What's new

Culture of winning or tank?

Win or tank?


  • Total voters
    87
This is so dumb Ron. Chet and Williams have been a huge part of the success. And if Shai is the only thing that matters we need to get a player on his level at all costs. Lauri is not on his level. Lauri may be the thing preventing us from getting that guy.



If they had Shai and no Chet or Williams they’d also be in the play in or lotto.

And what about another year of borderline play in team that leads to us sending a pick to OKC. The non tankers seem to want their cake and eat it to ignoring the scenario where we get nothing and now all the competitive advantage of a cheap Lauri contract is fully exhausted. I’m cool with keeping Lauri but we likely have to offload other stuff to stay below 10. Is Lauri excited to hang around next year if we tank second half of the season or get bounced in the play in? Or after he’s been paid does he get more grumbly?

I only move him for a BIG return. But it’s not stupid to trade him if the big offer comes in. The only thing that is dumb is making a move to get in the middle after the last two years we’ve had.
You can find those role players to fit around your MVP level player. They have a lot of solid players but he is by far the main reason for their success full stop. Glossing over that is crazy.

Lauri is not at his level. I'm not convinced tanking gets us a guy at Lauri's level let alone MVP level. That's a very low percentage.

I'm not arguing we need to get an MVP level guy. I'm saying following their model entirely depends on getting lucky in a trade that lands you an MVP. It's not a path we or any team can follow to be them.

I don't want to be a middle team, I want us to trade and improve. I'm okay giving OKC our pick next year, I don't care about that. I just want us to try to win. I'm okay if we are a 8th seed team next year but things are trending up.
 
You can find those role players to fit around your MVP level player. They have a lot of solid players but he is by far the main reason for their success full stop. Glossing over that is crazy.

Lauri is not at his level. I'm not convinced tanking gets us a guy at Lauri's level let alone MVP level. That's a very low percentage.

I'm not arguing we need to get an MVP level guy. I'm saying following their model entirely depends on getting lucky in a trade that lands you an MVP. It's not a path we or any team can follow to be them.

I don't want to be a middle team, I want us to trade and improve. I'm okay giving OKC our pick next year, I don't care about that. I just want us to try to win. I'm okay if we are a 8th seed team next year but things are trending up.
Dear lord… Chet and Jalen are closer to all stars than role players.
 
You can find those role players to fit around your MVP level player. They have a lot of solid players but he is by far the main reason for their success full stop. Glossing over that is crazy.

Lauri is not at his level. I'm not convinced tanking gets us a guy at Lauri's level let alone MVP level. That's a very low percentage.

I'm not arguing we need to get an MVP level guy. I'm saying following their model entirely depends on getting lucky in a trade that lands you an MVP. It's not a path we or any team can follow to be them.

I don't want to be a middle team, I want us to trade and improve. I'm okay giving OKC our pick next year, I don't care about that. I just want us to try to win. I'm okay if we are a 8th seed team next year but things are trending up.
Yeah you lost it with Chet is a role player take bro.

He’ll be fringe if not All Star player for years to come.
 
Dear lord… Chet and Jalen are closer to all stars than role players.
They are above average starters this year.

Give me an MVP level player and you can build around him. That is far more important than those guys.

If you swapped Lauri for SGA would you want to trade him and tank this year?
 
You can’t narrow things just to title winners and mvps imo anyway. You try to build a team that can make the conference finals… look at those teams and a disproportionate amount of talent comes from top picks.
You're the one who narrowed it down to franchise cornerstones, not me. You're just moving the goalposts now, and you're not even providing any numbers.

Not that it matters all that much. All these numbers and math. This isn't a video game; this is real life.

Of course tanking 2-3 more years will provide us with more assets and mathematically give us more chances at drafting good players or hypothetically trading those picks for players(though we all know Danny will never do that). We're all human here and not computers, though. I like seeing the Jazz compete and win. I think we all do. When the Jazz were on a tear around New Year, game threads had 15-20 pages regardless of day of week or time of day. When we blew it up, it'd be 4-5 pages for some of the games. I don't like watching a team I love lose on purpose, and it turns out that even people who clamored for the tank and talked about seeing what the rookies can do don't like watching that, else there'd have been more than 4-5 pages in game threads.

If the draft still worked the way it did 40 years ago and a generational talent like Wemby was in it, yeah, I might be down to tank this upcoming season. This not being true, I'd like to see what some of these players we've got can do when they're not being hamstrung. I'd like to see what players we might be able to get this summer, thought ideally they wouldn't be wife-beaters. It's not a very high bar, I'd like to think.

