Sam Hinkie and Teams Win/Loss Records Leading Up to 50 Wins

[Quetzalcoatl]

Sam Hinkie had some interesting comments the other day:
http://www.nj.com/sixers/index.ssf/2015/02/when_will_the_sixers_focus_on_winning_games_sam_hi.html

Where he noted that the real teams don't just slowly gain wins season by season, they essentially tank and then get good all at once.  Here are his comments:

"We're focused on ... How do you put the building blocks in place that give you a chance to compete in May," Hinkie told reporters Friday when asked directly about a timetable for when he expects to start valuing wins. "Those teams win in the high 50s. they don't win in the teens. They don't add two or three wins a year. They don't add a win a month for a little while to try to get to where they're going. They get all the way to the 50s.

"They get there usually on the backs of great players. As much as I talk about goals, how we make our decisions and our player development, this is a players driven league. Still. When we have a set of players that can carry us deep. That's the only way to get to where we're going."

I took the liberty of going to Wiki and looking at recent 50 win teams and basically every single one of their records bore this out.   I hear lots of criticism of tanking in favor of the nebulously defined "building a winning culture," but teams' records do not really bore that out.  I mean, I'm sure there have been recent teams that built up by a couple wins a season until they were good, but I didn't see that when I looked.  Gaining ten wins a season and slowly building up to 50 over two seasons has been done, but to be elite, it seems a lot less like building a "winning culture" and a lot more like "tanking to get assets and then being good out of nowhere."

Boston Celtics:
2005-2006: 33-49
06-07: 24-58
07-08: 66-16

Chicago Bulls:
1981-82: 34-48
82-83: 27-55
84-85: 38-44 (Jordan's rookie year)
85-86: 30-52
86-87: 40-42
87-88: 50-32

San Antonio Spurs:
1995-96: 59-23
96-97: 20-62
97-98: 56-26

Sonics / OKC:
2006-07: 31-51
07-08: 20-62
08-09: 23-59
09-10: 50-32

Miami Heat (Wade Solo)
2001-2002: 36-46
02-03: 25-57
03-04: 42-40
04-05: 59-23

Miami Heat (Lead up to Lebron/Bosh/Wade)
2007-08: 15-67
08-09: 43-39
09-10: 47-35
10-11: 58-24

Portland Trailblazers:
2011-12: 28-38
12-13: 33-49
13-14: 54-28

Atlanta Hawks:
2003-04: 28-54
04-05: 13-69
05-06: 26-56
06-07: 30-52
07-08: 37-45
08-09: 47-35
09-10: 53-29
....
13-14: 38-44
this year: 42-9

[Rondo9]

Hinkie: A much better GM than Anige. 

[jonaslopes]

ANOTHER Hinkie/Sixers thread? That's what- oh, whatever. They won't let me say that here.

[PhoSita]

I don't put much stock in arguments that focus on the win totals of a team leading up to 50-win seasons.

For each team, there are so many different factors that lead the team to work its way to 50 wins.  One of those factors is frequently drafting a historically great player high in the draft, but it doesn't always involve that.

Anyway, I like to look at which teams each year are at the top of the league, and how those teams were built.

I know around here we focus only on championships, but I think it's too reductive to focus only on the teams that win championships.  The sample size for championship winners is so small, and many great teams fail to win championships as a result of events that basically come down to chance (see: 2013 Spurs).

I think the focus should be on putting yourself in a position to be one of the best teams in the league, because one of the best teams in the league (measured by regular season record) is almost always the winner of the championship.  The team that wins it all is also typically in the top 5-10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency.



As for Hinkie, I think the strategy he's employing is artless and really sacrifices any regard whatsoever for the concepts of building a winning culture or the value of continuity and developing a system.  He also clearly has a broad mandate from ownership to totally alienate the fanbase in an attempt to procure the kind of star players that will win back those same fans at some indeterminate point in the future. 

