Tank for Wembanyama

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Rastapopoulos said:
Tanking was only a mistake if there was NO great player available at our pick. Now, if we didn't GET that player (let's say Dyson Daniels or Jeremy Sochan or Jalen Williams/Duren turns out to be way better than Sharpe), again, THAT'S NOT THE FAULT OF TANKING. That's the fault of poor talent-evaluators.
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But the draft is a crapshoot anyway. Always has been. Several #1 picks have been total busts. The “talent evaluators” get it wrong again and again. That’s why tanking doesn’t make sense. You’re losing games so you can get a player who may not even work out.
 
Bingo Bango said:
But the draft is a crapshoot anyway. Always has been. Several #1 picks have been total busts. The “talent evaluators” get it wrong again and again. That’s why tanking doesn’t make sense. You’re losing games so you can get a player who may not even work out.
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Look:
1. The draft is not a "crapshoot". Good talent evaluators make terrible picks much less frequently than bad ones. The most you can say is that there are a lot of factors that can prevent a good amateur basketball player from succeeding in the NBA. But everyone said LeBron was going to be an all-timer.
2. Because of 1., the very best players are still more likely to go in the first few picks. That means you will have no chance at getting them unless you pick there. The only way to pick there is either to do a great trade several years ago (perhaps the Pelicans this year) or to have your own pick and be bad (and lucky in the lottery). Sure there are great players available lower: Kawhi, Jokic. But much fewer. You're not getting Kareem or (H)akeem or David Robinson or Shaq or LeBron or Anthony Davis or Wembanyama unless you have the #1 pick. You're not even getting pudgy white-boy, non-certainty Luka Doncic if you're picking outside the top 3.
 
Freshtown said:
were you expecting a half season of tanking last year to turn us into an instant contender?
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Nope, but I don’t see how it moved the needle, either. By the time Sharpe figures everything out, Lillard will be retired. And then we’ll have to start over. I don’t see a brighter future with Sharpe than we’ve had with Lillard. We’re just spinning our wheels.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Look:
1. The draft is not a "crapshoot". Good talent evaluators make terrible picks much less frequently than bad ones. The most you can say is that there are a lot of factors that can prevent a good amateur basketball player from succeeding in the NBA. But everyone said LeBron was going to be an all-timer.
2. Because of 1., the very best players are still more likely to go in the first few picks. That means you will have no chance at getting them unless you pick there. The only way to pick there is either to do a great trade several years ago (perhaps the Pelicans this year) or to have your own pick and be bad (and lucky in the lottery). Sure there are great players available lower: Kawhi, Jokic. But much fewer. You're not getting Kareem or (H)akeem or David Robinson or Shaq or LeBron or Anthony Davis or Wembanyama unless you have the #1 pick. You're not even getting pudgy white-boy, non-certainty Luka Doncic if you're picking outside the top 3.
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The draft isn’t a crapshoot? You must be joking. Portland taking a teenager from Canada who didn’t play a minute of college ball is the perfect definition of a crapshoot.
 
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Bingo Bango said:
The draft is not a crapshoot? You must be joking. Portland taking a teenager from Canada who didn’t play a single minute of college basketball is the perfect definition of a crapshoot.
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I would submit, good evaluators elevate it to at the least, an educated crapshoot. Some GM's are notoriously bad, while others seem to do much better. Just like in life, some people are more prepared, or just have better skills. There is certainly no absolute certainty, except this era of Blazer being stuck in abject mediocrity for the vast majority of it's duration.
 
Bingo Bango said:
But the draft is a crapshoot anyway. Always has been. Several #1 picks have been total busts. The “talent evaluators” get it wrong again and again. That’s why tanking doesn’t make sense. You’re losing games so you can get a player who may not even work out.
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Higher picks are worth more than lower picks. Yes there is a huge variance in the worth of a single drafted pick. There is a lot of risk. Tanking has advantages and disadvantages. It isn't the solution to every situation. On the flip side it shouldn't be avoided in every situation.

Only one of 30 teams wins a title. The MVP players that led teams to those titles were in the upper range of the lottery far more often than not.
 
Bingo Bango said:
The draft is not a crapshoot? You must be joking. Portland taking a teenager from Canada who didn’t play a single minute of college basketball is the perfect definition of a crapshoot.
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Crapshoot would imply higher selections have the same expected worth as later selections. Thats clearly not the case. There has been many analysis of expected win shares/VORP/etc at various draft positions; and they all show huge increases in the expected on court worth of a pick as it is higher in the draft.
 
Bingo Bango said:
Nope, but I don’t see how it moved the needle, either. By the time Sharpe figures everything out, Lillard will be retired. And then we’ll have to start over. I don’t see a brighter future with Sharpe than we’ve had with Lillard. We’re just spinning our wheels.
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You shouldn't be comparing the past with Lillard to the future with Sharpe.

