2024-2025 Tank Race

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Jazz now predicted to win 20 games. Previously just 15 lol. What are doing?

Gonna call BS this is an actual thing, but if it was it's probably more predicated on health factors of other teams

 

[HermanG]

Jazz now predicted to win 20 games. Previously just 15 lol. What are doing?

The preseason line hovered around 28-29 wins, so getting to 20 would be "fantastic tanking job".

This was never a 15 win team even if we looked quite terrible there for a while. If we win just 20 and there are still 4 teams below us then its a historically bad year for cellar dwellers.

However micromanaging individual games into losses is not what tanking is about. Thats what gets you penalized by the league. So all the crying for wolf that occurs after every win is just people who are unable to see the big picture.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I think we need to answer two questions to be on the same page in the tanking discussion:
1. What is tanking?
2. What is the goal of tanking?

In the context of the current NBA, and judging by what I hear/read routinely from talking heads, podcasters, blog boys, and social media fans, my answers to these two questions are
1. Intentionally tearing the team down to the studs to accumulate draft picks and build through the draft. (Sitting David Robinson to get Tim Duncan was not a tank by this definition.)
2. Winning an NBA championship (i.e., ringz culture). Creating a perennial playoff team that routinely makes it to the second round or even the conference finals now and then is not enough (i.e., the "treadmill of mediocrity"). Sooner or later, the talking heads, podcasters, etc., will begin beating the drum to tear it all down.

Based on the above, I'm unaware of any team that has successfully tanked, except perhaps, Boston (we can debate this). OKC may prove an exception and, possibly, down the road, San Antonio. But, it seems to me that this strategy, and the accumulation of draft picks, is far more likely to put a team on the road of perpetual sucking or mediocrity (e.g., Washington, Detroit, Orlando, Charlotte, Houston, New Orleans) than it is to put a team on the road to a championship.

I would also like to see a frank discussion about the cost/benefits of tanking. In particular, how many years of sucking are people willing to trade for what is mostly likely, at best, a moderately elevated chance of winning the championship? For example, do Philly fans think that the years of sucking were worth it to make it no further than the second round? (Granted, if Philly had drafted better, the story might be different. But, at the same time, everyone they drafted was a consensus top prospect.)

How would you answer the above two questions? I’m assuming you answer them differently because, as I understand tanking, I don’t see 5-10 successful examples. I don't presume that my answers are the only legitimate ones. However, I think we need some agreement around them to have a productive discussion.

A final observation. My sense is that those people who are skeptical about tanking, who aren’t obsessed with winning a championship, and who would rather watch entertaining basketball year in and out, even if it doesn’t lead to a championship, than endure years of sucking for the possibility of winning a championship tend to be shouted down, patronized, and marginalized by the tanking advocates, not necessarily on this board, but in the overall tenor of the NBA media and social media landscape.

Yeah sorry you wrote all that because if your definition of tanking is so narrow to not acknowledge the Spurs tanked then there is no discussion to be had.

 

[hgb]

Are you actually a gerbil?

I would think he's both a gerbil and not a gerbil, at least until we can see for ourselves.

 

[jazznik]

The preseason line hovered around 28-29 wins, so getting to 20 would be "fantastic tanking job".

This was never a 15 win team even if we looked quite terrible there for a while. If we win just 20 and there are still 4 teams below us then its a historically bad year for cellar dwellers.

However micromanaging individual games into losses is not what tanking is about. Thats what gets you penalized by the league. So all the crying for wolf that occurs after every win is just people who are unable to see the big picture.

So, please tell me, have you heard any talk about the league penalizing the Wizards for shoving their vets to the bench and starting the games with 3 rookies and 1 second-year player? Because they are also not a 6-29 team on paper but they made it happen and now proudly flaunt the worst NBA record.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

Yeah sorry you wrote all that because if your definition of tanking is so narrow to not acknowledge the Spurs tanked then there is no discussion to be had.

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs sitting David Robinson as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

 

[FrenchJazzFa]

So, please tell me, have you heard any talk about the league penalizing the Wizards for shoving their vets to the bench and starting the games with 3 rookies and 1 second-year player? Because they are also not a 6-29 team on paper but they made it happen and now proudly flaunt the worst NBA record.

NO make also a good tanking effort.

 

[fishonjazz]

View attachment 17720

I tried for a minute but I got a life to live

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

I took a few spins on Tankathon. In one of them, the Jazz fell to #9. Jazz really need to move up a couple slots.

