It's a sports entertainment business. No one is getting screwed over. The league will do what is in it's best interest financially, and a rising tide will raise all the boats. Everyone gets paid, and the circus continues.
There is no conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are the refuge of the weak minded struggling to cope with the inequity and randomness of life. If you find yourself succumbing to conspiracy theories, this is a sure sign that it’s time for some serious critical introspection and, possibly, professional help.
This sucks. As far as tanking goes, the Jazz did everything “right,” and still got the shaft from Lady Luck. Lesson learned: Staking everything on seducing Lady Luck is, perhaps, not the best strategy, or any strategy at all.
Sadly and barring some unexpected Front Office (FO) move, every indicator is that next year will be more of the same, i.e., purposively losing to maximize lottery odds, unentertaining and uncompetitive basketball, irrelevance, FO posing a strategic geniuses despite lacking much of a strategy beyond hoping and praying, and tanking zealots gleefully and irrationally enthusing over “lose for Booz” (or equivalent) while shouting down and belittling anyone who manifests any hesitance about jumping on the tanking bandwagon, notwithstanding that this year ought to have induced them to some humility about the certitude of their tanking convictions.
Ainge, Zanik, and the rest of the Jazz FO need to get off their lazy arses and do their jobs. Tanking is as much about insulating the FO from criticism and accountability as it is about building a winning team in that it allows the FO to dole out a never ending diet of hope while they sit on their hands and do nothing beyond engineering losses for yet another bite at the lottery apple. If another bite fails to deliver, there’s always the next bite and the next. The FO isn’t responsible if the bite isn’t tasty, it’s just dumb bad luck, not their fault. Eventually, the luck’s gotta turn, right? And then, sweet holy vindication! That is not a strategy, and it’s not genius. It’s the lazy path of least resistance that places the team’s future almost entirely in the hands of lucky chance. ONLY in the NBA’s current tanking culture is betting all on the roll of the dice considered strategic genius.
Will Hardy has to be looking over his shoulder at some point. Notwithstanding the effusive FO’s praise for the job Hardy’s doing, when the time comes for accountability, the FO, as is human nature, will shirk it and seek a scapegoat. The most obvious scapegoat is Hardy. The odds are that Hardy gets the Bret Brown treatment well before the Jazz become legit contenders, or even relevant again.
Notwithstanding any explicit or implicit understanding in his contract negotiations, Markennan is likely to lose patience and seek to engineer an exit. We all know how sacred professional athletes hold contracts or handshake agreements, right?
Buckle up, the losing has only just begun, barring some unforeseen FO move or hitting the jackpot with the #5 pick. It could easily be another 3, 4, 5, or more years before the Jazz are good or relevant again. Even then, the likelihood that they win a championship is remote. The most likely scenario is that we end up right back where we were when we started this tank. If it comes to this, I’ll be curious whether the rabid pro tankers still think it was worth it.
For those who say that the Jazz had no other options than to tank, I say BS. There’s almost always other options. The limit is not that there are no options but that thinking is stulted by a lack of imagination and creativity and a suffocating groupthink. Tanking is the strategy de jour in today’s NBA. It’s what is expected and thus rewarded, if not in outcomes at least in terms of garnering peer approval. Judging from the past, it’s almost certainly also a temporary fad. FOs will eventually figure out other ways to build contenders, and in hindsight, arguments that tanking is the best strategy for building contenders will be seen as a quaint historical artifact.
I’m usually a defender of David Locke. Overall, I think he does a good job balancing his critical analysis with the fact that, in the end, he’s an employee of the Utah Jazz. I think much of the criticism I read about him is misplaced. On top of that, I admire like hell his entrepreneurial chops in building the Locked-On Network. Very, very admirable. Now, with that said, I’m afraid he’s verging on jumping the shark with his recent tanking “analysis.” First, he can’t seem to decide on whether we’re in Year 1 or Year 3 of the tank, although he seems to be settling on Year 1. This is not controversial, we’re in Year 3. Years 1 and 2 were tank years, just not “successful” ones. You don’t shed your team of competent veterans that contributed to winning in successive years if you’re trying to win. Trying to claim we’re in Year 1 is a way to soften the criticism and make it appear not so bad and that the path back to relevance, another few years required, is reasonable. Sorry, no sale. Second, he repeatedly invokes Detroit as a tanking success. Really? Detroit has averaged 29 wins over the last 15 years and made the playoffs only three times in that period, each time losing in the first round. They’ve been among the three sorriest franchises in the NBA for a decade and a half. Holy recency bias, Batman. I want to scream each time I hear him mention Detroit as a tanking success. Here's a hint, if you’re invoking Detroit as a tanking success, you’ve already lost the argument.
There is no conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are the refuge of the weak minded struggling to cope with the inequity and randomness of life. If you find yourself succumbing to conspiracy theories, this is a sure sign that it’s time for some serious critical introspection and, possibly, professional help.
