# What should we do to stop teams from tanking? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [December 9, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959 "2015-12-09T16:28:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959/41 "2015-12-11T19:30:08Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > And that’s why James Harden is such a big part of their offense this year, one presumes. That cheapness-motivated move actually illustrates my point about transaction costs pretty nicely. The Thunder got what, 60 cents on the dollar for Harden, if that? > [@Jimmy Chitwood](#): > > Which is to say that all you need is to win the lottery once or twice, and you can’t play if you don’t have a ticket. Agreed; I think the basic plan of building through lottery picks is the right one for teams that aren’t free-agent hubs or reasonably close to making the playoffs. They just keep taking the wrong guys; perhaps they need someone else in charge of making the picks while Hinkie makes the deals that bring in the picks? I don’t know, but if I were a Sixers fan my faith in Hinkie’s ability to draft players would be pretty shaky. You also need an elite player-development program if you’re going to just play young guys (who are disproportionately top picks, and thus raw but talented 19 year olds); I have no idea how good the Sixers are in this area. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959/42 "2015-12-11T20:51:31Z")
Yep. It also illustrates that when you pick the right players, you can make a trade at 60 cents on the dollar and still have it make sense for where you are talent-wise; i.e. still be better off than if you hadn’t taken the guy who didn’t fit. If you look at the Durant-Westbrook-Harden drafts as a package – a three year window where they hadn’t gotten good yet but had a good sense what they thought they had – you obviously take that haul in retrospect even after discounting Harden to keep Ibaka. So, I agree, for sure it depends whether they’re fucking up those picks or not, and like I’ve been saying, I’m disappointed in the Okafor pick. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to say they “keep” picking the wrong guys. Maybe that’s the sticking point. But from an overall process perspective, I haven’t seen them to be missing opportunities. I know you’re a UK guy, so presumably you appreciate that manufacturing the opportunity to get Noel at 6 overall was really good value. Embiid at 3? Should they have gone Gordon, Exum (hurt), Smart (hurt), Randle (got hurt), Stauskas (on Sixers), Vonleh (no longer on Hornets)? If Parker was available should they have taken him, even? Depends how likely you think it is that Embiid ever plays at 60 cents on the dollar of his own potential, and how much you’re willing to blame them for taking the risk, I suppose; I don’t see much of a missed opportunity there right now. Worth pointing out that had the lottery gone differently, it would be Noel-Wiggins-Towns or Noel-Embiid-Towns. You gotta pick the right guy, given what’s available. On the subject of player [development](http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12318808/the-philadelphia-76ers-radical-guide-winning): > [@](#): > > Two years into Brown’s four-year contract, Hinkie has handed his coach a staff of more than a dozen, with individuals responsible for everything from offense and defense, to analytics, to sports science, to video, to strength and conditioning. One basketball-ops staffer, Lance “Doc” Pearson, has a Ph.D. in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University and degrees in mathematics, computer science and philosophy from the University of Kentucky. Another guy, who teaches team-building part time, is a Navy SEAL. > > Hinkie is fond of sending Brown selected articles by one of his idols, Warren Buffett. Brown is fond of bringing his entire team on field trips, like the one to a University of Pennsylvania lecture hall in October. There, the Sixers met MacArthur-winning psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth, whose TED Talk on grit – which she defines as “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals” – had touched a coach tasked with alchemizing failure into development. “I’ve never met anybody more positive than Coach Brown,” undrafted forward Malcolm Thomas says. “We could lose by 30 and he’d still be like, ‘You guys played your heart out! I’m proud of you!’” > > But exertion – as with any goal for these Sixers – is more than a cliché. After every game, a squad of as many as eight staffers, under the direction of Pearson and assistant coach Vance Walberg, constructs something called an Effort Chart. Every Sixer, on every possession, is graded on five complex, proprietary criteria. On offense, for instance, the team wants to reward pace, so staffers time a player’s first three steps when a miss is recovered. On defense, they’ll recognize accomplishments such as contested shots, tips and deflections. Report cards, linked to video for review, are announced to the team. “We set it up as a competition,” undrafted forward JaKarr Sampson gushes. Brown harps on the team average – a score of 20 is high – and denotes improvement in 10-game chunks. > > The result: Hinkie’s alleged collection of flesh-eating bacteria, anonymous as they are, actually try. “Development, for