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Fultz4thewin

2017-2018 Official Season Discussion Thread

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12 minutes ago, Magicman28 said:

 

Under Skiles we finished with 35 win...What is giving you the impression we played better?

Probably that 35 wins is the best record we've had post-Dwight.

 

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16 minutes ago, ?4thewin said:

 skiles is a special case of being a ***** and crying about his roster mid season.  If he just did his job and then quit at the end of the season he wouldn't deserve as much scorn. 

But he didn't, so ***** that guy. 

Even how he got the job was ridiculous. Dude was calling Martins even though Henny didn't have him as a candidate. Skiles knew he could worm his way in.

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12 minutes ago, Miller4Prez66 said:


Maybe because Skiles' season here was easily the best one post-Dwight? Not going to disagree that he was behaving kind of like an idiot, but he may been acting like an idiot our GM was actually being one. Especially now in hindsight a lot of things Skiles said have shown to be true. I wouldn't necessarily even take Skiles back, but at the same time I'm not impressed at all with Vogel either.

Easily best season? It was 6 more than Frank.

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24 minutes ago, Skip to my Jameer 114 said:

We were 19-13 going in to January when Skiles quit on the team in London and stopped coaching and the wheels fell off. He deserves more blame than credit for creating the losing mentality

Damn right. He *****ed and complained not even a full season into a young squads season and quits in the off season. Great lesson in toughness. 

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1 minute ago, Magicman28 said:

Easily best season? It was 6 more than Frank.


6 wins goes a long ways in the NBA. Plus, last year was the first year post-Dwight where people actually thought the team could contend for a playoff spot and they underachieved miserably. I'm not trying to say Skiles is the greatest guy or coach, but Frank hasn't done any better and again a lot of the stuff Skiles complained about has shown to be true in some way. Maybe if we listened to him and didn't waste so much time trying to build around Payton as the starting PG we could be in a different spot right now, who knows.

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6 minutes ago, Miller4Prez66 said:


6 wins goes a long ways in the NBA. Plus, last year was the first year post-Dwight where people actually thought the team could contend for a playoff spot and they underachieved miserably. I'm not trying to say Skiles is the greatest guy or coach, but Frank hasn't done any better and again a lot of the stuff Skiles complained about has shown to be true in some way. Maybe if we listened to him and didn't waste so much time trying to build around Payton as the starting PG we could be in a different spot right now, who knows.

6 wins goes a long way when your 5 games out of the playoffs. In our case the 6 wins took us a step back in player development, coaching continuity, and morale.

Yeah, ***** that guy.

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1 hour ago, Miller4Prez66 said:


No, the reason we are in the situation we're in now is because of Rob Hennigan's moronic attempt to rebuild this team after trading Dwight. We stripped the roster of talent in an attempt to go young and lose a lot. Which created the culture of youth and losing we're stuck with today. At the time of the Dwight trade, this city and franchise was hungry for championships since we were not far off from playing in the NBA Finals and b2b Eastern Conference Finals. Which is fair to a point, but now 6 years later we are as far off from a championship as ever. Straight up tanking doesn't win you championships. All the teams contending for the title this year didn't tank to get where they are, this idea that you need to strip your roster down and just suck until your savior comes is just crazy because you're gambling your franchise on getting lucky on a 19/20 year old. Plus, even if your team sucks enough doesn't guarantee you the pick to get any potential star players. The only pro-tanking argument I see much of these days is the 76ers, which kind of makes me laugh since right now Philly is a fringe 8th seed who does have a lot of young talent but these talented youngsters have a lot of injuries and question marks on them going forward. The 76ers HAVE to win a championship with this core to be worth putting their fans through some of the worst basketball in NBA history to get a chance to land them. 

Like I said,  this season is a lost cause already and the draft has good potential so I'm fine with just tanking to finish. Which Vogel won't do, we'll have to rely on our own terrible play. But going forward, please put an end to this BS. 

