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2024-2025 Tank Race

KqWIN said:
I think it’s fair to question how good Hardy is because he hasn’t really been given the chance. There’s really not much to go on either direction. But playing Collier and Williams is obviously not an indictment on his coaching skill.

BTW, Hollinger is 100% one of the smarmy media heads who will act like it’s the world’s greatest tragedy if you win while you’re trying to tank.

We all know what’s going here.
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I think it's just the degree of terribleness of Collier and Cody that is making their minutes stand out.

Isaiah Collier has made 27 baskets this year... He has committed 55 turnovers.

I don't know if there's a single rotation player in NBA history that has more turnovers than made field goals, and Collier is doubling up in that category. Collier is having statistically the worst season in NBA history and was a late pick without a ton of expectations.

Hardy is in the weird situation where he has four legitimate NBA players this year so he must try to lose. Most coaches try to win and just are sabotaged by their GM to tank. Ainge refuses to trade away the Jazz's serviceable players and instead asks Hardy to intentionally lose for 82 games in a row which is... Not at all common.

Intentionally losing 1-3 games at the end of the year is very common. GMs sabotaging a team so they can't win is common.

A coach intentionally losing all year long is not really with precedent. Intentionally playing horrible defensive schemes to try to lose all year long is not with precedent.

The Grizzlies got extremely mad at Taylor Jenkins for not intentionally losing last year and fired his entire staff to punish him, lol.

I would say it's generally helpful Hardy is trying to lose, but he should definitely be fired once we're done losing as it's hard to imagine players respecting him after he chose to throw so many games.
 
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Handlogten's Heros said:
100% talking out of both sides of his ***. I like Hollinger but don't act like he wouldn't be killing us if we won a game based on riding Sexton, Svi, Kessler, Lauri, Clarkson while the young guys are riding the bench... I can here him and Duncan on the pod going "I mean what are we doing here..."
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Went back and read it... it isn't bad other than the part where he says in a larger market it would raise eyebrows... not really. This is run of the mill everyday tanking. It is about as ethical as tanking gets tbh. Not like OKC just saying "Horford is shut down for the year" after game 30 or whatever it was. Not sitting our best players... have shifted these guys up and down to the G League. This is the acceptable developmental tanking. All eyebrows should be down and any complaining is sour grapes.
 
UTA loses by 12
POR loses by 22
NOP loses by 3
WAS loses by 20
CHA loses by 7

It's going to be difficult to gain any ground at this rate. The teams above us in the tank race are a combined 4-36 in their last 40 games, and I'm pretty sure those 4 games were all against each other.
 
Unfortunately this year is looking like an elite tanking year. I looked back through the final standings for the past 10 years and our winning percentage of 0.226 would have given us the following best odds over that time span:

3rd, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 4th
 
NOLA, for a team supposedly tanking, really tried to win last night. All starters played huge minutes
 
Saint Cy of JFC said:
Dont show this to all the people bitching.
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Its about to get really tricky though. Starting on jan 12 we have Brooklyn, Charlotte, NOP, NOP, Wizards with an OKC game mixed in there. If we are playing like we are now we go 3-2 or 4-1 against those tankers. Make a Clarkson trade right now if you can... find contusions and do some maintenance. Williams/Collier need to be very prominent. That is the stretch that could take us from 5th with a chance at 3 or 4 to fighting off Porty for 6 or 7. We have been fine so far but FAFO time is coming and we need to be completely shameless.
 
Handlogten's Heros said:
Its about to get really tricky though. Starting on jan 12 we have Brooklyn, Charlotte, NOP, NOP, Wizards with an OKC game mixed in there. If we are playing like we are now we go 3-2 or 4-1 against those tankers. Make a Clarkson trade right now if you can... find contusions and do some maintenance. Williams/Collier need to be very prominent. That is the stretch that could take us from 5th with a chance at 3 or 4 to fighting off Porty for 6 or 7. We have been fine so far but FAFO time is coming and we need to be completely shameless.
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We've been doing a fine job of tanking so far, and in most years we would be set up very nicely for a top 3 odds. We happen to be tanking in a year with more really bad teams than the NBA has seen for at least the last 10 years.

The competition for the tank is fierce this year, and we will need to go above and beyond a normal tank year to ensure great lottery odds.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
We've been doing a fine job of tanking so far, and in most years we would be set up very nicely for a top 3 odds. We happen to be tanking in a year with more really bad teams than the NBA has seen for at least the last 10 years.