me, is everything,” Brown tells me. “It lets me truly look at somebody and not feel like, ‘We’re going to cut you in a week or two weeks to get another draft pick.’” > > […] > > Hinkie, as part of his drive to measure everything, tracks each shot his players take, not just in games but also shootarounds and practices. “You can’t hide,” Richardson says. Some of the tallying is by hand; some of it is noted off video. Brown uses the data to see which players “are investing time into development,” he says, and doles out playing time and in-game privileges accordingly. “It’s crazy,” Noel says. “They’ll tell me what my free throw percentage is in practice. And I’m like, ‘What?!’” > > It is possible that no team takes the structure of its pregame shootarounds more seriously. The players arrive in scheduled 15-minute waves of two or three and promptly begin to sweat under the supervision of shooting coach Eugene Burroughs. On one recent night in Philadelphia, Hinkie observes from a sideline as a platoon of assistants, video coordinators and basketball-ops guys waits on the sidelines with MacBooks bearing video and spreadsheets. When each wave finishes its tailored drills – in Brown’s system, for instance, bigs focus exclusively on baseline jumpers and rolling to the basket – the players sit down with a designated coach, who walks them through preselected clips from the last game. It’s like jump shot triage. “They really hit us over the head with percentages,” Thomas says, “and what type of shots they want us to take.” > > Like Houston, which shoots the most 3s in the league, Philadelphia fetishizes the importance of being lethal from behind the arc. Just as the title-winning Spurs fetishized it last season, and the playoff-bound Warriors, Hawks and Trail Blazers fetishize it now. But that trait can also be purchased and supplemented, Hinkie knows, when production is no longer delayed: Think of nomadic snipers like Ray Allen and Mike Miller; now think of what their spacing could do for a Nerlens Noel. Until then, the Sixers are second to last in 3-point percentage, at 31 percent, while still attempting more 3s than all but 10 teams. OK. Done defensively evangelizing. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959/43 "2015-12-11T21:23:57Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Yep. It also illustrates that when you pick the right players, you can make a trade at 60 cents on the dollar and still have it make sense for where you are talent-wise; i.e. still be better off than if you hadn’t taken the guy who didn’t fit. If you look at the Durant-Westbrook-Harden drafts as a package – a three year window where they hadn’t gotten good yet but had a good sense what they thought they had – you obviously take that haul in retrospect even after discounting Harden to keep Ibaka. They were better off taking and eventually trading Harden then taking a lesser player (Tyreke Evans?), sure. I’m just noting that you can’t always, or even often, flip a guy for equal value, so logjamming at one position is really risky. > [@Jimmy Chitwood](#): > > So, I agree, for sure it depends whether they’re fucking up those picks or not, and like I’ve been saying, I’m disappointed in the Okafor pick. I’m not sure whether it’s fair to say they “keep” picking the wrong guys. Maybe that’s the sticking point. But from an overall process perspective, I haven’t seen them to be missing opportunities. I’d argue that MCW, Embiid, and Okafor were misses (not including Payton since he was immediately traded, though bullet dodged there), _and_ that there were enough red flags to justify passing on them for other players. It’s not an exact science or anything, but drafting a point guard who can’t shoot, a center with chronic foot problems, and a guy who would’ve been _awesome_ 30 years ago, but out of his depth in an era where we know how important rim defense is to winning, can only be called 3 misses. > [@Jimmy Chitwood](#): > > I know you’re a UK guy, so presumably you appreciate that manufacturing the opportunity to get Noel at 6 overall was really good value. Embiid at 3? Should they have gone Gordon, Exum (hurt), Smart (hurt), Randle (got hurt), Stauskas (on Sixers), Vonleh (no longer on Hornets)? If Parker was available should they have taken him, even? Depends how likely you think it is that Embiid ever plays at 60 cents on the dollar of his own potential, and how much you’re willing to blame them for taking the risk, I suppose; I don’t see much of a missed opportunity there right now. Worth pointing out that had the lottery gone differently, it would be Noel-Wiggins-Towns or Noel-Embiid-Towns. You gotta pick the right guy, given what’s available. The Noel deal was a coup, you don’t want him to be the best player on your team, but as long as there’s shooting around him, he’ll rebound everything, defend the rim, and score just enough to demand that he be guarded. And, his injury was a fluke, not a chronic wearing-down sort of thing. The haul for Jrue Holiday was very nice. I think you have to take Parker if he’s there. If not, I’d have skipped Embiid and gone with either Exum or Marcus Smart. Agreed that the 76ers not actually winning a lottery is holding them back, a Noel-Towns front line would be a big upgrade over Noel-Okafor. > [@Jimmy Chitwood](#): > > On the subject of player [development](http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12318808/the-philadelphia-76ers-radical-guide-winning): > > OK. Done defensively evangelizing. Sounds solid (and there’s even another UK guy!). Presumably they tried very hard to teach MCW how to shoot 3s (among other things) before trading him, and it just didn’t take. That’s what concerns me the most, that the 76ers are trying to put together a team for 1985 instead of 2015. ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959/44 "2015-12-11T21:44:35Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > If one of us is relying on a hypothetical world where something crazy happened, it’s you, because you’re suggesting the Sixers could have gotten better faster some _intentional_ way that isn’t blowing the franchise up and hoping to strike it rich. So… what was it? Sign Aaron Afflalo and trade for Dion Waiters? But you’re acting like no one in the history of basketball has ever succeeded in some other way. We know that there are strategies apart from the one the Sixers are employing right now; we know this because every team in history that has ever succeeded has used one of them (if you want to compare much less extreme teardowns like the ones other teams have used and argue that there’s no difference, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree). > [@](#): > > Here’s another try. Again, you tell me why these aren’t things that we can right now make judgments about, because it seems, well, unassailable: I can agree with you that each individual transaction you list was a good deal in a vacuum, sure. That doesn’t mean the overarching plan is going to get them anywhere. But see below. > [@](#): > > There was no roadmap, no plausible route to becoming a very good team within, I dunno, four years… except blowing it up. That’s what they’ve done. I think this quote is the heart of what’s frustrating to me about the pro-Hinkie folks. It sums it up. There were other routes. At the risk of repeating myself, no team in history has ever done what the Sixers are doing right now to the degree that they’re doing it. This, all by itself, argues against the contention that there was “no plausible route.” But again, see below. > [@](#): > > If you write off the product on the court last night, which you absolutely must do unless that’s your criticism, what you are left with is a really really obvious fact, which is that they’re better off than they were and that this is a plan that has a clear trajectory. If you don’t want to write that off, that’s a perfectly reasonable criticism. > > But it’s never the one people make. Whoa! OK, I think now I see the disconnect. I think it’s implicit in any criticism of the Sixers approach that what’s happening now (and last year, and the year before, and let’s be honest, probably in 2016-2017 too barring a miracle) _cannot_ be simply written off. Sure, if you’re willing to say that what’s happening right now is flat out meaningless - if you are willing to write it off - then the Sixers plan is unequivocally the best possible plan. But I’m not so easily willing to write off four or five or six completely lost years. If nothing else at all, it sucks to be a fan of an abysmal team with a single win. But I think there are other consequences to what’s happening right now, too. The Sixers’ reputation is taking a hit league-wide; they’re irritating player agents, and the rest of the owners, and both of those things have potential (albeit unproven!) impact on their ability to build via trade and free agency. I maintain that these things matter. If you’re going to do this - if you’re going to ask people to accept such a big downside - the upside needs to be worth it. I think, oddly, that Sam Hinkie and I seem to mostly agree on the fundamental truth of roster-building, which is that you’re only going to win a championship by getting very, very lucky - either in free agency, in a trade, or in a draft. You can increase your chances of taking advantage of the luck you get by being well prepared and making smart decisions, but in the end you need that lucky stroke - you need Steph Curry to drop to you or LeBron, Bosh, and Wade to bond at the Olympics - or it ain’t happening. What Hinkie is doing is increasing his chance of hitting the lottery in the draft by some unknown percentage, at the cost of a _lot_ of losing (and a reduced chance of getting lucky in free agency or in a timely trade). Because teams that don’t completely break it down still have a chance to hit the lottery (literally and figuratively, I guess). The Celtics are doing a more traditional rebuild right now - they traded away their aging stars, but have still mostly tried to be some sort of competitive and find usable players in addition to collecting picks. And this June, they will have only a modestly smaller chance than the Sixers of getting the #1 pick overall. So is the 5-6% greater chance the Sixers have of beating out the Celtics in that race worth the amount of losing they’re doing right now, worth the reputational damage (and the financial hit they’re almost definitely taking, though that’s their business, obviously)? I don’t know. But the question has to be permitted. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-we-do-to-stop-teams-from-tanking/739959.md?page=2)