JJZFL

No official info but he stepped on someone’s foot and appeared to turn his ankle pretty bad the previous game. I assume it’s a bad sprain.

Hampton a human turnover machine

This exactly. Teamwork is nearly zero. Terrible to watch.

Good points. I share your hopes but also concerns regarding Isaac and Fultz. Can they stay healthy, and, even if they do, can they reach their potential given all the injuries? Also, shooting is potentially a problem depending on who we surround them with.

All good points regarding the above posts.

I certainly agree about the last sentence. I also understand the logic behind the argument that you’re making. Robbins points about tanking are the same ones I’ve made on this board for the past 10 years or so. While I agree with your conclusions in the abstract, my concern is that I don’t believe it’s as easy to turn tanking on and off as this assumes. I think that once you implicitly tell your players that we’re not trying to win, that attitude becomes very hard to reverse. A small part of them going forward always feels that everything is fine no matter what happens, because if we’re not winning we’re tanking. This is especially true for young players. And so I’m afraid that the decision to tank now will stick around and affect our play in the future, even though we want to “turn it off”. I freely acknowledge that this could be overstated and that maybe we can get away with it for the next ten games without it carrying over. From my standpoint, the risk is too high but I completely understand that mine is a minority opinion. As always time will tell.

Lol i don’t know if Cleveland decided to throw the game or not but it looked like we were about to lose and then they suddenly stopped the full court pressure with about two minutes left.

I agree, I think he’s part of our future.

Thank you TMF

You may be right. I don’t know for sure. Good posts BTW.

I agree with your post, and particularly with your summary of our circumstances this season. I’m fine with losing as long as you’re trying your hardest to win. Successful franchises like Miami and Boston never tank; they keep a culture of trying their hardest to win every game and we see how it pays off. They are almost always relevant, and develop young players who learn how to win. This wink and a nod stuff where we hold players out and implicitly try not win needs to go from my standpoint. We are teaching our young players how to lose. When they go on the court they expect to lose. In the past we’ve seen how this works with young talent such as Harris and Oledipo who really only developed after they left us and went to teams with a better culture. I want to see heart and hustle and getting everything we can out of what we’ve got. And then if we get a good draft pick that’s icing on the cake but we have a foundation of trying to build a winning team no matter what happens in the draft. If we allow ourselves to wallow in the muck for years hoping for lightning to strike in the lottery with a superstar talent, I’m reasonably convinced that 10 years from now we won’t have a team in Orlando.

I understand. But that’s only one side of the equation. I believe there is a significant downside to tanking, and the relatively small percentages you’re talking about don’t compensate for those disadvantages. Historically, is there that much difference between pick 6 and pick 8?

That should never be the main strategy for building a team.

Odds are so similar for the bottom 4 teams that it hardly matters.

Wow. That is remarkable. Not sure I’ve ever even heard of that injury

Picking a franchise changer is an extreme long shot. From my standpoint we look for complimentary pieces to what we have and try to develop these guys properly. That also includes smart trades and hopefully finding a diamond in the rough or two.

The odd thing was, there wasn’t even much contact, apparently just enough to get him off balance, and he must have landed in the worst possible way that put maximum pressure on the bone for it to snap like that. We’ve all seen similar plays in NBA games countless times where no injury occurs. What terrible luck for a guy fighting to make a place for himself in the NBA. All the best to him for a strong recovery. I would imagine he’s already had surgery. Big risk now is infection if the bone protruded through the skin, but of course they know that and will try to prevent it.

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. I hope he eventually recovers enough to get back.

Turned the game off. Any updates on Cannady?

They would have to block a nerve which would require injections into the thigh as far as I know.

Not sure how they could numb something like that up with a local, but maybe they did something. In any event, agree it's terrible bad luck.

They couldn't have done that without an IV. Have to suspect a compound fracture unfortunately.

Exactly

You build habits over time. There is no way that a string of games like this don’t negatively impact player development. We are creating a bunch of losers. And many of them will be on the team next year.

Does Bamba ever box out anybody?