-7). (I guess this is something of a reward, but hardly anything to get all hot and bothered about, in my mind).

We have people acting as if "the stakes" are that getting a win once in a while is going to prevent us from getting Flagg (or Harper, or Bailey, or Edgecombe). But this is just not true. At this point, it's just the uncontrollable way that the odds play out that will prevent us from getting those top picks. We already have the top odds for those guys. It's very unlikely that we drop in more than very marginal ways from those top odds, even if we don't shut Lauri down for the rest of the year.

The thing is, "the stakes" of getting a win give are nothing. It is only negative for us to win. Now of course, winning can be a byproduct of young players playing well....but that is different from the vets winning us games. I don't think people really have a problem if our full young group gets wins. If you think you're arguing against someone who doesn't want our young guys to play well and win, I think you're arguing against a made up boogeyman.

No matter how little you think the benefit of losing a game is, it is more than the value of that win which is nothing. You can decide on a personal level how much the value of being 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. in lotto position is worth to you. What's considered marginal or significant is subjective. But that value is still non-zero where the value of winning on any given night is exactly zero.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I'm curious what the tank race looks like next year. Obviously a lot that will happen between now and then but who are the tankers next season.

Jazz - I'm pretty sure.
Wiz - But also they have more vets to worry about if they can't offload Smart and Middleton. Might be more much more competent but still pretty awful
Hornets - What do they do with Ball. If healthy and if they get a difference maker do they break the cycle.
NOP - Who knows. If Zion actually keeps trending the right way they won't be in this group.
Brooklyn - Failed this year but likely more tanky next year.
Chicago - WTF they doing
Toronto - Dont think so with the moves they have made but they might suck on accident.
Philly - If their pick conveys this year I can see that.
Porty - Id guess no... they have made progress and don't have the leadership to try and go backwards.
SA - Nah

There will be a darkhorse maybe due to injury but if its Utah/Brooklyn/Wash/Charlotte... We should be able to jump into the bottom 3 again... if we move John Collins, Collin Sexton, and manage Walker/Lauri again. Really lean into Williams and Taylor on his rehab. It may not be this humongous tank off that people expect.

 

[KqWIN]

I'm curious what the tank race looks like next year. Obviously a lot that will happen between now and then but who are the tankers next season.

Jazz - I'm pretty sure.
Wiz - But also they have more vets to worry about if they can't offload Smart and Middleton. Might be more much more competent but still pretty awful
Hornets - What do they do with Ball. If healthy and if they get a difference maker do they break the cycle.
NOP - Who knows. If Zion actually keeps trending the right way they won't be in this group.
Brooklyn - Failed this year but likely more tanky next year.
Chicago - WTF they doing
Toronto - Dont think so with the moves they have made but they might suck on accident.
Philly - If their pick conveys this year I can see that.
Porty - Id guess no... they have made progress and don't have the leadership to try and go backwards.
SA - Nah

There will be a darkhorse maybe due to injury but if its Utah/Brooklyn/Wash/Charlotte... We should be able to jump into the bottom 3 again... if we move John Collins, Collin Sexton, and manage Walker/Lauri again. Really lean into Williams and Taylor on his rehab. It may not be this humongous tank off that people expect.

My thoughts on these teams:

Jazz - We're gonna tank, existing young players will be improved (hopefully), but I think we will finally trade Lauri. Collins, Sexton, and Clarkson will never ever be traded of course.
Wiz - Yes, they will be improved but still stuck
Hornets - All depends on Ball's health, they are mid with him and historically awful without him. Basically a repeat of this year.
NOP - Don't think so.
Brooklyn - Will have learned their lesson like we did, they will tank hard
Chicago - They will tank, but they will always be too mid to be big tanking contenders
Toronto - More likely to have home court
Philly - See NOP
Porty - Nope
SA - Nope

There will, of course, be surprise tanking contenders like NOP and PHI this year. There is always at least one. I think the Jazz, Hornets, Wizards, and Nets will be the cream of the crop tankers.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I'm curious what the tank race looks like next year. Obviously a lot that will happen between now and then but who are the tankers next season.

