My takeaway is that tanking just increases your opportunities for future success, you still need a competent decision maker and/or some geographic advantages.
They won 34 games and had 3 draft picks the year before they traded for Harden. Also, Houston is a large market team that has an incredible tax break for athletes. I guess the next time Portland attracts the best center in the league to it's team via free agency, Houston and Portland will be on par.
Are you referring to something else or did you get that out of this freakanomics article? I admit there are a lot of stats being misused there, but I didn't see anything to support the idea that "thanking increases your opportunities for future success".
Sorry, players want to play for winners. Portland starts winning, then free agency will be much more appealing. The tax savings are a benefit, but a lot of veterans want success.
Players do, sure.... but superstars will not choose Portland. We can't blow up a roster, create a bunch of cap space and then sign a Dwight Howard or a LeBron James. That model will never work for us. If we are going to get a superstar, we either have to draft them or we have to trade for them. If we want superstars, we have to draft them and that will only happen if we're in the lottery.
I think you're right, but getting to that level is where tanking is needed for small market teams. Portland is a middle of the road team, small market, shitty in season weather, tax the shit out of you, not a lot to do for a young black male kind of town. It's simply not a place that attracts a lot of high end Free Agents. PA used to counter that by opening his checkbook, but those days are over according to him. What Portland does seem to have going for it is that once a player is in Portland they fall in love with it....at least most of the time. Neil Olshey seems to get that also because it has been said it is one of the questions he asks draft picks. Big time FA don't go to small market teams, for the most part. David West is the last one I can remember, although I could be wrong (normally I am in these things) He was coming off a knee injury and had surgery that summer, I think? went from a clusterfuck organization to the Pacers. There were also no big time free Agents that year either, so teams overspent.
That's my first point on all this. You need a competent decision maker. I would say that today's CBA does make it easier to acquire a star via tanking than free agency (unless you're one of a handful of markets). But a competent decision-maker can also take you from a mid-level team to contender. I think the common denominator is having a competent person in charge.
Back when the Blazers had 100+ million salary. Pippen requested a trade to the Lakers, actually, but Buss refused to pay his salary, and Portland said they would, so he said he wanted to come here
He didn't request to come to Portland. The Rockets wanted him gone and we obliged, taking on his huge contract.
The draft is the only real chance for a team like the Blazers to get a superstar in their prime. Getting someone like Pippen was great, but at the point when we got him he was only a borderline All-Star, if that.
Fuck tanking. You can only do it for one season...MAYBE two, not every year like most teams do. The thing is any particular year you'll have 5-7 teams tanking for a top 3 pick, of which maybe one of them will be a star. Its a crapshoot. Then people get addicted to it. OH, we tanked for one borderline star...let's do it again! True franchise players come MAYBE once every 3 years and even then your chance at getting one is pretty low compared to the shit you'll have to endure via tanking. In the scheme of things, you should just have a GM that swings for the fences. Get big contracts and deal with the shit later.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991002/aponline174256_000.htm He did want to go to la, but pippen said all the right things about Portland. Winning teams get players to play for them period.
Okay, but Pippen was in the twilight of his career at that point. He just wanted to play for a winner. The whole point of tanking is to get a superstar in their prime. Not a former superstar towards the end of their career.
34 wins is Hell right? They got pick 14 they wasted on Marcus morris. The only rookie they took that did anything was Chandler Parsons. Then they traded for James harden. Had to blow cap space on Omer asik and Jeremy lin. Did they get lucky signing Dwight? Absolutely. Would Portland get to sign Dwight? Unlikely. But the fact remains Houston did not tank whatsoever. You don't have to tank to become good. We got hibbert to be willing to sign with us. Brook Lopez too. Yes they were rfa, but if we had a winning team along with space or pieces to sign and trade when similiar guys are ufa, I don't see why they wouldn't sign with us
When the Bulls got Rose, what exactly did they specifically do from the year prior to tank? Who did they dump off of their 49 win team from the previous year to facilitate their tank? They had as many wins their tank year to land Rose as we did last season. What they also had was an incredible amount of LUCK to jump from 9th to win the lottery. They didn't dump an all star off of their roster like many here want us to, as the only way to win. Let's not try to re-write history and say because they landed a superstar at number 1, that they intentionally tanked there season to get there. That's just incorrect. Also, while the CLippers tanked, for years, they'd still probably be just an ok team if they didn't trade for Paul. SA had an injury to a superstar cost them their season. Bit different.
Are Miami and Houston huge markets? They got LeBron and Dwight. If we had enough space to sign the big three in 2010, they would've played for us. They didn't care where they played. They wanted to play together.
