I agree with you, JD1, players ALWAYS want to win. Management? Hmmm…Fans? To have a chance to get a high draft pick? I think fans are the worst…and I know because I’ve been there…so often! 
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Of course, but the Pistons have been sitting Jerami Grant and Mason Plumlee (among others) every game. That’s how you openly tank. The players will play hard, but management will make sure that it is players who make it less likely to win. It’s why Iggy and Moe have been getting major minutes for the Magic down the stretch. Those guys want to play well and win to solidify their future, but they also aren’t likely to beat many teams
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I found it interesting that they did bring back Grant and Plumlee for their game against the Sixers. Probably because the Sixers were fighting for 1st place and secondarily because they expected to lose anyway.
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Not every game and they didn’t really start sitting those guys out until the end of April. Grant played 9 games last month and Plums played 10. Also, starting Isaiah Stewart over Plumlee may have been an upgrade.
OKC went for the all-out tank it back in March.
9 out of 16 games for your best player is not a lot of games when he didn’t even have a real injury. And I love Stewart but Plumlee + Stewart off the bench is way better than Stewart + Okafor/Cook. Starters sitting half your games for no reason is a tank. I am not sure why you’re pretending the Pistons organization has been trying to win. I love what they’ve been doing. It is a perfectly executed tank - losing a lot of games while developing the youngsters. They are fun to watch and the losses are the cherry on top. I love seeing Killian, Stewart and Bey playing well in losing efforts.
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I never said the organization was trying to put their best team out there (I still think the Pistons players are always trying to win). I was saying they aren’t all-out trying to put out one of their weakest rosters out there, or at least weren’t until this month.
I don’t think the lottery rule changes will really ever discourage tanking, and there are always a good number of teams giving up in the final month - I think the real measure is how many teams walk into the season with the intent to lose - this year Id say Detroit, OKC were really the only two (the Rockets quickly joined post-Harden).
Cleveland joined after injuries, Minnesota just sort of played like a tanking team (losing Towns for a ton of time didn’t help), but I don’t think it was their intent. The Magic tossed into the tank at the deadline. The Raptors too.
I think the final weeks are a little more competitive - the play-in has kept teams like Chicago, and Indiana, and Washington playing their best lineups, which wouldn’t always be happening. In the West, the Kings, Grizzlies and Spurs and Pelicans may have given up by now. Plus you have the Lakers and Warriors trying like crazy to get out of the play-in and the Mavs fighting to avoid it.
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I mostly agree - the play-in has had a positive benefit that it keeps more teams in the mix and trying to win. That’s the goal.
I don’t think the draft rule has done much of anything. In fact, now that three teams get the same odds it has almost increased the number of teams outwardly tanking. Before, if there was one horrific team locked into the worst record the other tanking teams might at least try or let their regular players participate. Now that three teams get the same odds, everyone wants to lose the maximum number of games.
Feels like there’s a better way…though I’m not sure what it is.
Exactly. Of course by the end of the year there are gonna be a handful of travesty teams but coming into the season there weren’t many teams tanking, but a few franchises are so bad they couldn’t avoid it. There’s no more teams than normal tanking, maybe about average
Honestly, there are by my count 7 teams who have outright quit at this point (normally it’s between 7 to 10). As I said, I think the question is how many teams lose with intent and how many lose out of incompetence. The only teams in my opinion for whom losing was the goal from Day 1 were OKC and Detroit. By my count, recent years had as many as 5 (two years ago). Last year I count 3 (and one, the Warriors, sort of had it forced on them by circumstance).
Note: I find no franchise makes me think harder about “stupid or tanking?” year in and year out more than the Timberwolves.
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I’m not sure that I agree that OKC intended to tank before the season. Before SGA got hurt they were 19-24 and in the thick of the playoff race. After he was injured, they started to intentionally tank.
Generally I don’t agree that teams start the season trying to tank before they’ve even played a game. Once teams start playing and find out how bad they are, they lean into it though.
I think a lot of people are confusing bad with tank. There are always a lot of bad teams that will lose a lot of games without trying. But tanking is when those bad teams further compound the issue by benching their only decent players for absolutely no reason other than to lose. That is what I have seen more of this year than in the past. Pistons have had some nights where they’ve sat like 6-7 guys at a time. Last year Christian Wood was playing every game and dominating at the end of the season. That’s not tanking. That’s just being bad.
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See, I think they did, and SGA’s big leap from last year (when he was pretty good!) made them need to take further action. In my mind, they intended to lose, and lose big, but Shea had other ideas.
As a Bulls fan I can point to at least one year where the name of the game was to lose from the jump. The Suns famously did it to fall into the Ayton pick, and the Hawks did it to get the Young pick. The Cavs have absolutely done it a few times. The sixers don’t need mentioning here I don’t think.
The Pistons packed it in last season about mid-way through, so it wasn’t a full-on tank. But they did have a fire sale, getting rid of Andre, Reggie, and Keef when it became evident that they were not very good and not very healthy.
I really think I could name 30 kids worth picking in this draft.
Even a “weak draft” like last year was deep. Now so many kids take off early there is surplus of raw talent late. This year particularly has a deep pool.
I also think Kids are getting better at younger ages. At least it seems that way to me, I think a lot of older heads disagree but I really respect the skill level of some of these young kids.
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to me every draft seems deep with college stars and crazy good athletes going late 1st and early 2nd and then most of them flame out.
NBA rotations are tough to crack and the players are really good.
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I think there will be a few freshman that get undervalued because Covid undermined their seasons.
I wouldn’t go after many of those above guys you mentioned. They have 3 2nd rounders which is nice but they also had guys like Frank Jackson who showed out well, Tyler Cook etc… They need to make a decision on Diallo, Dennis Smith(probably drop him just wasn’t healthy), They currently have 15 contracts and 2 2 ways. I can see them moving 2nd rounders or just a draft and stash with a european player.
I do not think Weaver will end up keeping all 3 2nd round pick. He could package all 3 to move up into late 1st if there’s a guy that he likes.
I could see that unfortunately in that scenario I believe it would happen if the Pistons fell to 5th or 6th in the lottery. That’s probably my biggest concern a top 2-3 pick probably gets this Pistons thing going pretty quick. A 5th or 6th pick and it might be a couple more tough years.
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Yeah, they’ll probably either trade two of the 2nd round picks or draft and stash some International players.