Jazz - I'm pretty sure.
Wiz - But also they have more vets to worry about if they can't offload Smart and Middleton. Might be more much more competent but still pretty awful
Hornets - What do they do with Ball. If healthy and if they get a difference maker do they break the cycle.
NOP - Who knows. If Zion actually keeps trending the right way they won't be in this group.
Brooklyn - Failed this year but likely more tanky next year.
Chicago - WTF they doing
Toronto - Dont think so with the moves they have made but they might suck on accident.
Philly - If their pick conveys this year I can see that.
Porty - Id guess no... they have made progress and don't have the leadership to try and go backwards.
SA - Nah

There will be a darkhorse maybe due to injury but if its Utah/Brooklyn/Wash/Charlotte... We should be able to jump into the bottom 3 again... if we move John Collins, Collin Sexton, and manage Walker/Lauri again. Really lean into Williams and Taylor on his rehab. It may not be this humongous tank off that people expect.

One of the reasons 22-23 was such a fail was 22 wins landed you tied for 2nd/3rd best odds. 4th was 27 wins. It wasn't the epic tank off people thought. This year has been much more "competitive" in the tank race.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

My thoughts on these teams:

Jazz - We're gonna tank, existing young players will be improved (hopefully), but I think we will finally trade Lauri. Collins, Sexton, and Clarkson will never ever be traded of course.
Wiz - Yes, they will be improved but still stuck
Hornets - All depends on Ball's health, they are mid with him and historically awful without him. Basically a repeat of this year.
NOP - Don't think so.
Brooklyn - Will have learned their lesson like we did, they will tank hard
Chicago - They will tank, but they will always be too mid to be big tanking contenders
Toronto - More likely to have home court
Philly - See NOP
Porty - Nope
SA - Nope

There will, of course, be surprise tanking contenders like NOP and PHI this year. There is always at least one. I think the Jazz, Hornets, Wizards, and Nets will be the cream of the crop tankers.

Which is not like a stacked race... if we make some moves. I think the tanking has much more potential next year than maybe the last 3.

 

[KqWIN]

Which is not like a stacked race... if we make some moves. I think the tanking has much more potential next year than maybe the last 3.

I'll say the same thing as I did last year....the idea of moving forward just seems more and more unrealistic by the day. It's just not a great option to try to jump forward and win more, especially in this stacked West. I am not a big tanking guy and will repeatedly say it's effectiveness is overrated, but it's hard to look at the landscape and convince yourself that adding more talent/winning as much possible is pretty bleak.

Even if it was a heavy tank race, I'd say enter it. There was a window with Lauri that could have been opened had other things happened/gone right....but that been almost entirely shut for me. Flagg is the only remaining hope, and even if Flagg I'm heavy leaning towards tanking anyways.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I'll say the same thing as I did last year....the idea of moving forward just seems more and more unrealistic by the day. It's just not a great option to try to jump forward and win more, especially in this stacked West. I am not a big tanking guy and will repeatedly say it's effectiveness is overrated, but it's hard to look at the landscape and convince yourself that adding more talent/winning as much possible is pretty bleak.

Even if it was a heavy tank race, I'd say enter it. There was a window with Lauri that could have been opened had other things happened/gone right....but that been almost entirely shut for me. Flagg is the only remaining hope, and even if Flagg I'm heavy leaning towards tanking anyways.

I will say... I don't think we trade Lauri. On his deal the mechanics will get tough and the return might be pretty mid. Its a tangent on an earlier post you had but I think we are tanking with Lauri... getting Flagg and having him Lauri and Walker might be tough to tank through but it might more just land us in the danger zone where the pick could convey.

