For the good of the NBA, shouldn't some of these teams stop tanking?

[QUOTE=ProfessorMurder]Nobody wants Gerald Wallace's contract. Big Baby and Rondo are coming off of injuries.

They should get all they can for Afflalo right now.[/QUOTE]

Afflalo probably won't get until closer to he deadline. I think teams might be weary of his current production and see if it's going to hold up over a longer period of time.

Well at least most bad teams are from the east and we should have a lot of east teams with high picks in a strog draft (like 2003), so there will be good teams in the east until 3 players from the top 5 decide to make a superteam together.

[QUOTE=mrpibb]Who actually believed Monta Ellis would be part of a championship roster? Why would we sign Al or Millsap when we're trying to get Favors and Kanter playing time? Why would we sign good players at the expense of signing great players next year?

What you're suggesting makes sense, but it also mortgages the future. This is what you're asking for. Every league needs to have bad teams. When it's intentional it's glaring, but this is not intentional. It was going to happen.

We missed the playoffs last year, so we're trying something else. We didn't like what we saw, so we're trying something else.[/QUOTE]
I'm not saying there was no reason for Utah to rebuild. But what I hope you realize is that tanking can and in Utah's case is part of the rebuilding process for a lot of teams. It just doesn't seem to me that the Jazz did anything to improve in the offseason.

In the case of Ellis, he doesn't make Utah a Champ by himself (no one does) but he would have made the team better. In the right situation like most good players he could be part of a Championship formula, to answer your question.

And I'm not saying the players are coaches are part of the tank. That's almost never done, as far as I know. But when a team doesn't improve the roster, just let's talent walk and goes into a season with Gordon Hayward as the best player? That's how a front office tanks.

There is nothing wrong with tanking. It's a perfectly acceptable strategy for teams to acquire new talent.

However if you want to get rid of tanking, then get rid of the draft. Force teams to win in order to attract players, rather than lose.

[QUOTE=Sarcastic]There is nothing wrong with tanking. It's a perfectly acceptable strategy for teams to acquire new talent. [/quote]What's wrong with it is that it has left us with an entire conference that is irrelevant. When there isn't enough competitive, entertaining basketball the popularity of the league can take a hit. I am not saying that this will end the NBA with one bad season but we could definitely see a temporary dip in the ratings, ticket sales, and merchandising.

[QUOTE=Real Men Wear Green]What's wrong with it is that it has left us with an entire conference that is irrelevant. When there isn't enough competitive, entertaining basketball the popularity of the league can take a hit. I am not saying that this will end the NBA with one bad season but we could definitely see a temporary dip in the ratings, ticket sales, and merchandising.[/QUOTE]


Then get rid of the draft. Teams are incentivized to lose because of the draft.

I think your confused with tanking and rebuilding. Yeah some teams should probably make an extra move or two to compete but expecting Utah to go out and grab Monta Ellis? .. wouldn't even make them that much better. Hurts there cap flexibility and probably hurts some development that's going on right now with there core. Moves like that are why teams end up sucking.

Some of these shitty teams are simply rebuilding and have no choice in the matter, some are just smart and trying to force the rebuild. Like the Celtics, which isn't going to work because of how poor the East is.

[QUOTE=NuggetsFan]I think your confused with tanking and rebuilding.[/quote]No I have not. They are related with tanking being at the core of a lot of team's rebuilding. Toronto traded Gay away, is looking to deal Lowry, and dealt Bargnani. The value of Gay and especially Bargs is questionable but looking at these moves overall there's no doubt Ujiri knows he's made the team worse in the short term. They are tanking. Orlando, like Utah, did nothing to improve short term and it will be to no one's surprise if/when Afflalo is dealt for a pick. And I've addressed the Cs. This is tanking. What you hopefully can understand is that tanking is often a part of rebuilding. [quote]Yeah some teams should probably make an extra move or two to compete but expecting Utah to go out and grab Monta Ellis? .. wouldn't even make them that much better. Hurts there cap flexibility and probably hurts some development that's going on right now with there core. Moves like that are why teams end up sucking.[/quote]Ellis was just an example. The question I posed is, "what has Utah done to improve?" They certainly lost players, in Jefferson's case a valuable player. They let the team become terrible and unless they know less about ball than the average fan they have to have realized they would struggle. They let it happen. They're tanking.[quote]Some of these shitty teams are simply rebuilding and have no choice in the matter, some are just smart and trying to force the rebuild. Like the Celtics, [B]which isn't going to work because of how poor the East is[/B].[/QUOTE]Which is a direct result of all the tanking, which is another reason why some of these teams should stop taking. The Cs traded two of their 4 best players, the best player is injured, the coach was let go and they're still on top of the division? Give it up and see what you can do to build a good team instead of a not-bad-enough bad team.

