Off-Season Trade and Free Agent Ideas Thread

[Chef]

to me, westbrook is correct in this argument.

i take tanking to mean losing on purpose through either sitting players to increase the chance of losing or intentionally having players not play hard or have coaches not make sound decisions to lose on purpose.

rebuilding is not tanking, it is starting over. aside from some coaching decisions (it is tough to tell if silas was just a bad coach or purposefully putting out bad lineups and rotations), we did not tank last year. we were and still are a pretty bad basketball team. we have some young talent and are certainly better than last year from that perspective but we are still pretty bad. we played hard last year, we just were terrible. we had legit injuries that made the situation much worse.

it depends on what your goal is. i like to think the goal is winning the championship, not winning as many games as possible. with a salary cap and a finite money situation, you can't keep adding to a team that has already peaked. it isn't tanking to unload crash, felton, jax, etc given that they range from moderately overpaid to way overpaid based on current production and age when it is clear that they would not win a championship. so you are forced to start over by selling them to a team that is going for a championship for assets to put yourself in a better position to rebuild and try to achieve the goal of winning a championship.

what golden state did was tanking. they said as much.

[kitch0202]

Just because you deconstruct, doesn't mean you're only rebuilding for one year.

Our form of tank is taking a strategic position of getting one of the best chances for the top pick while also increasing the asset value of our current players...and one does not cancel out the other.

This essentially illustrates my point. We simply have different definitions of what 'tanking' specifically is.

For myself and Westbrook08 tanking is essentially being intentionally uncompetitive. I understand the rebuilding process we're going through and agree with the points SWedd523 & spectre are making. It is just to my mind we're done tanking and we're now rebuilding. In my mind they are definitively two separate things. Tanking was stage one of our rebuilding. We're now onto stage two.

We're all on the same page, just with a little difference in explicit definition.

[SWedd523]

In my eyes, as long as you're doing every single thing you possibly can to win another game, then you're tanking. We didn't increase an offer to Humphries, didn't claim some of the better guys off waivers, and traded our only veteran SF for a backup SG.


I don't think they'll move on to stage two until they get another 1 or 2 high (read tanked) draft picks to build a core talent base.

[QC Thundercats]

The term tanking has such negative connotations for many people, where a lot of folks view it as something despicable and going against the integrity of the game. Whereas other folks take a realistic/pragmatic view of the term and basically means anything done to purposefully make yourself worse in order to get better, which was one of Cho's stated goals.

The difference is the first group of people call that latter view "reconstruction" or "rebuilding", and the second group says its all the same.

I do think there is a difference, but the negative stereotype comes from the teams or GMs that had no idea what they were doing, screwing up even more and making a complete mockery of themselves,



versus the brilliant teams who controlled the demolition and were able to build up without missing a beat.


There is good tanking and bad tanking, its just people think it all means the same thing when the word "tanking" is used. Its like those home rehab shows on tv, where the poor do-it-yourselfers completely mess up their homes, maybe screwing up the foundation or making it completely tacky. But when the experts come in, they also purposefully tear down the walls and floors, but since they know what they're doing, they can build it back up into an incredible home that adds a ton of value to the home.

With our current management, I don't think the "tanking/rebuilding" thing is a concern. Everyone seems to be feeling positive vibes from the direction the team is going, so with that said, we can just enjoy the growth of the team as the expert "rehabbers" build up the team and add value for the future.

[westbrook08]

In my eyes, as long as you're doing every single thing you possibly can to win another game, then you're tanking. We didn't increase an offer to Humphries, didn't claim some of the better guys off waivers, and traded our only veteran SF for a backup SG.


I don't think they'll move on to stage two until they get another 1 or 2 high (read tanked) draft picks to build a core talent base.

I don't think you can say the team is tanking because they don't want to destroy their salary cap for years to come by paying 12 million or more a year to a middle of the road player like humpries.And we may have traded away our starting SF, but we got one of the best 3 point shooters in the league(which was one of our biggest needs,and got a pick as well) and we drafted 2 absolute blue chip SF's in his place.Not to mention we went out and added a solid back up point guard and center which we needed to do.And as far as claiming guys on waivers, they just may not have been the best fit for our team right now or it may have been fiscally irresponsible to add them long term. Just because management didn't call every agent in the NBA and offer a blank check for any half assed player to come here regardless of price in no way suggests tanking.Their is still as salary cap which has to be accounted for. And resigning alot of our own players will factor into that into the future. And we tried to look at gordon,beasley,dragic,landry,humphries,and several others.We just weren't able to make the sale. But if was definitely not for a lack of effort. We were VERY active this off season. I don't know what more you could possibly have expected them to do without jeopardizing the franchise long term. If we add a veteran 4 by training camp, that will be at least one player at every position added this off season. You could very easily make the argument that we are trying as hard as any team in the league to improve for this upcoming season!