 

[idiot]

The thing is, "the stakes" of getting a win give are nothing. It is only negative for us to win. Now of course, winning can be a byproduct of young players playing well....but that is different from the vets winning us games. I don't think people really have a problem if our full young group gets wins. If you think you're arguing against someone who doesn't want our young guys to play well and win, I think you're arguing against a made up boogeyman.

No matter how little you think the benefit of losing a game is, it is more than the value of that win which is nothing. You can decide on a personal level how much the value of being 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. in lotto position is worth to you. What's considered marginal or significant is subjective. But that value is still non-zero where the value of winning on any given night is exactly zero.

We're in a position where it's entirely possible that the ACTUAL impact of a random loss in February is negative (or a win could be positive).

Say #4 draft lotto position ends up with Cooper Flagg and #3 lotto position ends up with Tre Johnson. That's a low likelihood possibility, for sure, but it's still a many-times higher possibility than being in the 4th draft lotto position hurting our odds of getting Flagg compared to being at #1.

Of course, I agree with you that getting higher position in the lotto odds is overall MATHEMATICALLY better going into the lotto. But I hope you'll agree with me that this pertains what might happen in picks 5-7 far more than to anything else. There is a small (but very small) chance that the difference between a #4 and a #1, 2,or 3 pre-lotto position will hurt us in regards to the top four picks. But the lotto is a one-time event. The likelihood of this difference mattering is miniscule compared to the likelihood of this difference not mattering.

My point is that we're far, far more at the mercy of the lotto's uncertainty right now than we are able to say that any particular win or loss is going to hurt/help us.

(And as for who I was arguing against: I was arguing against @The Midnight who seemed convinced that we were destroying our chances at Bailey, Flagg, Harper if we don't shut down Lauri.)

 

[KqWIN]

We're in a position where it's entirely possible that the ACTUAL impact of a random loss in February is negative (or a win could be positive).

Say #4 draft lotto position ends up with Cooper Flagg and #3 lotto position ends up with Tre Johnson. That's a low likelihood possibility, for sure, but it's still a many-times higher possibility than being in the 4th draft lotto position hurting our odds of getting Flagg compared to being at #1.

Of course, I agree with you that getting higher position in the lotto odds is overall MATHEMATICALLY better going into the lotto. But I hope you'll agree with me that this pertains what might happen in picks 5-7 far more than to anything else. There is a small (but very small) chance that the difference between a #4 and a #1, 2,or 3 pre-lotto position will hurt us in regards to the top four picks. But the lotto is a one-time event. The likelihood of this difference mattering is miniscule compared to the likelihood of this difference not mattering.

My point is that we're far, far more at the mercy of the lotto's uncertainty right now than we are able to say that any particular win or loss is going to hurt/help us.

(And as for who I was arguing against: I was arguing against @The Midnight who seemed convinced that we were destroying our chances at Bailey, Flagg, Harper if we don't shut down Lauri.)

Meh, results based analysis just isn't the way I would want this franchise run. If we end up 3rd and the 4th position ends up winning the lotto, I'm not going to look back and say it was incorrect to say we put ourselves in a better position by getting 3rd. We can't predict the future, we can only gives ourselves the best chance. You can only control what you can control, and just because something is mostly luck I don't think that means you should just ignore it altogether.

The point I was making is that it doesn't really matter how small you think the benefit is. What matters is that it's greater than zero and the value of playing Lauri and winning the game because we played him is actually zero. So when it comes to playing or sitting Lauri, I consider sitting him to be strictly better. It's not enough to say that the value of tanking is small, you need to argue that the value of trying to win (aka playing Lauri) is more. I am totally with you in saying that tanking is highly overrated, but I still come to the conclusion that we should sit the vets because there is no value to playing them.

Everybody knows we're at the mercy of the lotto. Yes, people can be hyperbolic and that's annoying, but when you get down to brass tacks it makes total sense why people want to sit Lauri and the vets. If you took a team in the opposite situation where they were trying to win, you could argue that any given regular season game is largely insignificant in their quest to win a title...and yet people still really want to win that game. Every game is mostly insignificant whether you're winning or losing, but on any given night you want to get the maximum value out of that game. For the Jazz, the maximum value is to lose.

