JJZFL

Detroit will be slaughtered. Minnesota is actually trying to play well to set themselves up for next year. Witness their annihilation of us two nights back.

And they’ll be continuing to tank well for years to come. Practice makes perfect.

Share your concerns, and agree these games are mostly not worth watching.

I would argue that the decision to use a tanking strategy 10 years ago is what started us on this long downward spiral. We’ve drafted relatively high most of the past 10 years and that didn’t help us much either. Many of the players touted in past drafts haven’t turned out to be all that great; certainly not franchise changers. And many players drafted after we used our picks have been better than what we drafted. I still think there’s no substitute for committing to the hard work of building a team, as opposed to hoping for a draft miracle. That includes developing young players that you have, smart trades to get necessary veterans, hopefully getting a break or two in the draft, but never tanking, which confuses the players and sets the wrong expectations. Anyway I realize we are not going to agree on this but I appreciate the discussion. I believe most people on here agree with you but I think it’s worth presenting both sides.

Such a move would make us a laughingstock and make our team toxic for the next decade.

We just see things differently. I don't see the risk of messing up the development of our young players being worth relatively small changes. Even 40/1000 extra means you only hit once every 25 years due to the extra ping pong balls. Minnesota isn't tanking despite their record. And judging by tonights game, I'd say their prospects for next year look a lot brighter than ours. Tanking is becoming like a disease, an addiction, an end in itself. Lose at all costs even for a small benefit, and ignore the cost.

Our new talent doesn't look so good.

In my opinion, you are overestimating the effects of a position or two.

I hope you're right but I don't share your optimism at all. Unless there are wholesale changes, we will barely have anyone on our roster with more than 2 years actual NBA experience. And I don't see any reason to expect that this group will suddenly start playing better after a few months off over the summer. We used to count on that all the time with the "young guns" during the last rebuild and it never happened. If we're going to not be a doormat next season, it would be nice to see signs of life now. Right now I could see us being bottom 3-4 next season.

Instead of worrying about losing, I’d like to see our young guys learning to share the ball and trust each other. We had a grand total of 19 assists in a game where we scored 112 points. I want to see them play properly rather than develop bad habits, and if that leads to a win, fine with me.

Wagner with the air ball on the wide open three. That was horrible.

If I were the coach I’d make them have 3-4 people touch it every possession before anyone is allowed to shoot unless they have a lay up.

Way too much dribbling and people looking for their own shots. Harris in particular making everyone else worse on the offensive end.

Total flop by Ball against Harris. Ref just blew that call

I was talking about the chance of getting a top 4 pick. If you don’t get that, I’m not sure how important it is to get pick 5 vs pick 7. The chance of getting a top four pick for the very worst team is 52%. The chance of getting a top four pick for the 5th worst team is about 45%. That 7 percent difference means that every 14 years on average, you’ll get one extra pick in the top four as the worst team rather than the fifth worst team. For that it’s worth screwing up your young players by telling them to lose??

The percentage difference for getting a top 4 pick for the bottom 5 teams is very small. Not nearly worth sabotaging our young players.

Could not agree more

Well said

We have at least a 50-50 chance of not being in the top 4 no matter where we land.

LOL. It is really something!

Even if they “succeed” in getting blown out in games the rest of the season, they only have a 14% chance of the first pick. That means they have an 86% chance of not getting it. They have around a 48% chance of getting pick 5. Most likely they’ll remain awful next year and that’s punishment enough for me.

Good point. There is no getting away from the fact that Fultz' 3-point shot is a weakness. If Fultz had the ball in this same situation I'm not sure what he could have done. They had clogged the paint which made driving impossible.

Gotta love this win. How much does this help a guy like Cole develop?

And we also seem to specialize in dribbling into traffic

Amazing how we start off moving the ball well and then get away from it after the first quarter. It then becomes all 1v1 stuff.