I try to politely bow out of conversations once they get into semantics. There's very little point in spending mental bandwidth on these issues. But it struck me as very odd that you've just marshaled together evidence for your position, and all of it reads like a synopsis of message-board chat. This reads like a weird set of avatars. Who is "we"?For those who want to say that tanking is much broader than just purposive losing (to benefit in the draft), consider which types of the following sentences you've heard recently or that even make sense in normal usage:
In other words, tanking, in the way that we normally use the term, is all about the losing (especially in order to try to bolster the draft pick.)
- "Our tank is going great, though we're not losing very much." (No one says this, except sarcastically)
- "We've got 3 teams in the tank race this year: Washington, Utah, and Brooklyn. Everyone else with bad records is just bad. (You don't hear this because everyone who's bad is in the tank race regardless of what "strategy" with signings, acquisitions, cap space, etc. they're following).
- "I wouldn't mind seeing Sexton on the next iteration of a winning Jazz team, but we need to trade him, so we can tank." (This one makes sense, because tanking's all about the win/loss record)
- The 2022-23 Spurs were bad at tanking because 27-year old journeyman Keita Bates-Diop played in the second most games of all players and played the second-most minutes per game. (All that matters is they lost a lot and got Wemby in the draft after that season.)
- "The Thunder kept Kenrich Williams because they were tanking." (No one says that, because keeping Kenrich Williams jeopardized their winning percentage. It would make much more sense to say that the Thunder kept Kenrich Williams in spite of their tanking."
- "We're doing great at the tank because our youngsters are playing a major role in helping us win. (While the success of the youth might be solace if we had a .400 winning percentage, nobody would say this. It would be much more common to hear, "Our youngsters are too good; they're preventing us from tanking.")
I couldn't care less about fans' reactions.
There are, of course, poorly run teams. But I feel totally safe in the assumption that there's not a single front office that thinks that intentionally losing games is something that works in isolation. Intentionally losing is always embedded in a team development strategy that spans seasons, contract lengths, etc. They may not get lucky enough or execute their plans effectively, but that's not the point. The point is the intention.
In your post above the quoted one, you say " 'Talent acquisition, talent retention, and team building' are what every team tries to do. There's nothing exclusive to tanking about these." The non-exclusivity of these actions is precisely my point.
You're a good poster. Thanks for writing good content. It's ok that we're on different pages here.