This sucks. As far as tanking goes, the Jazz did everything “right,” and still got the shaft from Lady Luck. Lesson learned: Staking everything on seducing Lady Luck is, perhaps, not the best strategy, or any strategy at all.
Sadly and barring some unexpected Front Office (FO) move, every indicator is that next year will be more of the same, i.e., purposively losing to maximize lottery odds, unentertaining and uncompetitive basketball, irrelevance, FO posing a strategic geniuses despite lacking much of a strategy beyond hoping and praying, and tanking zealots gleefully and irrationally enthusing over “lose for Booz” (or equivalent) while shouting down and belittling anyone who manifests any hesitance about jumping on the tanking bandwagon, notwithstanding that this year ought to have induced them to some humility about the certitude of their tanking convictions.
Ainge, Zanik, and the rest of the Jazz FO need to get off their lazy arses and do their jobs. Tanking is as much about insulating the FO from criticism and accountability as it is about building a winning team in that it allows the FO to dole out a never ending diet of hope while they sit on their hands and do nothing beyond engineering losses for yet another bite at the lottery apple. If another bite fails to deliver, there’s always the next bite and the next. The FO isn’t responsible if the bite isn’t tasty, it’s just dumb bad luck, not their fault. Eventually, the luck’s gotta turn, right? And then, sweet holy vindication! That is not a strategy, and it’s not genius. It’s the lazy path of least resistance that places the team’s future almost entirely in the hands of lucky chance. ONLY in the NBA’s current tanking culture is betting all on the roll of the dice considered strategic genius.
Will Hardy has to be looking over his shoulder at some point. Notwithstanding the effusive FO’s praise for the job Hardy’s doing, when the time comes for accountability, the FO, as is human nature, will shirk it and seek a scapegoat. The most obvious scapegoat is Hardy. The odds are that Hardy gets the Bret Brown treatment well before the Jazz become legit contenders, or even relevant again.
Notwithstanding any explicit or implicit understanding in his contract negotiations, Markennan is likely to lose patience and seek to engineer an exit. We all know how sacred professional athletes hold contracts or handshake agreements, right?
Buckle up, the losing has only just begun, barring some unforeseen FO move or hitting the jackpot with the #5 pick. It could easily be another 3, 4, 5, or more years before the Jazz are good or relevant again. Even then, the likelihood that they win a championship is remote. The most likely scenario is that we end up right back where we were when we started this tank. If it comes to this, I’ll be curious whether the rabid pro tankers still think it was worth it.
For those who say that the Jazz had no other options than to tank, I say BS. There’s almost always other options. The limit is not that there are no options but that thinking is stulted by a lack of imagination and creativity and a suffocating groupthink. Tanking is the strategy de jour in today’s NBA. It’s what is expected and thus rewarded, if not in outcomes at least in terms of garnering peer approval. Judging from the past, it’s almost certainly also a temporary fad. FOs will eventually figure out other ways to build contenders, and in hindsight, arguments that tanking is the best strategy for building contenders will be seen as a quaint historical artifact.
I’m usually a defender of David Locke. Overall, I think he does a good job balancing his critical analysis with the fact that, in the end, he’s an employee of the Utah Jazz. I think much of the criticism I read about him is misplaced. On top of that, I admire like hell his entrepreneurial chops in building the Locked-On Network. Very, very admirable. Now, with that said, I’m afraid he’s verging on jumping the shark with his recent tanking “analysis.” First, he can’t seem to decide on whether we’re in Year 1 or Year 3 of the tank, although he seems to be settling on Year 1. This is not controversial, we’re in Year 3. Years 1 and 2 were tank years, just not “successful” ones. You don’t shed your team of competent veterans that contributed to winning in successive years if you’re trying to win. Trying to claim we’re in Year 1 is a way to soften the criticism and make it appear not so bad and that the path back to relevance, another few years required, is reasonable. Sorry, no sale. Second, he repeatedly invokes Detroit as a tanking success. Really? Detroit has averaged 29 wins over the last 15 years and made the playoffs only three times in that period, each time losing in the first round. They’ve been among the three sorriest franchises in the NBA for a decade and a half. Holy recency bias, Batman. I want to scream each time I hear him mention Detroit as a tanking success. Here's a hint, if you’re invoking Detroit as a tanking success, you’ve already lost the argument.
The issue i have with Locke is because of his position he cannot be 100% critical on the Jazz.
He means well, works hard, entrepreneurial, i get all of that.
But you ALWAYS have to take his words with a grain of salt since he is effectively employed by the Jazz and would never shoots the hand that feeds it.
Furthermore it’s sad that with every other “Locked On” podcasts you get impartial critical content, while we’re stuck with a Jazz employee with the Jazz one cos Locke founded the damn network.
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