Very well said.  Philly is certainly an extreme example of tanking.  Again, no one is saying that it never works, only that it's an extremely high risk strategy and the odds make it much more likely you'll wind up like we did.  And as you said, despite playing incredibly bad basketball for years, you can hardly say that Philly is championship material.  And they are the best example the tankers have right now.

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1 hour ago, Magicman28 said:

Philly says you're wrong. Philly's last year as a playoff team was in 2012-13 season where they got knocked out of the semi conference final. They're rebuild started about the same time as ours. They are currently 28-25. In 2014 they selected Embiid with the 3rd pick (we took AG at 4). 2015, they took Okafor with again the 3rd . 2016 they took Simmons number 1 and this previous draft they moved up to 1 from 3 and selected Fultz whom the jury is still out on due to whatever. 

Here we are however after only 2 seasons of trying to tank and the last 3 trying to win. Not only are we not winning but instead sitting in purgatory. We've had only 1 top 3 pick.

Why? That's what's missing from your argument. It's not just some blanketed idea like tanking promotes losing. That's not always true as 76ers current situation is evident of that.

Its the why's?

So it's not that I don't disagree that tanking CAN lead to further losing. I disagree that tanking alone promotes losing. It's the other variables. We simply did not stay committed to tanking because management thought the same way you did and here we are, still losing and under a complete revamp of our front office resulting from that.

A front office that so far imo hasn't given me a ton of confidence.

Denver ended their play off run with the 2012-13 season and began a sort of rebuild. Since then they have gone 36-46, 30-52, 33-49, and 40-42. They currently sit 7th in the western conference with a 30-26. 

Their draft picks since their last play off appearance

2013, #27 Gobert (traded to Utah for Erick Green and cash); 2014, #11 McDermott (traded to Chicago for the 16th and 19th picks which turned into Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris), #41 Jokic, #56 Marble; 2015, #7 Mudiay, #57 Radicevic; 2016, #7 Murray, #15 Hernangomez, #19 Beasley, #53 Cornelie, #56 Hamilton; 2017, #11 Donovan Mitchell (traded to Utah for the 24th pick which was Tyler Lydon and Trey Lyles), #49 Cancar, #51 Morris.

Starting line up 2012-13

Lawson, Iguodala, Gallinari, Faried, Koufos

Starting line up 2017-18

Murray, Harris, Chandler/Barton, Millsap/Chandler, Jokic

My point? The Nuggets have managed to rebuild their starting line up and team without tanking. They have prioritized developing their young players and acquiring assets (picks and players). For example they traded Ty Lawson to Houston and a second round pick for a bunch of players, cash, and a first round pick; and they acquired a first round pick from Portland by trading Afflalo and Gee, they also received Will Barton in this trade. Essentially they have managed to rebuild their team without losing and they look set to make the play offs gain. Now we might argue over how good they can become but they have found a star in Jokic to build around and he's one of the most skilled big men in the league (16.6 ppg, 10.4 trb, 5.6 apg) and have a young ascending back court in Murray and Harris. Just imagine this team had they kept Mitchell and Gobert!

So rebuilding can be done without tanking, but for that approach to be successful the front office needs a bit of luck to land those difference making players through the draft, trades, and free agency. There is no reason why this team could not have been rebuilt and back in the play offs by now. The issue is we have made some questionable moves over the past few seasons. For example, we had Dario Saric but decided to turn him into Elfrid Payton, thankfully we didn't end up giving them a first round pick; and we also had Domantas Sabonis, but packaged him with Oladipo for a declining Serge Ibaka. Quite why we gave up on Oladipo is still something that puzzles me since he slotted in at SG, Fournier at SF, and Gordon at PF - unless of course we did it because of Hezonja (?). In 2017 we decided to spend our sixth pick on Jonathan Isaac, granted it is early days for him and he might turn into a star, but would we not have been better off spending that pick on Lauri Markkanen or Dennis Smith Jr? At this point I would say we made the wrong pick because I preferred both of those guys over Isaac in the build up to last year's draft, but maybe Isaac proves me wrong. 

