JJZFL

I really hope you're right. I just remember us saying basically the same thing every summer for the past 4-5 about how various young players will improve and make a big difference. Never seems to happen.

I wish I could have that outlook but we've come up with excuses every year for the past 3-4. At some point we need to face the fact that we just don't have much talent, and that our players have lost their mental edge due to all the losing.

I know. Another lost season. I don't see a change any time soon. Unlike many of the others here, I'm not excited at all by all these losses. I think people are kidding themselves if they think this will lead to us being better next year.

You forget how incredibly bad we are. A high draft pick won't make much of a difference. We're on a treadmill of being terrible with no end in sight.

Yeah well put. +1 from me above. Whenever anyone questioned Henny here years ago they got shouted down with insults.

With our relative youth we should have been able to play good, hard, defense also even with the players we’ve got. The fact that we haven’t figured that out after all these years is worrisome. Players who’ve been contaminated by all the losing and start to hang their heads when things go wrong should be yanked. Players who can’t or won’t play defense should have been benched also.

So going 17 years with less than 50 wins is our goal? The way we’re going, we just might get there.

Until we veered off in the wrong direction. Teams make some of their own luck by making good decisions, not just making themselves terrible and hoping the balls bounce their way. Works occasionally but not good odds.

No, we should have worked hard to be great instead of hoping for history to repeat itself and luck out with a hall of fame draft pick.

Quite an outstanding post. I couldn't stop reading it. +1 from me.

Yeah. We need to get even better at losing. That's the secret to success we've been missing.

Yeah. It's too bad performances like tonight don't count for 2 losses. Ask the fans who were foolish enough to go the game if they got their money's worth.

You have it backwards. We’ve wasted all these years with no end in sight because of the decision to tank in the first place. If you don’t luck out it’s a disaster.

People paid real money to see it. Tankers should be thrilled with this fine performance.

Agree

Travis Diener - Never got a fair shake with us but offense always looked better when he was playing.

In total agreement with this. +1 to All Eyes on Me for his post above. I don’t think I can watch Vuch for another year either. Having said that, it worries me a great deal that as soon as Vuch came back after the ASB, Birch got stuck at the end of the bench, even though we looked horrible with Vuch.

+1 from me

If they want to lose, put Vuch back in. I hope they don’t, though. I’d really like to see how Birch looks with the starters.

I doubt Vogel was trying to tank at all, and definitely not right after the all-star break. They play Vuch because they think he’s better, I guess, and because he makes more $$. I wish it weren’t so. It makes me very worried that we’re going to see a lot more Vuch next season.

Just a shame that he’s been mostly buried on the bench since Vuch returned after the All-Star break.

Completely agree. We’ve talked about this problem a number of times before. I think many were hoping that the last few months of the season would provide more clarity on what to do with Gordon, but unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that way. Lots of questions.

Not to mention Vuch going thru the motions on defense.

Hard to believe people actually paying money to watch this

I don’t entirely agree with you about tanking. But I respect your reasoning, so +1 from me. At this point, the season is almost over anyway, so any discussion about our strategy for the rest of this year will soon be moot. I think one thing many of us can agree on is that we don’t want to be having this same discussion 2-3 years from now. At some point, I think almost everyone wants the tanking/losing to stop.