Life is short, stuff happens. I just wanna be able to cheer on the team I've loved for 3/4 of my life in games whose outcome isn't predetermined. Thanks to @JazzAvenues, we get some glimpses into fan bases where you've got one playoff appearance in a decade. None of those guys seem happy. No one's saying "Well, at least we're not a treadmill team. Championship or tank!"
 
They are above average starters this year.

Give me an MVP level player and you can build around him. That is far more important than those guys.

If you swapped Lauri for SGA would you want to trade him and tank this year?
No… because you can trade for guys on Lauri’s level but guys on SGAs level are almost never available lol. That’s the whole point. You have to get that guy. Lauri is a one time all star. It’s a totally different conversation.

And again you are way underselling Williams and Chet to a degree that I think either aren’t paying attention or you are being disingenuous.

Look all this keep Lauri and draft in the 6-9 range stuff is real cute. You only get to try to walk two paths for so long. If we make no changes and are relatively healthy we will be right on that line again. Go ahead and see how everyone reacts when we manage the tank again or lose in the first round of the play in (best case scenario) see how happy Lauri is to be a team player. Would be great to have our cake and eat it too but also pretty fine line to walk.
 
Fish I love you buddy but when “the data” factors in a once in 100 year event to push the average draft position then “the data” isn’t a great predictor of the future. Jokic may be the only mvp ever to be drafted in the second round. Go look at a simple list of league mvps since say 2000 and it’s comprised of guys drafted top 4 or 5… quick count of 14 of the last 24 mvp awards. Can you get an mvp talent between 7-15? Yes. Those picks don’t change hands a ton. If you have extra draft capital you can trade for picks in that range in some drafts… so why wouldn’t we try to do both? Especially because playing the middle will cost us one of those picks in the middle in the next two years and send it to OKC.

You can’t narrow things just to title winners and mvps imo anyway. You try to build a team that can make the conference finals… look at those teams and a disproportionate amount of talent comes from top picks.

Hinkie is like pretty good with data and what did he do? Morey is pretty good with data and what did he do? They both did different things… so the data doesn’t just say one thing.
He made a list. Go look at the post

Sent from my CPH2451 using Tapatalk
 
No… because you can trade for guys on Lauri’s level but guys on SGAs level are almost never available lol. That’s the whole point. You have to get that guy. Lauri is a one time all star. It’s a totally different conversation.

And again you are way underselling Williams and Chet to a degree that I think either aren’t paying attention or you are being disingenuous.

Look all this keep Lauri and draft in the 6-9 range stuff is real cute. You only get to try to walk two paths for so long. If we make no changes and are relatively healthy we will be right on that line again. Go ahead and see how everyone reacts when we manage the tank again or lose in the first round of the play in (best case scenario) see how happy Lauri is to be a team player. Would be great to have our cake and eat it too but also pretty fine line to walk.
Above average starters are what they are. They are not all-stars. They might become that but right now they are not.

But I guess we agree on what a big deal having SGA is, which is the point I have made all along so ill move on. Having that guy is huge and they got lucky getting him in a trade not the draft.

Your argument against me isnt what I have made at all. But the above is the most important so Ill gloss over the rest of this "cute" stuff and call it good.
 
He made a list. Go look at the post

Sent from my CPH2451 using Tapatalk
Things have changed so much in the NBA and in the Draft. Evaluating talent is so much harder and guys are becoming MVP level players from all over the draft. This year is a 2nd round draft pick winning but following him you have guys like SGA that no one expected out of college or even after his first year in the NBA at #2 and Brunson at #5 on the MVP vote list who was also a 2nd round pick.

Look at how many guys after Lebron were highly rated at #1 that turned into not much. Zion, Wiggins, KAT, Oden, and Simmons were supposed to be sure things and very hyped up. Thats not to mention the other 1st picks like Ayton, Fultz, Bennett, and Bargnani that didnt have much hype but were complete busts at #1.
 
Ok, let's look at this the other way then. In the past 30 years, the average spot where the NBA MVP was picked has been 9. Last decade, it's trended lower and it's 17. Of course, Jokić repeating skews that, but a number one pick hasn't won the MVP in more than a decade. Nor has anyone picked 2nd.
The problem with that type of stat keeping is that even a few outliers skew the stats a ton. You need four no.1 pick MVPs just to get 1 of the Jokic ones to the average of 9. Or... you need 12 to "compensate" for the 3 Jokic ones. What is easier in your opinion? To get an MVP at the top of the draft or one in the second round? BTW note that one doesn't prohibit you from doing the other since you are supposed to have second round picks too. If you actually take the median... the median over the last 45 years is #3!!! This means half the MVPs have been won by players taken at 3 or above. 33 of the last 45 MVPs have been taken 6 or above.

