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OKC Sees Our Tank and Raises

Poku scoring 25 a game this year on 38/32/80 shooting splits.
 
This will stretch out and be like a 8 week injury. He will miss a couple weeks... but they could use it as reason to do maintenance sitting strategically.

Lu Dort better watch his back... Chet... SGA... Dort or Giddey next.
 
Really sucks for SGA that he got injured, double bad that the Thunder will rob him of more of his young career. The NBA is in bad place with the massive incentive to tank.
 
KqWIN said:
Really sucks for SGA that he got injured, double bad that the Thunder will rob him of more of his young career. The NBA is in bad place with the massive incentive to tank.
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I seem to remember a lot of criticism predicting this when the current CBA was signed.
 
KqWIN said:
Really sucks for SGA that he got injured, double bad that the Thunder will rob him of more of his young career. The NBA is in bad place with the massive incentive to tank.
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There’s never been less incentive but okay.
 
Sounds like we just need to cater sandwiches from a specific deli that may or may not get Jazz players sick in SLC 82 times next year.
 
NUMBERICA said:
There’s never been less incentive but okay.
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Incentive maybe the wrong word, but it’s really moreso about what teams value. The idea of sitting out a player to be as bad as possible isn’t necessarily new, but it’s more prevalent than ever.

The increasing focus on championship bust has made this stuff par for the course….and that’s an ugly reality for the NBA.
 
The Thriller said:
I seem to remember a lot of criticism predicting this when the current CBA was signed.
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The CBA doesn’t really change much….there’s just been a huge shift in the mentality of players/franchises and it’s something I think the league ought to deal with it somehow. The race towards the bottom is not what you want in a competitive league.
 
KqWIN said:
Incentive maybe the wrong word, but it’s really moreso about what teams value. The idea of sitting out a player to be as bad as possible isn’t necessarily new, but it’s more prevalent than ever.

The increasing focus on championship bust has made this stuff par for the course….and that’s an ugly reality for the NBA.
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I don’t think that trend is any worse now on scale than in recent previous years. The difference is there are 24 teams that are playoff/play-in hopefuls and flattened lottery odds that disincentivize trying to lose 82 games a year.
 
NUMBERICA said:
I don’t think that trend is any worse now on scale than in recent previous years. The difference is there are 24 teams that are playoff/play-in hopefuls and flattened lottery odds that disincentivize trying to lose 82 games a year.
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We'll have to agree to disagree. Regardless of the the lottery odds teams and players are operating much differently in the past. Tanking, the idea of purgatory, and being championship or bust aren't new ideas but have become so central to how players, teams, and fans operate and think about the league. All three concepts deemphasize the regular season, which is why I think the NBA is in a tough spot.
 
KqWIN said:
We'll have to agree to disagree. Regardless of the the lottery odds teams and players are operating much differently in the past. Tanking, the idea of purgatory, and being championship or bust aren't new ideas but have become so central to how players, teams, and fans operate and think about the league. All three concepts deemphasize the regular season, which is why I think the NBA is in a tough spot.
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I think this change started when the nba went from 4 to 6 divisions and then began eliminating the value of winning a division. Without meaningful division races all that was left was championship or bust. They’re trying to fix it with the mid season tournament. We’ll see…
 
Ujfanatic said:
I think this change started when the nba went from 4 to 6 divisions and then began eliminating the value of winning a division. Without meaningful division races all that was left was championship or bust. They’re trying to fix it with the mid season tournament. We’ll see…
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I actually think that social media has caused the most changes. That’s how ringgggzzzzz culture kind of came about. We only talk about the championship….if you don’t win you’re just a loser. The NBA became so LeBron focused and that’s all LeBron’s career has been.

The division thing definitely didn’t help. There aren’t rivalries in the NBA. Closest thing is probably when a player changes a team, but it’s not the same as a division rival that you bitterly want to beat. They’ve got figure out a way to make games mean something more than the direct impact on a championship, because the reality is that the regular season doesn’t really matter when it comes to winning it all and teams are well aware of it now.
 
KqWIN said:
We'll have to agree to disagree. Regardless of the the lottery odds teams and players are operating much differently in the past. Tanking, the idea of purgatory, and being championship or bust aren't new ideas but have become so central to how players, teams, and fans operate and think about the league. All three concepts deemphasize the regular season, which is why I think the NBA is in a tough spot.
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For sure, but right now there's enough parity (at least perceived) in the league that the tanking race is more about 8 franchises (maybe less), when few years ago it could be about 10 or more, with up to another 10 either considering themselves going for it or under heavy outside pressure to do so
 
rjfan said:
For sure, but right now there's enough parity (at least perceived) in the league that the tanking race is more about 8 franchises (maybe less), when few years ago it could be about 10 or more, with up to another 10 either considering themselves going for it or under heavy outside pressure to do so
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That’s fair….the problem is that it’s not contained with the teams tanking. If a team was winning 30 games and now they win 22 because they lost on purpose….yeah whatever. But even the good teams don’t care about winning on the RS. Of course they need to make it to the playoffs, but any team that’s a title contender is going to do that by default.

There’s just not a lot of consequence to any random RS game. There’s never been much in the first place, but teams/players are just more aware these days and know that giving 100% effort during the RS actively works against their goal of winning the championship.

Playoff basketball has always been different than RS basketball, but that divide keeps getting wider. I don’t think it makes for a more exciting playoffs because there are no storylines coming out of the RS and it comes at the cost of making the entire RS a glorified preseason.
 
rjfan said:
For sure, but right now there's enough parity (at least perceived) in the league that the tanking race is more about 8 franchises (maybe less), when few years ago it could be about 10 or more, with up to another 10 either considering themselves going for it or under heavy outside pressure to do so
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Even if the number is 8 it is a sad state of affairs. In every sports the race to see who can be the best at being the worst taints the game. It clearly wasn't working with Don and Rudy so something had to change but the number of people who are more excited about tanking than doing a reset around one of our all stars gives me pause. I know that is a minority view.
 
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