Did The Blazers Engage In "Tank n' Draft" Practices?

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nope... we were actually THAT BAD when we got the # 4 pick :D
 
We didn't tank to get that first high lottery pick. That was pure incompetence. But after we were that bad, we stayed bad maybe a little longer than was absolutely necessary.

Pritchard is a really good GM, but you have to admit we were pretty lucky too. The Oden pick was such a longshot, and we were lucky enough to have high picks in two drafts where there were star-caliber players to be had.
 
The year we had the worst record in the league, I do believe we did. The other years I think had more to do with a crappy front office then intentional tanking.
 
Foulzilla said:
The year we had the worst record in the league, I do believe we did. The other years I think had more to do with a crappy front office then intentional tanking.
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The year we had the worst team in the league coincided with what most people believed was one of the weaker drafts in recent memory. If this team was truly guilty of tanking for the draft they would have done it for the Durant/Oden sweepstakes the next year.

We just sucked ass in 06
 
Everyone knows, if you want to tank for the top pick, the 4th worst record is the place to be!
 
mook said:
We didn't tank to get that first high lottery pick. That was pure incompetence. But after we were that bad, we stayed bad maybe a little longer than was absolutely necessary.

Pritchard is a really good GM, but you have to admit we were pretty lucky too. The Oden pick was such a longshot, and we were lucky enough to have high picks in two drafts where there were star-caliber players to be had.
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Pritchard's 2006 draft was perhaps the best of the last decade in the NBA. Turning the #4 pick and Sebastian Telfair into Roy and LMA was simply stunning.

As for "tanking", that Blazer team was miserable. That line-up at the end of the year was brutal. Are any of the players from that line-up contributing to an NBA team at this point?

Take a look at the line-ups that team was throwing out at the end of the season prior to the Roy/LMA draft.



http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2006_start.html
 
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Nikolokolus said:
The year we had the worst team in the league coincided with what most people believed was one of the weaker drafts in recent memory. If this team was truly guilty of tanking for the draft they would have done it for the Durant/Oden sweepstakes the next year.

We just sucked ass in 06
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true, we could have tanked in 07 and nobody would have noticed, but we overachieved to the 8th spot or so.
 
It is ridiculous to think we tanked, especially in 05-06. That team was absolutely terrible.
 
They sure did.

I don't think the players tanked. But John Nash did blow up the team which caused the tanking. Then Pritchard came in to draft. And Pitch was masterful in getting two franchise players in one draft to accelerate the rise.
 
I seem to remember the "Black Saturday" game of April 2007, where we defeated the Sonics in Seattle, much to the chagrin of the "we gotta tank!!" crowd (granted, I was on Olive at the time, so the intellect level was probably lower than here). We ended up at 32-50, I game better than Seattle (31-51) and tied with Minny. The screaming of the "I told you we shoulda tanked!" when the Sonics got a few more pingpong balls, until we won the coin flip with Minny and ended up with Honk Once.
 
There are two ways to tank. 1) play lesser players from your squad to in effect, give the game away. 2) Formulate a strategy where you trade players that may be beneficial in the short term for assets that will hopefully be beneficial in the future, be they players, picks or money off the books. I think that the Blazers never participated in the first method but they did the second. This might not even be called tanking because the point is not to lose, but to better position yourself for the future. But the short-term result of trading away today's assets for tomorrows is that you do tend to lose in the immediate.
 
To GOD's point, I hadn't thought of the "trade away to tank" strategy as "tanking", since whatever players were left on the floor were giving honest effort to try to win. That's all you can ask for, since some teams will be bad and occasionally some will be horrendous. I didn't get the impression in 2005-06 that we were actually good enough to win 25-30 game, but quit to tank and ended up with 21. I had the impression that I was amazed that KP got 5 wins out of his "young player evaluation" period, including the L*kers in the home finale.

Going along with the "trading the good to stockpile young players for the future", I consider that good team strategy rather than tanking. Sure, you know that you're probably going to get poorer value immediately if you trade talented veterans who aren't getting it done for future chances at success (i.e., PHI trading Iverson for Miller and 2 1sts). I don't see that as tanking. Now, if Ha's the best C we have, and KP's forced to play him b/c of that, that's not tanking to me. If we had Greg Oden and no one else, and sat Greg for Ha just to ensure we'd rack up the L's for more pingpong balls, then that's tanking.
 
BrianFromWA said:
To GOD's point, I hadn't thought of the "trade away to tank" strategy as "tanking", since whatever players were left on the floor were giving honest effort to try to win. That's all you can ask for, since some teams will be bad and occasionally some will be horrendous. I didn't get the impression in 2005-06 that we were actually good enough to win 25-30 game, but quit to tank and ended up with 21. I had the impression that I was amazed that KP got 5 wins out of his "young player evaluation" period, including the L*kers in the home finale.

Going along with the "trading the good to stockpile young players for the future", I consider that good team strategy rather than tanking. Sure, you know that you're probably going to get poorer value immediately if you trade talented veterans who aren't getting it done for future chances at success (i.e., PHI trading Iverson for Miller and 2 1sts). I don't see that as tanking. Now, if Ha's the best C we have, and KP's forced to play him b/c of that, that's not tanking to me. If we had Greg Oden and no one else, and sat Greg for Ha just to ensure we'd rack up the L's for more pingpong balls, then that's tanking.
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What's the real difference between the two strategies. In both, the players that are on the court try their best to win, but management has made decisions that they believe give them the best chance at winning in the future because at the moment they are not a playoff team. One strategy gets fans riled up and the other is deemed OK, but to me it really seems like semantics. Both strategies have the same goal of getting higher picks in the draft and setting up the team for the future.
 
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PapaG said:
Pritchard's 2006 draft was perhaps the best of the last decade in the NBA. Turning the #4 pick and Jarrett Jack into Roy and LMA was simply stunning.
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I'm disappointed in you, Papa G. We didn't trade Jarrett Jack until 2008.
 
BrianFromWA said:
To GOD's point, I hadn't thought of the "trade away to tank" strategy as "tanking", since whatever players were left on the floor were giving honest effort to try to win.
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I thought that's what was being discussed here. The organization tanking, not the players. I certainly don't think the players were intentionally tanking.
 
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