 

[idiot]

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs sitting David Robinson as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

I don't agree with some of the things here, but this is a well-structured, well-argued statement that brings up some important points if we want to seriously consider the value of tanking.

 

[tksavis]

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs sitting David Robinson as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

I’m very sympathetic to this line of argument

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

I tried for a minute but I got a life to live

Anytime they want to really define something with all these arbitrary rules and such I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve been through it so many times. Tanking is like porn… I know it when I see it lol.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

View attachment 17720

LOL, all hail cognitive dissonance. The pro-tanking crowd is so unused to pushback or situations where they cannot browbeat dissent that they refuse to deal in good faith with anyone who doesn't drink their Kool-Aid.

 

[Tremendous Upside]

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs sitting David Robinson as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

Beautiful post

 

[whatthe]

Put painstaking energy in drafting the best possible talent.
Always looking for the best value in trades.
Intentionally hiring a talented coach.
Having a quality front office.
Having a good development staff.
Keeping good players like Lauri, Sexton, Kessler, JCx2.
Playing heavy the younger players and a couple start to break out.

To tank perfectly you can't do all these things. You probably can only do two or three of them. Our culture still pushes to try to excel but then we want the team to go against this and lose. It's incongruent messaging/approach from the fans, the coach staff, management team and the culture

We applaud great picks in the draft and good performance and good trades, a good Lauri signing but we also want be last in the NBA. How do we pull that off?

 

[HermanG]

Defining tanking in such broad terms renders discussion about its merits pointless. Perhaps more importantly to the pro-tanking advocates, it serves to inoculate them from criticism because now they can invoke any number of examples, i.e., 5-10, to claim that it works. For example, the Lakers sucked long before Kobe retired. But because they sucked for several seasons and were able to leverage this to get AD once LeBron joined, viola, successful tank (albeit only after six long-suffering years). This, despite the fact that their sucking was in no way the result of any strategic plan (they were trying to win, which is why they signed Nash and Howard), but due to general FO incompetence and other factors.

Another example. Orlando is being advanced as a successful tank job because they have a promising young core. Well, yes, but that’s after seven years of being in the lottery after trading Howard, followed by two years of consecutive first-round losses, another three years in the lottery, and a first-round loss. That’s a total of 10 years of sucking and three first-round exits.

If those are your ideas of “successful” tanks, you’re correct, there’s no discussion to be had.

Context matters. Although sitting players remains an ongoing strategy to enhance draft positioning, the discussion of tanking in the current NBA climate overwhelmingly centers around structural rebuilds, i.e., tearing down an existing team to accumulate draft picks over the years and either use the draft picks to land a star or stars or leveraging them to acquire star players in trades. That and the end goal is to win a championship, not to win high 50 games every year, put a competitive and entertaining product on the court, but get bounced out in the first or second round every year.

This context is also the fulcrum for discussions about tanking here on Jazzfanz. The Jazz underwent a structural teardown/rebuild to put the team in a position to win an NBA championship. Anyone who denies or downplays this is being disingenuous.

However, ignoring this reality facilitates yet another rhetorical trick pro-tankers like to use. For example, if someone on this board expresses skepticism about the merits of tanking (i.e., Jazz structural teardown and rebuild), the pro-tankers can point to, say, the San Antonio Spurs sitting David Robinson as a successful tank job, so … checkmate! Notwithstanding, the San Antonio situation doesn’t remotely resemble that of the Jazz.

If pro-tankers on this board want to argue that tanking is the best way forward or push back on tanking skepticism, they need to argue about the merits of the teardown/structural rebuild strategy; otherwise, it’s apples to oranges.

My issue with tanking is the lack of critical, skeptical pushback on its merits and cost. It is supported by an impenetrable wall of collective groupthink and haughty disdain for those who dare question it (i.e., galaxy brains vs. the rubes). It is now the largely unquestioned convention wisdom, which in and of itself should be sending up red flags and ringing alarm bells.

I’m not pro or anti-tanking, per se. I’m more than willing to entertain the argument that tanking CAN work, as OKC or San Antonio may soon demonstrate. Thus, there are indeed good strategic arguments for tanking. But I’m skeptical about the prevailing, unquestioned insistence on tanking (i.e., structural teardown and rebuild) as the single “best” strategy to put a team on the championship path.