Somewhat unrelated, but this is why I think any solution to tanking would be aided by incentives to win, not just decreasing the incentive to lose.

 

[fishonjazz]

Meh, results based analysis just isn't the way I would want this franchise run. If we end up 3rd and the 4th position ends up winning the lotto, I'm not going to look back and say it was incorrect to say we put ourselves in a better position by getting 3rd. We can't predict the future, we can only gives ourselves the best chance. You can only control what you can control, and just because something is mostly luck I don't think that means you should just ignore it altogether.

The point I was making is that it doesn't really matter how small you think the benefit is. What matters is that it's greater than zero and the value of playing Lauri and winning the game because we played him is actually zero. So when it comes to playing or sitting Lauri, I consider sitting him to be strictly better. It's not enough to say that the value of tanking is small, you need to argue that the value of trying to win (aka playing Lauri) is more. I am totally with you in saying that tanking is highly overrated, but I still come to the conclusion that we should sit the vets because there is no value to playing them.

Everybody knows we're at the mercy of the lotto. Yes, people can be hyperbolic and that's annoying, but when you get down to brass tacks it makes total sense why people want to sit Lauri and the vets. If you took a team in the opposite situation where they were trying to win, you could argue that any given regular season game is largely insignificant in their quest to win a title...and yet people still really want to win that game. Every game is mostly insignificant whether you're winning or losing, but on any given night you want to get the maximum value out of that game. For the Jazz, the maximum value is to lose.

Somewhat unrelated, but this is why I think any solution to tanking would be aided by incentives to win, not just decreasing the incentive to lose.

This.
Everyone knows we are gonna need luck. But every loss increases our chances to get lucky.

 

[idiot]

Meh, results based analysis just isn't the way I would want this franchise run. If we end up 3rd and the 4th position ends up winning the lotto, I'm not going to look back and say it was incorrect to say we put ourselves in a better position by getting 3rd. We can't predict the future, we can only gives ourselves the best chance. You can only control what you can control, and just because something is mostly luck I don't think that means you should just ignore it altogether.

The point I was making is that it doesn't really matter how small you think the benefit is. What matters is that it's greater than zero and the value of playing Lauri and winning the game because we played him is actually zero. So when it comes to playing or sitting Lauri, I consider sitting him to be strictly better. It's not enough to say that the value of tanking is small, you need to argue that the value of trying to win (aka playing Lauri) is more. I am totally with you in saying that tanking is highly overrated, but I still come to the conclusion that we should sit the vets because there is no value to playing them.

Everybody knows we're at the mercy of the lotto. Yes, people can be hyperbolic and that's annoying, but when you get down to brass tacks it makes total sense why people want to sit Lauri and the vets. If you took a team in the opposite situation where they were trying to win, you could argue that any given regular season game is largely insignificant in their quest to win a title...and yet people still really want to win that game. Every game is mostly insignificant whether you're winning or losing, but on any given night you want to get the maximum value out of that game. For the Jazz, the maximum value is to lose.

Somewhat unrelated, but this is why I think any solution to tanking would be aided by incentives to win, not just decreasing the incentive to lose.

Your argument seems to have the assumption that sitting Lauri comes at no cost. Maybe that's the case. But it might not be. There are several ways I could imagine that sitting Lauri comes at a cost (or that him playing provides value). But I don't think any of us know what is at play (or have any way to estimate what the Jazz see as the value of Lauri playing).

As for the rest of the argument, I understand the point and I don't begrudge it. But I just don't see the value in "winning" the tank race. We're in a position where we're giving ourselves every chance to do well. And we're very unlikely to fall from that position. If 5th through 7th matters that much to you, have at it. I doesn't to me.