You should be comparing the future with only Lillard to the future with Lillard and Sharpe.

Does Sharpe guarantee anything? Certainly not. Hell he might even end up as a bust. Or he might end up as a star. We don't really know. But we do know the Blazers are in a much better place with him than without him.

Lillard and a bunch of below average starters clearly won't ever contend. Put a bunch of young players with Sharpes potential on this team and there is something in the future to potentially look forward to. Will they contend? Maybe, or maybe not. But the Blazers certainly have a better chance with them than without.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Do Americans know that that band is named after characters from Tintin (you might wonder why a 3-member band is called "Twins" - although that explanation doesn't work for the Cocteau Twins, an infinitely superior band)? One of whom is actually called Thomson (no "p"). (In the original French, they're Dupont and Dupond, because you don't say the last letter in French.) The thing is, you can actually tell the difference by their mustaches, so I hope the Basketball players follow the same principle:
dupondt.png
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Did we just get a rough draft of your TED talk?
 
Bingo Bango said:
We tanked half of last season and now we’re limping along with a losing record. And Sharpe is a big question mark. I don’t see that as a ringing endorsement for tanking.
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One tank isn’t always enough. One more tank could put us in a great position to be a future powerhouse. If we get Wembenyama, we won’t have to wait for the returns. If you don’t like tanking, tell me how Dallas has the best player in the league.
 
KingSpeed said:
One tank isn’t always enough. One more tank could put us in a great position to be a future powerhouse. If we get Wembenyama, we won’t have to wait for the returns. If you don’t like tanking, tell me how Dallas has the best player in the league.
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Even if we got Wembanyama, which we won't, Chauncey wouldn't know what to do with him.
 
If we lose the next 3 games and fall to 19-24, that is time to pull the plug. There are other teams that want it more.
 
Chris Craig said:
Even if we got Wembanyama, which we won't, Chauncey wouldn't know what to do with him.
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I think the difference is he'd be dealing with a player who is far more advanced than any young player that he's been around.
 
If we lose both games to Dallas, we might move to 7th position in lottery. We will certainly pass OKC and Lakers by falling to 13th in West.
 
Sloth said:
Tanking is a moronic thing to do imo. I may be a little dramatic, but in essence actively rooting for your team to lose or not really caring one way or the other, has never sat well or been understood by me. We need to get our heads on straight and start a nice winning run not a losing one to maybe get a chance at this dude.

As far as Wembanyama goes, dude looks a great prospect on paper but we shall see when he goes against the best players in the world. Watch him be a 5 and 5 player per night and that's it...
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I'm not a fan of tanking but you know what I'm even less a fan of ... purgatory picking at the back end of the lottery over and over with no real hope of ever getting out! I want to see a championship from this team, and while I'm realistic that that may never happen, I know it won't happen with the current roster as constructed.
 
bigbailes said:
I'm not a fan of tanking but you know what I'm even less a fan of ... purgatory picking at the back end of the lottery over and over with no real hope of ever getting out! I want to see a championship from this team, and while I'm realistic that that may never happen, I know it won't happen with the current roster as constructed.
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Fair enough friend, we all want a championship;been too long!And I 100 percent agree we need some different pieces in to really make a run at the title or even just a good seed in the playoffs as far as that goes.

Will be interesting to see what the rest of the season holds for sure. This is a very hard league, but we make it even harder on ourselves night in and night out due to lack of focus on the defensive end, and not making the plays in crunch time that we need to.
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Hey, it worked for New Orleans and Memphis...
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I guess "instant" contender means something different than instant. Also must mean something different than contender because neither team looks like a contender to me, although Memphis isn't too far away. At the same time, in the last 8 years they have won a grand total of 2 playoff games outside of the 1st round

Ja and Zion are both in their 4th seasons by the way
 
Very unlikely to get Wemby, but the Blazers are now just 1.5 games out of the #7 Lottery pick spot. They got that last year by purposefully tanking.
They are very near that same level right now......playing all their main guys.

Tied with OCK.

#embarrassing
 
Sloth said:
Tanking is a moronic thing to do imo. I may be a little dramatic, but in essence actively rooting for your team to lose or not really caring one way or the other, has never sat well or been understood by me. We need to get our heads on straight and start a nice winning run not a losing one to maybe get a chance at this dude.

As far as Wembanyama goes, dude looks a great prospect on paper but we shall see when he goes against the best players in the world. Watch him be a 5 and 5 player per night and that's it...
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Boom.
 
If the Blazers lose to the Lakers, we could be at #7 in the Lottery standings. Because of the quick start, we would likely not be able to get any higher than 6th even if we tried.....which we are sadly accomplishing without trying.
 
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