Thank you for your excellent analysis. I guess my question is what are the criteria to determine whether the tank was successful tank and whether the benefits exceed the costs.
For example, after suffering five years of intentional misery, what is the expected outcome? An NBA title or multiple titles, an NBA finals appearance or multiple finals appearances, a conference final or multiple conference finals, etc.? Will it be considered a successful tank if the team becomes a perennial high 40s or 50 win team that routinely makes the playoffs and occasionally makes a deeper run (i.e., second round or conference final) but never makes the finals? I don't think that we can talk about good vs. bad or successful vs. unsuccessful tanking without specifying what the criteria are for determining this.
Closely related to this is at what point do the benefits of the tank exceed the costs? How many years of playoff appearances and how deep in to the playoffs constitute sufficient benefits that they begin to outweigh the costs of enduring five years of what we endured the other day vs. the Lakers?
Of course, another factor that must be considered is the opportunity cost. In lieu of tanking, what were the other options and associated outcomes? Admittedly, this one is hard to assess, but we can assume a variety of scenarios and compare our projected tanking outcomes to these.
From my perspective, the discussion of tanking focuses disproportionately on the perceived benefits without considering these other factors. I'm not trying to be contrarian for contrarianism's sake here, I'm genuinely interested in how people would answer these questions. This analysis provide a good benchmark to facilitate the discussion.