I do agree that had we tanked and landed a couple of first or second overall picks during 2014-17, then we could have got a couple of franchise changing players. However, there is also the potential that we could have still drafted Aaron Gordon in 2014, or preferred Russell and Okafor in 2015, or liked/got Ingram or Brown in 2016, or even still rated Isaac as a top prospect in 2017. Our front office has made questionable and poor decisions, so I wouldn't place any money whatsoever on them picking one of the players we have seen develop into stars during the past handful of drafts had they been picking first or second. They could still have got it wrong. Perhaps our new front office will be different and get things right, but we'll have to wait and see. Would committing to losing this season for a top pick and next season for another top pick benefit us? Potentially, but again only if our front office don't try to think outside the box and do something different, or pursue guys that have length and defensive potential over more offensive orientated players with questionable defense (e,g. Isaac over Markkanen and Smith). 

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1 hour ago, Magicman28 said:

Even how he got the job was ridiculous. Dude was calling Martins even though Henny didn't have him as a candidate. Skiles knew he could worm his way in.

Conjecture 

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18 hours ago, JJZFL said:

Very well said.  Philly is certainly an extreme example of tanking.  Again, no one is saying that it never works, only that it's an extremely high risk strategy and the odds make it much more likely you'll wind up like we did.  And as you said, despite playing incredibly bad basketball for years, you can hardly say that Philly is championship material.  And they are the best example the tankers have right now.

Lol. Soo tanking promotes losing but a team that extremely tanked are a fringe playoff team BUUUUT, they're not not a championship team while we abandoned tank and have been trying to win for 3 years and not even close to a playoff team is your argument against tanking?!

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1 hour ago, Miller4Prez66 said:


6 wins goes a long ways in the NBA. Plus, last year was the first year post-Dwight where people actually thought the team could contend for a playoff spot and they underachieved miserably. I'm not trying to say Skiles is the greatest guy or coach, but Frank hasn't done any better and again a lot of the stuff Skiles complained about has shown to be true in some way. Maybe if we listened to him and didn't waste so much time trying to build around Payton as the starting PG we could be in a different spot right now, who knows.

Agree. Skiles got more out of our putrid rosters post Dwight than anyone else has been able to. He called it with Payton but we needed to waste 2 more years thinking Payton didn’t suck. Skiles isn’t great in anyway, but he was the best we’ve had post Dwight. 

No one knows exactly why he left and what the exact circumstances were. 

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2 hours ago, Magicman28 said:

Philly says you're wrong. Philly's last year as a playoff team was in 2012-13 season where they got knocked out of the semi conference final. They're rebuild started about the same time as ours. They are currently 28-25. In 2014 they selected Embiid with the 3rd pick (we took AG at 4). 2015, they took Okafor with again the 3rd . 2016 they took Simmons number 1 and this previous draft they moved up to 1 from 3 and selected Fultz whom the jury is still out on due to whatever. 

Here we are however after only 2 seasons of trying to tank and the last 3 trying to win. Not only are we not winning but instead sitting in purgatory. We've had only 1 top 3 pick.

Why? That's what's missing from your argument. It's not just some blanketed idea like tanking promotes losing. That's not always true as 76ers current situation is evident of that.

Its the why's?

So it's not that I don't disagree that tanking CAN lead to further losing. I disagree that tanking alone promotes losing. It's the other variables. We simply did not stay committed to tanking because management thought the same way you did and here we are, still losing and under a complete revamp of our front office resulting from that.

A front office that so far imo hasn't given me a ton of confidence.

The idea that we were only "trying" to tank for 2 years doesn't really make sense.  If you purposely have lousy and/or excessively young players, you're tanking, no matter what you say you want.  That's the kind of line-up we built for ourselves, and we're still reaping the "benefits".  How much worse can you be than the worst record in basketball for the 2011-2014 seasons (which is 3 seasons, btw).

The argument that we weren't "tanking" long enough, even though I don't agree with the premise, is also non-falsifiable.  You tank for 5 years and still terrible?  Well you need to tank for 5 more.  Tank for 10 years and no draft superstar?  Well, you need to tank for 20.  There is no end to that approach, only a deeper hole to dig out of.

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