And if you want to make it unique players - 25 players have won MVPs over the last 45 years. The median is again #3. Half of the players who have won an MVP since 1980 have been drafted in the top 3.

I don't really know why there is a conversation about where you want to be drafting if you want to maximize your chance at taking an MVP... sure there will be outliers and sure you can always try to get an MVP in the second round or in the teens. But the odds are just A LOT better at the top of the draft.

You wanna expand this a bit? Let's take top 5 MVP vote getters in the past 5 years. The average is 14. Of course, there are a lot of players repeating. It's only been 13 unique players getting top 5 votes the past 5 years. The average is 12 if you just take each of the 11 players once.
Same conversation as above. Do you want me to go over the stats over a prolonged period of time and see the results? I don't know why it's even a conversation - do you really think it doesn't matter where you draft for your chance to draft an MVP level talent?
Of those 13 players, only 6 were drafted with the team's own pick of the team they were on when they got the votes. The other 7 were either obtained in trades or drafted with a pick obtained in trades. In other words, those picks had nothing to do with the records of those teams the year before. You know the average of the players drafted with their team's own picks and still on the team when they were getting these MVP votes? Twenty! Brunson and Jokić were both second round picks, Giannis went 15th, Booker went 13th, and Curry was 7th. The only one picked in top 5 of those six was Embiid at #3.
This I agree with and this is one of the benefits of tanking BTW - when you trade most your current value(vets that won't be part of the next contending Jazz team) and turn it into future value(picks) you get the benefit of getting other teams picks and you get the benefit of having more shots at the target, the benefit of having more ammunition to be able to maneuver around the draft board for the players you really want.
I mean, I'd love to tell you that teams get MVP level players by tanking and finishing bottom 5 in the league, but it doesn't look like it.
I just fundamentally disagree. Getting an MVP level player is NOT easy. Drafting at the top does NOT guarantee you get one. But the chances when drafting at the top are just much MUCH better. Otherwise you wouldn't have to trade huge hauls if you wanted to trade into the top of the draft and teams wouldn't care much where they draft. This is just demonstrably false.
 
Last edited:
The problem with that type of stat keeping is that even a few outliers skew the stats a ton. You need four no.1 pick MVPs just to get 1 of the Jokic ones to the average of 9. Or... you need 12 to "compensate" for the 3 Jokic ones. What is easier in your opinion? To get an MVP at the top of the draft or one in the second round? BTW note that one doesn't prohibit you from doing the other since you are supposed to have second round picks too. If you actually take the median... the median over the last 40 years is #3!!! This means half the MVPs have been won by players taken at 3 or above. 33 of the last 45 MVPs have been taken 6 or above.

And if you want to make it unique players - 25 players have won MVPs over the last 45 years. The median is again #3. Half of the players who have won an MVP since 1980 have been drafted in the top 3.

I don't really know why there is a conversation about where you want to be drafting if you want to maximize your chance at taking an MVP... sure there will be outliers and sure you can always try to get an MVP in the second round or in the teens. But the odds are just A LOT better at the top of the draft.


Same conversation as above. Do you want me to go over the stats over a prolonged period of time and see the results? I don't know why it's even a conversation - do you really think it doesn't matter where you draft for your chance to draft an MVP level talent?

This I agree with and this is one of the benefits of tanking BTW - when you trade most your current value(vets that won't be part of the next contending Jazz team) and turn it into future value(picks) you get the benefit of getting other teams picks and you get the benefit of having more shots at the target, the benefit of having more ammunition to be able to maneuver around the draft board for the players you really want.

I just fundamentally disagree. Getting an MVP level player is NOT easy. Drafting at the top does NOT guarantee you get one. But the chances when drafting at the top are just much MUCH better. Otherwise you wouldn't have to trade huge hauls if you wanted to trade into the top of the draft and teams wouldn't care much where they draft. This is just demonstrably false.
Your top 7ish picks likely almost all come from your own poor record as teams don’t trade those picks. So if you own other teams picks you likely get some in the 10-14 range and some in the 20s. Chase all star talent in both ways… but you likely only get those top 7ish picks one way.

We might catch some fish with one pole in a pond that is somewhat stocked… or we can fish in a pond with twice as many fish and can use a couple poles. I get that the fish still have to bite and there are no guarantees.