The competition for the tank is fierce this year, and we will need to go above and beyond a normal tank year to ensure great lottery odds.
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And the Horncats will be getting a couple guys back and Raps should play a little better... NOP schedule gets easier, but we have some wins coming down the pipeline and there will be a few teams that try to pull the late tank when they see the writing on the wall. Losses will be hard to come by so need to do our work early.

NOP will also want to showcase Zion and because of his contract he will want to show he is healthy... If he can give them a stretch of 25-30 games I think they take themselves out of the picture. We won't catch the Wiz and I am doubtful Charlotte figures it out long enough.
 
NBA.com has team win% since 1996-1997, so the past 28 years. There has only been one other year (1997) that has had more than 3 teams finish with a record of 0.250 or lower. The average number of teams that finish with a record of 0.250 or lower is 1.89. (Yes, I've had a lot of time on my hands pretending to be busy at work today).

Either teams are going to start winning games because this pace is unsustainable, or we are looking at the largest group of disgusting tanking teams in 27 years.
 
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Handlogten's Heros said:
And the Horncats will be getting a couple guys back and Raps should play a little better... NOP schedule gets easier, but we have some wins coming down the pipeline and there will be a few teams that try to pull the late tank when they see the writing on the wall. Losses will be hard to come by so need to do our work early.

NOP will also want to showcase Zion and because of his contract he will want to show he is healthy... If he can give them a stretch of 25-30 games I think they take themselves out of the picture. We won't catch the Wiz and I am doubtful Charlotte figures it out long enough.
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Teams will win more games, but it is just going to be difficult to keep pace. Every one of the bottom 5 front offices has the same goal at this point. They all want to lose as many games as they can. We've been tanking just fine, but we need to start tanking harder, and trade guys out earlier than our competition.

Outlast, Outwit, Outtank.
 
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SoberasHotRod said:
NBA.com has team win% since 1996-1997, so the past 28 years. There has only been one other year (1997) that has had more than 3 teams finish with a record of 0.250 or lower. The average number of teams that finish with a record of 0.250 or lower is 1.89. (Yes, I've had a lot of time on my hands pretending to be busy at work today).

Either teams are going to start winning games because this pace is unsustainable, or we are looking at the largest group of disgusting tanking teams in 27 years.
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Building off this thought, I used B-Ref to see the standings on December 30 in each of those years (a few years of lockout means a few years' data were missing).

There was only one year that was close to the situation this season (with five teams under .250); that was 1997, with 4 teams under .250 at this point of the season along with two other teams that were at .250 exactly. That season led into the 1998 draft (Danny Manning, Rik Smits, Charles Smith, Chris Morris, Mitch Richmond, ...).

Two other years also had as many as 4 teams under .250: 2012 (Anthony Bennett, Victor Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cody Zeller, Alex Len, ...) and 2023 (Risacher, Sarr, Sheppard, Castle, Holland, ...).

Frankly, I'm surprised to see that these drafts were the seasons that had so many teams toward the bottom. Maybe it means that there's not really much connection between draft quality and the commitment of teams to losing.

During Wemby's upcoming draft season, only one team was below a .250 winning percentage on December 30, and Spurs themselves were at .343.

The previous year (with Chet, Paolo), there were two teams below .250. Thunder were at .353.
 
idiot said:
Building off this thought, I used B-Ref to see the standings on December 30 in each of those years (a few years of lockout means a few years' data were missing).

There was only one year that was close to the situation this season (with five teams under .250); that was 1997, with 4 teams under .250 at this point of the season along with two other teams that were at .250 exactly. That season led into the 1998 draft (Danny Manning, Rik Smits, Charles Smith, Chris Morris, Mitch Richmond, ...).

Two other years also had as many as 4 teams under .250: 2012 (Anthony Bennett, Victor Oladipo, Otto Porter, Cody Zeller, Alex Len, ...) and 2023 (Risacher, Sarr, Sheppard, Castle, Holland, ...).

Frankly, I'm surprised to see that these drafts were the seasons that had so many teams toward the bottom. Maybe it means that there's not really much connection between draft quality and the commitment of teams to losing.

During Wemby's upcoming draft season, only one team was below a .250 winning percentage on December 30, and Spurs themselves were at .343.

The previous year (with Chet, Paolo), there were two teams below .250. Thunder were at .353.
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Wow, nice work!!!

I've looked in to and noticed the same thing as you, that there is not a positive correlation between draft class and number of tanking teams, and if anything there is a reverse correlation.
 
SoberasHotRod said:
Wow, nice work!!!

I've looked in to and noticed the same thing as you, that there is not a positive correlation between draft class and number of tanking teams, and if anything there is a reverse correlation.
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Yeah, here's another point at which the "general wisdom" about tanking doesn't really match the data very well.
 
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