Not sure this qualifies as intentional tanking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Robinson_(basketball) Early in the 1997 season, Robinson's dreams of becoming a champion seemed to vanish when he hurt his back in the preseason. He finally returned in December, but six games later broke his foot in a home game against the Miami Heat, and ended up missing the rest of the regular season. As a result of the injury to Robinson and other key players (most notably Sean Elliott, who missed more than half the season), the Spurs finished the season with a dismal 20–62 record. However, his injury proved to be a blessing in disguise. Despite having only the third-worst record in the league, the Spurs won the NBA Draft Lottery—and with it, the first pick in the next year's NBA draft. They used that pick to select Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest University, who was, after a few years, the final key to Robinson's quest for an NBA title
Part of it depends on the franchise and how they are run. Philly is so bad, the league has stepped in and had Jerry Colangelo take over. Minnesota has been bad since inception as were the Clippers pre-Balmer. Of course there are cycles but does anyone thing that if a top Draft pick when to SA that they wouldn't succeed even as the geriatrics retired? Portland isn't run as well as SA but much better than Philly etc. All they have to do to make this work is let D69 make the pick for them.
I'm of the mind that this season is all about developing the young talent on our team and seeing what we have. If we make the playoffs while doing that then awesome, if we suck and keep our pick then awesome as well. The only scenario I see that has me slightly annoyed is if we are decent but not great and end up with the 13/14th pick.
We can definitely do it. As I said in an earlier thread, we have a massive Homestand (12 of 14) coming up and that could get us back in the race. Go Blazers!