And I’m cool trading Lauri and drafting top 5 or keeping Lauri and being 7 or 8ish… but is he really way more satisfied and happy with that? I think at max you have one more year where you can duck around like that with Lauri on the roster. Better hit all the home runs that year. There is also the chance you land 11-14 and look around and your fortunes haven’t changed at all and watch a tremendous draft slip through your hands with only the Cavs and wolves picks to show for it.

Again… if we wanted the type of team some of y’all want to build we had a better version of that already and voluntarily blew that **** up. If you did that with thoughts of winning a title then don’t get squeamish at the thought of a multi year drop in the standings.
 
I don't by any means think we voluntarily blew the last team up. Mitchell was leaving. That forced our hand.

We probably traded him a season early but the FO knew we would get more for him sooner than later.

If Mitchell and Gobert got along and wanted to be here you should have kept them and adjusted the roster. We could have made plenty of moves around them with what we had. I would have enjoyed that team. But they didn't get along and Mitchell wanted out.

I'm also not sure but I get the feeling Gobert also said me or him to the FO.
 
Your top 7ish picks likely almost all come from your own poor record as teams don’t trade those picks. So if you own other teams picks you likely get some in the 10-14 range and some in the 20s. Chase all star talent in both ways… but you likely only get those top 7ish picks one way.

We might catch some fish with one pole in a pond that is somewhat stocked… or we can fish in a pond with twice as many fish and can use a couple poles. I get that the fish still have to bite and there are no guarantees.

And I’m cool trading Lauri and drafting top 5 or keeping Lauri and being 7 or 8ish… but is he really way more satisfied and happy with that? I think at max you have one more year where you can duck around like that with Lauri on the roster. Better hit all the home runs that year. There is also the chance you land 11-14 and look around and your fortunes haven’t changed at all and watch a tremendous draft slip through your hands with only the Cavs and wolves picks to show for it.

Again… if we wanted the type of team some of y’all want to build we had a better version of that already and voluntarily blew that **** up. If you did that with thoughts of winning a title then don’t get squeamish at the thought of a multi year drop in the standings.
Yep. I don't mind people wanting us to field a good roster and not bottoming out. I don't mind us just trying to be a good team that is in the playoffs/playin every year. I just don't want us to fool ourselves about what exactly it is that we are doing. You can be a playoff/playin team by just... trying to be. Hell we were in that picture half way through this season with severely limited roster and a ton of youth. We were in that picture the previous year.... and ever since Rudy got into the starting lineup really. We can be 2016-2022 Jazz... we can be Memphis or Pacers of the 2010s... Just ... don't fool yourself that you are more than that. Or that there is some big chance that you are going to strike an MVP in the 20s or in the second round.

No shame in fielding good teams, filling the arena and giving your fans a good product to get behind. Just... don't fool yourself that you are maximizing your chances at a title this way.
 
Yep. I don't mind people wanting us to field a good roster and not bottoming out. I don't mind us just trying to be a good team that is in the playoffs/playin every year. I just don't want us to fool ourselves about what exactly it is that we are doing. You can be a playoff/playin team by just... trying to be. Hell we were in that picture half way through this season with severely limited roster and a ton of youth. We were in that picture the previous year.... and ever since Rudy got into the starting lineup really. We can be 2016-2022 Jazz... we can be Memphis or Pacers of the 2010s... Just ... don't fool yourself that you are more than that. Or that there is some big chance that you are going to strike an MVP in the 20s or in the second round.

No shame in fielding good teams, filling the arena and giving your fans a good product to get behind. Just... don't fool yourself that you are maximizing your chances at a title this way.
Cool thing is you can simply be a first round team and go from that to a championship team by getting lucky with a draft pick.

Sent from my CPH2451 using Tapatalk
 
Anyone who thinks taking steps backward when you have the assets the Jazz have is stupid. Just straight up. You don't move Lauri.
It’s not stupid at all. Having Lauri at the current moment is what has us in the middle. What exactly would your plan be this upcoming offseason and going forward? I’m all for trading for a top-15 guy but who is it and when is he coming available?
 
It’s not stupid at all. Having Lauri at the current moment is what has us in the middle. What exactly would your plan be this upcoming offseason and going forward? I’m all for trading for a top-15 guy but who is it and when is he coming available?
He already stated that his plan is to get Paul George and Jimmy Butler while keeping Lauri and Sexton. Unfortunately that is not possible because you need Sextons salary to match Butler's incoming salary.
 
Back
Top