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2024-2025 Tank Race

Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
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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Already heard them all a million times silly goose.

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whatthe said:
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?
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Really just need coach to buy in completely

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Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
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.
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I'm sorry that you dont like the definition. My condolences

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HermanG said:
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.
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This

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Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
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.
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Who cares about the "definition"? The debate should be about whether our strategy is a good or not, whatever title you wanna give it.

Every championship winner in the history has been built in its own unique way. I would say three main things that are common for all of them is you need good talent evaluation, good coaching and a lot of luck.

Luck can manifest in many different ways. For Bucks it was Giannis turning into a monster post draft after they were able to snatch him 14th. For Nuggets it was Joker having a ceiling no one could have imagined (not even themselves, as evident by them also skipping him in the first round). It can be about a guy becoming available when you got other pieces in place, like Toronto trading for Kawhi for 1 year rental or Lebron returning to Cleveland after his Miami stint.

Besides those 4 individual championships, only other teams to win the chip in the past 20 years are GSW, Lakers, Boston, Mavs, Spurs and Heat who have combined for 16 titles. We cannot really model our plan based on those teams as they operate under different type of conditions. Whether its their locale being more desirable, state income taxes or just general brand equity we arent who they are.

You cannot model based on Bucks or Nuggets because of their MVP caliber draft steals... you could model based on Toronto and Cleveland and both where bad for stretches before they won their chips. Cleveland intially sucked to draft Lebron and then sucked when Lebron was gone to draft Kyrie. Toronto gave up Bosh and Turkoglu and were a 22-23 win team for two years before they returned to relevance and made the Kawhi trade few years later.
 
Schrödinger's Gerbil said:
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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All hail the guy who thinks he’s the first to pushback against tanking lol. It’s not that I’m not used to it… it’s that I’ve been around this block 100 times. I dont have time to walk it with you.
 
www.tankathon.com

NBA Remaining Schedule Strength | Tankathon

Shows the remaining strength of schedule for NBA teams based on the winning percentage of the opponents left on their schedule.
www.tankathon.com www.tankathon.com

According to tankathon, Toronto and Washington have the easiest remaining SOS. That is largely in part because they haven't played each other even once. Thats 4 wins spread out between the 2 teams guaranteed.
 
And to further drive home the general point that our draft position destiny is far from determined...

We have the following swing games to look forward to:

Wizards x 2
Toronto x 2
Nets x 1
Pelicans x 3
Blazers x 2
 
While I think @Schrödinger's Gerbil makes some good points, I find my self on the other side of their key point. For me, we shouldn't try to define tanking more narrowly; instead we should probably define it more broadly. To me, the intentionality isn't most important. It's the fact of losing (especially over multiple years consecutively) that's important and the likelihood of success of building a championship contender based on the resulting draft picks.

I think that's what most arguments about tanking here boil down to: are we losing enough in any particular year so we can get top draft choices and thereby all-pro/mvp-type talent, and will we go at it for a long enough period?

With this type of definition, I find the evidence shows that the value of tanking is somewhat low (though admitting that it can work in a minority of cases).
 
idiot said:
While I think @Schrödinger's Gerbil makes some good points, I find my self on the other side of their key point. For me, we shouldn't try to define tanking more narrowly; instead we should probably define it more broadly. To me, the intentionality isn't most important. It's the fact of losing (especially over multiple years consecutively) that's important and the likelihood of success of building a championship contender based on the resulting draft picks.

I think that's what most arguments about tanking here boil down to: are we losing enough in any particular year so we can get top draft choices and thereby all-pro/mvp-type talent, and will we go at it for a long enough period?

With this type of definition, I find the evidence shows that the value of tanking is somewhat low (though admitting that it can work in a minority of cases).
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The definition of a successful tank is much more interesting than the actual definition of tanking. If the championship is the definition of a successful tank then almost all talent acquisition and team building strategies are low probability.

I also think the folks that think we should run it back with Donovan haven't really paid attention to the reporting in the aftermath. It was over. If we wait for him to really force our hand we would have been in a worse situation. They have muffed plenty of things the last two years and haven't been blessed with much luck. But I think hitting the blow it up button was the right call. The time to save that team was 2-3 years before it all shook out.
 
I'll also admit that one of the things I find a bit annoying about the pro-tanking argument is that it's seen to be the cure-all in almost any situation:

The 2025 draft has 5-6 true #1 option type talents (which seemed to be the pre-season consensus)? That's why we need to tank hard.
The 2025 draft has only maybe 2 true #1 type talents, and maybe not even that, depending who you trust (which may be closer to the consensus now)? That's why we need to tank hard.

Even last year, with a consensus down-year in draft talent there were lots of voices (though not all, admittedly) who were all about the need to tank.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
The definition of a successful tank is much more interesting than the actual definition of tanking. If the championship is the definition of a successful tank then almost all talent acquisition and team building strategies are low probability.
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Maybe so, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen the championship-or-bust justification for tanking. Something like: "I want to see a Jazz championship in my lifetime, and the only way we'll get there is through a true tank."
 
when they define tanking to exclude sitting David Robinson to get tim Duncan just to make their argument better i stop caring what else is read. David Robinson could have played at least a portion of the season, but management felt it was better that he sit the entire season (umm... cough tanking). Management making decision to prioritize a higher pick next year is my definition of tanking. Players dont tank. players want to win. Management tanks.
 
oldtimer said:
when they define tanking to exclude sitting David Robinson to get tim Duncan just to make their argument better i stop caring what else is read. David Robinson could have played at least a portion of the season, but management felt it was better that he sit the entire season (umm... cough tanking). Management making decision to prioritize a higher pick next year is my definition of tanking. Players dont tank. players want to win. Management tanks.
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That was how I knew it wasn't worth a conversation.
 
idiot said:
Maybe so, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen the championship-or-bust justification for tanking. Something like: "I want to see a Jazz championship in my lifetime, and the only way we'll get there is through a true tank."
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I agree and its kind of right... sorta. The other ways are to draft an MVP where Giannis and Jokic were drafted... which we are also able to do as we have additional picks.

I just don't know if you can say being a perennial playoff team for a decade or making the finals or conference finals is an unsuccessful rebuild/tank or whatevs. I think however you do it you build a top 5 team and hope for some luck. We did that but in the process forgot to fill the pipeline or failed to do it... and cashed in some of the assets needed in the future... while also refusing to move around the deck chairs. Wouldn't swap out any good pieces to see if the mix could be improved. Quin was too rigid and I think was partly the driver of that and DL was too passive. It put us in a spot where it was going to be mortgage the future and try with a couple guys that don't like each other... I would have pressed the rebuild button and we got a good return for doing it maybe a little prematurely.
 
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