I'm not sure if I should be excited or not!

[LarBrd33]

We are .500 in a season that's just started, with a pretty much all-new core of the team, and question-marks around the return of our lone all-star / star player / captain.

This teem can go either way, and everyone knows this.

Right now, most of the people posting on this blog/forum have split into two camps; those that believe we're tanking, and those that don't.

I'd like to make a case for both of these camps to join the middle grounds, where we just wait and see, and forego the chance to say "I told you so" in favor of rooting for a team that has a lot of young developing talent.

This change in approach to these games will allow both camps to focus less on calling each-other out over nothing, and more on rooting and predicting where individual players will go.

In other words, I'm kind of hoping people will stop presenting their opinions and guesses as facts and obvious truths.

So yes, be excited. By all means, root for this team to do as best they can. The better they do, the more we get back for their contracts, or perhaps even develop them into (fringe-) stars or rotation players.

Terrific post, TP for that.

As someone who is an admitted "pro-tanker", I can speak for myself and reiterate that I've never thought the players/coach were actively throwing games.  I do think that there's a mandate to showcase the old vets and I do think that Danny Ainge set this team up to fail.  The second he traded KG/Pierce, it was an blatant admission that the team could no longer contend and we were better off collecting chips for the future.  I see that as Ainge tanking the season.  I fully expected the kids to play hard.  They are playing hard.  On paper, they aren't a very talented group.  Sullinger and Oly are exceeding my expectations right now and it's a fun thing to watch. 

I found it really hard to believe Ainge would make any trade this year that would help us in the short-term, but who knows... if the kids keep exceeding expectations and this team remains competitive by the deadline, maybe they use the Pierce exception or Humph to bring in a long-term deal.