As a sports-follower (I wouldn't cathegorize myself as a fan but rather a casual enthusiast) I also have trouble in understanding why all actions should or must be done specifically with the sole aim of targetting for a title. If we really dive deeper into what sports is about, it is mainly entertainment for spectators. In this sence, a teams sole aim should and must not be targetting for the one and only title but instead a team should be competing and giving its best performance each and every season with the given set of players each year. As a proponent of this view it is utterly bewildering to me for any professional sports franchise to in any way concider tanking as a remotely attractive path at any given time. Yes, I do understand that the idea derives from trying to keep the league somewhat competitive by giving poorly performing teams a better shot at more gifted players in the draft. Regardless, it should be shameful to the extreme for any team or sports professional (including GMs) to deliberately attempt to suck in order to winning the tanking race.
For this, we need to keep in mind that the franchise is a business first and foremost. Yeah, with an owner like a Cuban or even Larry H. we will get a more hobbyist approach to the game, but in the end the pluses and minuses matter. And frankly fans flock to winning franchises. They generate money. That is why the league has profit sharing, to balance that out. But the franchises that win will have bigger fan-bases than the ones that don't. And that winning comes in 2 parts: regular season and playoff. The thing is, the bigger driver of growing the fan-base is wins in the post-season, and championships are the biggest driver of all. Chicago was always a larger market, but their fan-base grew exponentially when they had Jordan and even more when they started racking up the rings. Fans, especially mid-level casual fans, want to feel like they are a part of something bigger, something winning. And that is all about the rings. That is what drives the money. So their focus will always be, in the end, on getting the rings.
Now I think the Jazz were on the treadmill for a long time because they believed that this bump in fans and money that would come with a ring was limited, so it made more sense financially to play BITS basketball (Butts In The Seats), where they were successful enough to keep their primary fan-base active, but never risked that by reaching for the rings. This came about after Larry H mostly, because his family really only cared about his legacy and the money, not the rings, not the hobbyist viewpoint.
I think Smith is more like the Cuban and Larry H mold and will do more to rock the boat to get us to the top, that is his dream and his goal, hence the HUGE shakeup this year. He is more the hobbyist. No Miller-run team (post-Larry, and even with Larry somewhat) would make a bold move like that. They played it safe, kept playing BITS basketball and enjoyed watching the team be 60% successful year after year. But most hardened fans, like many of us vocal ones on here, are along for both reasons. We feel committed to the team be it regional or whatever other irrational reason, and we enjoy watching them play, win or lose, but we also want to see the ring. We want to feel like we are part of something winning at the highest level as well. Yeah, like losing your virginity the anticipation is probably way way better than the reality, but we want that experience nonetheless. It is what keeps us coming back.
Without that hope, fans would dwindle off until all you had were people who watched it because it was on, and hey, basketball is kind of fun! But that isn't the fanbase that drives the success of the franchise.
This Jazz team is such an unlikely group of likable mismatch guys that I am enjoying this ride so much more than I ever anticipated.
Cannot agree with this more!