I also would really like an honest discussion about the tradeoffs. Just how many years of losing is worth it for a moderately elevated prospect of winning the championship? As a representative of the “I want to watch competitive, entertaining basketball, even if it doesn’t mean a winning championship crowd,” I put the cutoff at around three seasons. NO championship is worth enduring what the fanbases at Detroit, Charlotte, Washington, New Orleans, Orlando, etc. have endured.

As for the argument that tanking is a way to generate excitement and hope in the fanbase, I note that game threads now barely crack three pages when, in a normal year, they’d often be into double-digits. Many outside of the pro-tanking crowd have fled, at least from active posting. I think we’d all agree this is not behavior we’d expect from an excited fanbase. I would also offer the many empty stadium seats at the supposed tanking franchises as evidence that tanking doesn’t excite the fanbase but rather has the opposite effect.

In the end, I’m happy to find a middle ground regarding how we define tanking, with the proviso that it needs to be relevant to the Jazz's current context. This is, after all, a website dedicated to discussing the Jazz.

In here tanking as a term is used for any strategy that deprioritizes wins. Whether its Spurs in 1997 who opportunistically sucked for just 1 year or whether its The Process Philly who build a god awful roster so they wouldn't even accidentally compete or whether its the Jazz who sold their stars in hopes to find hidden gems (and a haul of draft picks). Those three are not comparable strategies at all, and neither should we look for correlation between their success and failures.

Its not about "being as bad as possible" and its not about 1 or 10 years. Its essentially just a mindset that draft position is higher priority than getting into playoffs. That puts a lot of teams into the scope of the term, but not all bad teams are tanking. Some are just inherently bad despite their effort going the other way.

You can disagree with that usage of the term all you want, but it just is how its used around these parts.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

In here tanking as a term is used for any strategy that deprioritizes wins. Whether its Spurs in 1997 who opportunistically sucked for just 1 year or whether its The Process Philly who build a god awful roster so they wouldn't even accidentally compete or whether its the Jazz who sold their stars in hopes to find hidden gems (and a haul of draft picks). Those three are not comparable strategies at all, and neither should we look for correlation between their success and failures.

Its not about "being as bad as possible" and its not about 1 or 10 years. Its essentially just a mindset that draft position is higher priority than getting into playoffs. That puts a lot of teams into the scope of the term, but not all bad teams are tanking. Some are just inherently bad despite their effort going the other way.

You can disagree with that usage of the term all you want, but it just is how its used around these parts.

My point is that this definition is far too broad. It empowers tanking advocates to advance any number of specious arguments supporting the Jazz tanking strategy while dismissing any skepticism, notwithstanding that much of the evidence cited is irrelevant to the Jazz's situation. The Jazz's tanking strategy is not good because other teams may have used diverse means to deprioritize wins (e.g., sitting star players); it's a good strategy because there's evidence or good reason to conclude that tearing down a competitive, winning team and stockpiling draft picks is a viable path to winning a championship and preferable to other possible options (e.g., competent, creative team building around an existing core) with reasonable odds of success in a reasonable period of time. Again, this is not just about being a good team or winning games. We were a good team and won lots of games during the Mitchell-Gobert era; it's about winning a ring. To deny this context is being disingenuous.

 

[The Jazz Wonderbra]

Thus, the answer to the evergreen question on social media: How long before people resort to insults to deal with disagreements?

As a card carrying gerbil, I take offense to your slight. We gerbils are a noble breed. My dangling gerbil balls are proud to be so disproportionatley monstrous.

 

[latin jazz]

LOL, all hail cognitive dissonance. The pro-tanking crowd is so unused to pushback or situations where they cannot browbeat dissent that they refuse to deal in good faith with anyone who doesn't drink their Kool-Aid.

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Hi, just my two cents because I appreciate the time put into writing your post. I think valid points were made but also they get lost due to the length and structure of the post. Your main point could be summarized in the 9th paragraph. This is a sports forum after all and being concise helps to get a point across.

As per your question about tanking. I believe it's more likely to be successful if supported by strong/capable management, who is able to draft wisely, manage assets and build a team before and after a super star is acquired. OKC is the perfect example. SAS is in the same line as you mentioned. Franchises like the Wizard or Hornets/Bobcats the opposite.

Finally, you also need a bit of luck. You might put yourself in a position to succeed but then the lottery balls are not in your favor and you end up drafting 5th in a 4-man draft.

I think the Jazz have proved to be a well-run organization after all these decades, and that's why people is optimistic for a better future (I would feel differently if I were a fan of the Kangs)