[dav7z]

I don't think you can say the team is tanking because they don't want to destroy their salary cap for years to come by paying 12 million or more a year to a middle of the road player like humpries.And we may have traded away our starting SF, but we got one of the best 3 point shooters in the league(which was one of our biggest needs,and got a pick as well) and we drafted 2 absolute blue chip SF's in his place.Not to mention we went out and added a solid back up point guard and center which we needed to do.And as far as claiming guys on waivers, they just may not have been the best fit for our team right now or it may have been fiscally irresponsible to add them long term. Just because management didn't call every agent in the NBA and offer a blank check for any half assed player to come here regardless of price in no way suggests tanking.Their is still as salary cap which has to be accounted for. And resigning alot of our own players will factor into that into the future. And we tried to look at gordon,beasley,dragic,landry,humphries,and several others.We just weren't able to make the sale. But if was definitely not for a lack of effort. We were VERY active this off season. I don't know what more you could possibly have expected them to do without jeopardizing the franchise long term. If we add a veteran 4 by training camp, that will be at least one player at every position added this off season. You could very easily make the argument that we are trying as hard as any team in the league to improve for this upcoming season!

We seem to be trying to inprove without jeperdising our long term cap flexability. I really belive we will be major players in the free agent market next season.

[westbrook08]

We seem to be trying to inprove without jeperdising our long term cap flexability. I really belive we will be major players in the free agent market next season.

I think we were trying to be major players in it this year.There was talk that if gordon had made it past his phoenix visit that we had scheduled a meeting and we possibly could have been in play to offer him the max(even though it would have been matched).We went after lopez,dragic,and humphries as well.These guys were just all restricted are there wasn't much we could do. It's also gonna take us getting better for players to legitimately want to come here. So people can't just say "you had cap room,why didn't you get a marquee player?) It doesn't always work that way. We're gonna have to be creative through trades and the draft until we become a destination people are excited about.

[spectre]

I think we were trying to be major players in it this year.There was talk that if gordon had made it past his phoenix visit that we had scheduled a meeting and we possibly could have been in play to offer him the max(even though it would have been matched).We went after lopez,dragic,and humphries as well.These guys were just all restricted are there wasn't much we could do. It's also gonna take us getting better for players to legitimately want to come here. So people can't just say "you had cap room,why didn't you get a marquee player?) It doesn't always work that way. We're gonna have to be creative through trades and the draft until we become a destination people are excited about.

Which IMO went all against what we think is The Plan. Esp. the interest in Dragic, Hump & Lopez. I don't think any of those guys were worth that much AND the CBA will be agreeing next year. With the drop in salary all those have big potential to be massive overpays.

It bothered me.

[westbrook08]

Which IMO went all against what we think is The Plan. Esp. the interest in Dragic, Hump & Lopez. I don't think any of those guys were worth that much AND the CBA will be agreeing next year. With the drop in salary all those have big potential to be massive overpays.

It bothered me.

Oh' i'm right there with you on that. I wouldn't have minded humphries or landry at a reduced salary but i sure as hell wasn't for overpaying any of the guys on the market this year and i quite frankly didn't understand the interest in dragic at all. I thought getting gordon,the 2 young guys we drafted, and bringing in haywood and sessions for depth at positions of need ended up being right on par for what we need right now. If we sign a serviceable 4 who can get a few minutes while we evaluate thomas and mullens this year i will totally happy with this off season. I'm actually not sweating jamison not getting signed because this gives us a year to see what we have in our other guys and since he's on a one year deal i wouldn't be surprised if he ends up here next year anyway.

[KGE]

It's josh Harrelson not Hamilton, but either way I don't want him. Big unskilled player, low ceiling.

It appears ESPN thinks he has a high ceiling!

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story...-standings-nba