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2024-2025 Tank Race

idiot said:
Don't know where else to put it, but Locke dropping some truth bombs (imo) the last couple days on his show:
  • Jazz have done a masterful job tanking this year
  • The tanking (or bottom-5 finish, as he prefers) model works almost all of the time, but only if your expectations are to build a playoff team, and only if you commit to 3+ years
  • There is no model for building a championship team
  • It's quite rare to have someone you drafted after tanking lead you to a championship, and it hasn't happened for many years
  • There's a real conversation to be had about whether tanking is a better long-term team strategy (since it's not a reliable path to championships) than just trying to keep your team at as high a level as possible
  • Flagg is legitimately a highly ranked prospect and there should be high hopes for him, but several somewhat-recent prospects that had higher expectations at draft time either didn't work out well, or didn't quite turn out to be what was hoped for them
  • It looks like a 2-player draft. We're not really likely to get anywhere (beyond getting a solid rotation player -- a Jabari Smith type) from this year's tank if we don't end up with one of them
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I think the part about keeping a high level being a valid strategy is something I would agree with. But we kind of made the decision to quit on that already. I think tanking is as bleak as is presented here, but the Jazz don’t have much else going for them. There is no high level to maintain. We’re in a position where building forward feels even more bleak and could potentially result in catastrophic disaster. If Ainge had succeeded in a his quick rebuild attempt we would have been set back like a decade.
 
KqWIN said:
I think the part about keeping a high level being a valid strategy is something I would agree with. But we kind of made the decision to quit on that already. I think tanking is as bleak as is presented here, but the Jazz don’t have much else going for them. There is no high level to maintain. We’re in a position where building forward feels even more bleak and could potentially result in catastrophic disaster. If Ainge had succeeded in a his quick rebuild attempt we would have been set back like a decade.
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I will never stop banging this drum, but the biggest missed opportunity was not embracing tanking to this degree in ‘23. Getting trapped on a treadmill is a real thing and we have a team with tanking fatigue without getting any of the benefits because they ****ed around, basically the worst of both worlds.

We really need to hit on some luck now.
 
NUMBERICA said:
I will never stop banging this drum, but the biggest missed opportunity was not embracing tanking to this degree in ‘23. Getting trapped on a treadmill is a real thing and we have a team with tanking fatigue without getting any of the benefits because they ****ed around, basically the worst of both worlds.

We really need to hit on some luck now.
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Eh....I get what you're saying, but I think that kind of has to be taken into the initial decision to tank or not. In a video game, yeah you can totally break down a team to the studs in one off season and tank this hard. But in the real world that just doesn't happen quickly. Part of the initial decision to tank or not should have been the consideration that tanking doesn't just happen over night and it may take a season or two to tank the way you want to. Now, I would definitely say that Ainge's stubbornness delayed this more than it had to....but when you look around the league and consider all the teams trying to tank, you'll see a lot of teams doing what the Jazz did. It's not a real expectation for teams to give away their good players for free. So while I think you can be critical for how long it took us to got here, it was very idealistic to think it could just happen immediately. Maybe we should have expected two years of being in the middle, but we should have expected at least one.
 
KqWIN said:
Eh....I get what you're saying, but I think that kind of has to be taken into the initial decision to tank or not. In a video game, yeah you can totally break down a team to the studs in one off season and tank this hard.
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I am quite confident a better version of the Lakers trade could’ve been executed before the season that also wouldn’t have gifted the Timberwolves a swap of one of the more cancerous players in recent NBA history for one of the chemistry/leadership greats. Danny was greedy. It remains to be seen if his greed yields more than it loses (and it might’ve already maybe sorta kinda cost a real shot at Wemby).
 
NUMBERICA said:
I am quite confident a better version of the Lakers trade could’ve been executed before the season that also wouldn’t have gifted the Timberwolves a swap of one of the more cancerous players in recent NBA history for one of the chemistry/leadership greats. Danny was greedy. It remains to be seen if his greed yields more than it loses (and it might’ve already maybe sorta kinda cost a real shot at Wemby).
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I don't think you're wrong and these are the kinds of things that I alluded to when I mentioned Ainge's stubbornness and greed earlier. But I still think that when making the decision to tank/not tank, there does need to be an acknowledgement that it may not happen over night. We give "credit" to Ainge for trading Mitchell and Gobert and starting the tank, but he definitely deserves criticism for his half and half worst of both worlds outcomes that result from his greed. I also think he beyond greed, he wanted to keep the door open for a quick rebuild and thank god he failed to execute on the Bridges+PG "haul". I can't believe he was so smug about "almost guy" in that press conference.

It's not important, but I really do wish Jazz fans would stop acting like it's the greatest thing ever that Ainge asks for ridiculous trade hauls. I think it has done a lot of harm to this franchise.
 
NUMBERICA said:
I will never stop banging this drum, but the biggest missed opportunity was not embracing tanking to this degree in ‘23. Getting trapped on a treadmill is a real thing and we have a team with tanking fatigue without getting any of the benefits because they ****ed around, basically the worst of both worlds.

We really need to hit on some luck now.
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One of the main signs of a treadmill team is to be mediocre with no options. Like Phoenix is now. Being a mid team with a clean salary sheet, your own picks, plus a ton of other picks is not really a bad place to be. The worst would be to putz around with tanking and still miss a top pick (because of the flat odds) while we give away good players and burn our surpluss picks.
 
NUMBERICA said:
I will never stop banging this drum, but the biggest missed opportunity was not embracing tanking to this degree in ‘23. Getting trapped on a treadmill is a real thing and we have a team with tanking fatigue without getting any of the benefits because they ****ed around, basically the worst of both worlds.

We really need to hit on some luck now.
Click to expand...
Agree about the luck. And the tanking fatigue is real. But I don't think that getting trapped is as much of a danger as it's often laid out to be. Go compare what the Spurs record looked like in the years before they got really bad and lucked into Wemby with what we seem to have gotten ourselves into.

We could have easily gotten Scoot or Brandon Miller from a '23 tank and been virtually no better off than we are now. I'm not sure that even Ausur or (dare I say it?) Amen by themselves would really have us in a much better place (maybe I'm being too cynical on Amen?) Certainly not Anthony Black, or Bilal.
 
idiot said:
Agree about the luck. And the tanking fatigue is real. But I don't think that getting trapped is as much of a danger as it's often laid out to be. Go compare what the Spurs record looked like in the years before they got really bad and lucked into Wemby with what we seem to have gotten ourselves into.

We could have easily gotten Scoot or Brandon Miller from a '23 tank and been virtually no better off than we are now. I'm not sure that even Ausur or (dare I say it?) Amen by themselves would really have us in a much better place (maybe I'm being too cynical on Amen?) Certainly not Anthony Black, or Bilal.
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This. 23 draft class is pretty meh outside of Wemby. Scoot is already looking like a bust. Black and Walker are not much better. The only guy you can make an argument for is Amen but he is the type of guy who's way more valuable on a winning team, instead of being asked to carry the entire offense/defense on a losing one. Houston is the perfect environment for him.
 
framer said:
One of the main signs of a treadmill team is to be mediocre with no options. Like Phoenix is now. Being a mid team with a clean salary sheet, your own picks, plus a ton of other picks is not really a bad place to be. The worst would be to putz around with tanking and still miss a top pick (because of the flat odds) while we give away good players and burn our surpluss picks.
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Man it would suck to be Phoenix

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