[QUOTE=Sarcastic]Then get rid of the draft. Teams are incentivized to lose because of the draft.[/QUOTE]
That may be right. To me it's a whole other discussion, as there's a lot of variables to consider when it comes to fixing the draft. The lottery was constructed specifically to eliminate tanking and now it seems that isn't good enough.

[QUOTE=Real Men Wear Green]I'm not saying there was no reason for Utah to rebuild. But what I hope you realize is that tanking can and in Utah's case is part of the rebuilding process for a lot of teams. It just doesn't seem to me that the Jazz did anything to improve in the offseason.

In the case of Ellis, he doesn't make Utah a Champ by himself (no one does) but he would have made the team better. In the right situation like most good players he could be part of a Championship formula, to answer your question.

And I'm not saying the players are coaches are part of the tank. That's almost never done, as far as I know. But when a team doesn't improve the roster, just let's talent walk and goes into a season with Gordon Hayward as the best player? That's how a front office tanks.[/QUOTE]

Any player we could have brought in would take minutes away from the young core. We needed the young players to be our best players for the sake of seeing what they're made of. We had seen Hayward excel, and this year we're seeing him struggle as the one guy defenses do not want to let beat them.

And really, we're [I]not that bad[/I]. I believe we've won 5 of our last 6 when our current starting lineup is healthy.

The goal wasn't to win a championship, but neither was the goal to get a high draft pick. We want to find out what we have and avoid making a mistake like we did with Kirilenko.

[QUOTE=mrpibb]Any player we could have brought in would take minutes away from the young core. We needed the young players to be our best players for the sake of seeing what they're made of. We had seen Hayward excel, and this year we're seeing him struggle as the one guy defenses do not want to let beat them.

And really, we're [I]not that bad[/I]. I believe we've won 5 of our last 6 when our current starting lineup is healthy.

The goal wasn't to win a championship, but neither was the goal to get a high draft pick. We want to find out what we have and avoid making a mistake like we did with Kirilenko.[/QUOTE]
I think we both understand where the other is coming from. There will never be a team that announces itself as tanking, it's left to the observer to judge for himself. As it is open to interpretation, it can be interpreted differently by different people.

The Eastern Conference is an absolute disgrace. How the **** are we 4th in the conference? I didnt want to trade Rondo and I love him as a Celtic, but I'm considering having Danny trade him and Green for Granger, Stephenson, Hill, Johnson and future picks. That's a shitty return for us but I'd rather have a top 8 lottery pick than being stuck in the first round of the playoffs and Doug McDermott as our first round pick in the Draft. You can call it tanking if you want, and I agree with you OP, tanking is annoying, but the route we went (the real way to rebuild), isn't working in this terrible conference.

How about this? Teams with the three worst records, CANNOT be in slot #1, #2, or #3 of the draft lottery. If the raptors win #1, they would slide to #4, the others would move up.

The problem is the NBA has too many teams really. When you have more teams than talent to fill those teams you're perrenially going to have a huge group of really bad teams and situations like this are inevitable.

NBA should contract franchises but they're not willing to do that and those franchises even with horrible teams still want to keep them because they need something (anything) to keep their arena dates busy in between Miley Cyrus concerts and the Ice Capades.

I agree stop tanking so we can have a crop of NBA teams stuck in mediocrity for a few seasons. Wait what?