Tanking vs Team/Player Growth and Development

I know the vast majority of you are all about tanking this season and pissed off the tanking didn't go how you hoped. But on the bright side, look at the player growth and development we had this season that we probably wouldn't of had if we went all in on tanking from the start. And tanking builds a bad team culture and vibe. Is the chance to have a better draft pick, and one possibly impactful player, worth the sacrifice of the development of several of our young core guys?
Fire away at me!

 

I've always rejected the culture arguments. This is the NBA and these aren't high school kids getting their first taste of major competition.

as for development, how much more would Scoot and Sharpe have developed if Simons wasn't standing in their way? How much more would Avdija and Camara have developed if Grant wasn't standing n their way. How about Clingan with Ayton standing in his way?

pretty clearly Avdija, Sharpe, and Clingan got better and more impactful when those vets were out of action instead of dominating minutes, the ball, shots, and usage

nobody was talking about sitting Sharpe-Scoot-Avdija-Camara-Clingan in order to tank. We wanted those guys to not only get lots of minutes, but to start and get those minutes playing with each other instead of deferring to the vets

 

I’m an avid proponent and tank commander. If Portland had run Clingan, Camara, Avdija, Sharpe and Scoot out there every game and played them all 35 minutes a night they could have gone 82-0, 42-42 or where they finished and I would have been ecstatic. Winning games with Ant, Grant, Ayton, Williams and Thybulle while benching Scoot, Sharpe limiting Clingan’s minutes, etc. is what pissed me off

 

Scoot and Sharpe basically were.

 

It seems years ago that Grant and Ayton played. Can anyone say they missed them? I dont have anything personal against them but the style of game they bring just is ugly. I see DA being around next year and I want to see his game change. His game needs a makover. but I love his midrange.

 

I don't like tanking. Aside from dubious results, it enforced culture of losing.

 

May I ask what you think their record would have been if we did start the young core from Game 1?
With your reasoning, which i find to be sound, wouldn't they have been even better, possibly finishing with 40 wins or more?

If that is the assumed outcome, then the lottery placement would have been no better.
So the only real loss we took this year was a little more development earlier in the season for the young core?

Now lets say Joe is trying to move the vets we all want gone, doesn't he need to showcase them early in the season to try to make moves? Do you think if he had started the young core from day one, that the value of the vets would have gone down even more? I do.

So early on the vets played more minutes to get Joes’ feelers out there in an attempt to move them.

It didn't work for one reason or another.

So we lost half a season trying to move the vets and giving less minutes to the future core.

Some people are advocating this has set us back years and I think thats absurd. This team had too much talent to be at the bottom, regardless of the vets playing or not. In years past, 20 something teams weren't even at the bottom. It’s typically a team with single digit wins or in the teens.

Why people are soooo miffed baffles me and seems to be a bit tunnel visioned, and not aware that the core is still improving. They will win more games next year and the year after that just on experience alone without adding players to the roster.

The sky isn't falling and the Blazers have not been set back 5-10 years like some are making it out as.

We all want a championship, But they are rare and require luck for all teams to win it all.
I find it best to just enjoy the games without getting all rile up because the didn't lose enough games or won a few too many.
The future is brighter than some claim, in my opinion.

 

^ what he said! ^

 

I prefer to have the chance to draft first even if it meant Ant Grant and Ayton didn't play much or at all

 

I don't believe 40 wins is realistic. 30 might be

Camara led the Blazers in minutes at 32.8. Sharpe averaged 31.3. If you gave Sharpe 2 more minutes a game, he would have played an extra 150 minutes. At his winsahre/48 rate, those extra minutes would have added 0.2 more wins...over the season

give Avdija 3 more minutes a game. That would have been 220 more minutes. That's about 0.6 added winshares

that's why I imagined about 1-2 more wins added by the young guys. And 1-2 more wins added by replacement players. That would put the Blazers at 29-30 wins right now. The Clingan/Ayton trade-off would be the biggest wild card

 

no, they weren't. High school players are a mix of grades, and their ages can range from 15-18. Sharpe is 21 and will 22 in March; Scoot is 21 too. Those two are a lot further advanced than 15-16 year olds

in Sharpe's Portland career, the Blazers have won 89 and lost 155. In Scoot's career, Blazers have won 56 and lost 106. Is anybody really believing that those two guys have been culturally imprinted to lose?

in Avdija's career, his teams have won 154 games and lost 244. Does he play like he's been infected by a culture of losing?

 

I guess I'm really confused because we already have 35 wins and likely would have a couple more if not for trying to lose at the end.
Doesn't that disprove the foundation of your statement based on your projection?
So let’s say we were fully healthy and played all players as optimally as Billups could. You don't think we could have hit 40 wins when we are at 35 already?

Or are you saying if we had started the young core from day one we would have lost more? If so, Im not sure about that at all.
The progress in the young core would have happened sooner, allowing them to potentially win a few games we lost. Grant has looked like ass. Willams barely played. Ant had his worst shooting year so far in his career. The vets caused more losses than wins I think.

 

I think as a young team we would have lost more games than we would have gained. The refs wouldn't give us the respect that they give Simons and Grant. Young guys go through longer stretches of poor play.

And the guys that would be filling in instead of Grant and Simons would ideally not be as good as our young core.

I can see us having 10 fewer wins. And by not playing Scoot or Sharpe with Simons I think you would probably get better development out of both.

 

Hard disagree. We would have developed sooner and more, resulting in even more wins later, offsetting the earlier losses. I mean, we are kinda watching it happen before us. It just would have happened sooner. So i disagree.

 

I guess I don't view playing the youngsters a good chunk of minutes to let them develop as 'tanking.' Tanking to me is holding them out and running guys out there like McGowens, Cissoko and Banton to just purposely lose even with better players on the bench. I'm with MM on this one, the Scoot-Sharpe-Deni-Tou-Clingan group could have won 35 games this season and I would have been very happy and I think they would have progressed even more than they did. Also, yes I think a chance at a possibly transformative player, in a sport/league where you need a transformative player, would have been worth sacrificing a little bit of development for one season.

 

we're obviously talking about two different things

I'm talking about how many wins the Blazers would have without any games of Simons-Ayton-Grant-Timelord....as if they were all traded last off-season

 

Tanking is cheating.

 

That would be awesome. Far better than what we ended up with.

 

Transformative players like Kobe, Dirk, Kawhi, Klay, Karl Malone for example have been drafted 8th or later. and there are a ton of busts drafted 8th or higher.
it’s all a roll of the dice