Of course, it will all be for naught if they can't retain those same superstar players before they can really build a cohesive, consistently competitive team around those stars.  Even OKC is having some trouble figuring that out, despite the embarrassment of riches they had as of just a few years ago.

As we saw last year, all it takes is for one team to get inordinately lucky in the lottery to completely short-circuit the Sixers all-out tanking plans.  This is the second year in a row in which they've entered the season with a barren roster and yet appear likely to fail to finish with the worst record in the league.  Even if they do get the worst record, like last year there are fewer than 4 seeming sure-things at the top of this draft, so Philly might not even end up with such a great prospect out of their second straight feckless season.

[BballTim]

Sam Hinkie had some interesting comments the other day:
http://www.nj.com/sixers/index.ssf/2015/02/when_will_the_sixers_focus_on_winning_games_sam_hi.html

Where he noted that the real teams don't just slowly gain wins season by season, they essentially tank and then get good all at once.  Here are his comments:

"We're focused on ... How do you put the building blocks in place that give you a chance to compete in May," Hinkie told reporters Friday when asked directly about a timetable for when he expects to start valuing wins. "Those teams win in the high 50s. they don't win in the teens. They don't add two or three wins a year. They don't add a win a month for a little while to try to get to where they're going. They get all the way to the 50s.

"They get there usually on the backs of great players. As much as I talk about goals, how we make our decisions and our player development, this is a players driven league. Still. When we have a set of players that can carry us deep. That's the only way to get to where we're going."

I took the liberty of going to Wiki and looking at recent 50 win teams and basically every single one of their records bore this out.   I hear lots of criticism of tanking in favor of the nebulously defined "building a winning culture," but teams' records do not really bore that out.  I mean, I'm sure there have been recent teams that built up by a couple wins a season until they were good, but I didn't see that when I looked.  Gaining ten wins a season and slowly building up to 50 over two seasons has been done, but to be elite, it seems a lot less like building a "winning culture" and a lot more like "tanking to get assets and then being good out of nowhere."

Boston Celtics:
2005-2006: 33-49
06-07: 24-58
07-08: 66-16

Chicago Bulls:
1981-82: 34-48
82-83: 27-55
84-85: 38-44 (Jordan's rookie year)
85-86: 30-52
86-87: 40-42
87-88: 50-32

San Antonio Spurs:
1995-96: 59-23
96-97: 20-62
97-98: 56-26

Sonics / OKC:
2006-07: 31-51
07-08: 20-62
08-09: 23-59
09-10: 50-32

Miami Heat (Wade Solo)
2001-2002: 36-46
02-03: 25-57
03-04: 42-40
04-05: 59-23

Miami Heat (Lead up to Lebron/Bosh/Wade)
2007-08: 15-67
08-09: 43-39
09-10: 47-35
10-11: 58-24

Portland Trailblazers:
2011-12: 28-38
12-13: 33-49
13-14: 54-28

Atlanta Hawks:
2003-04: 28-54
04-05: 13-69
05-06: 26-56
06-07: 30-52
07-08: 37-45
08-09: 47-35
09-10: 53-29
....
13-14: 38-44
this year: 42-9

  I think there are a lot more 50 win teams than that. You probably won't find any kind of a common pattern with them beyond "they were worse and then got better, either quickly or slowly".

[MBunge]

I really don't know what those examples are supposed to prove. You're looking at 3 years for some teams, 4 for others, 6 years for one and then 9 for another.  None of them had back-to-back years anywhere close to as terrible as what Philly is deliberately going through.  One of your examples, Atlanta, is absolutely a team that slowly improved over time and what finally put them over the top was not tanking to get an elite player but getting rid of a supposedly elite player in Josh Smith.  And you also make no effort at all to identify when teams are actually tanking and when they are just bad.  For example, OKC was tanking when they got Westbrook but were just a bad team that got lucky in the draft when they got Durant.

You want to see what tanking gets you, why don't you also look at Sacramento, Minnesota, Charlotte and all the other teams that are in the lottery for years at a stretch and wind up with nothing to show for it?

Mike

[LooseCannon]

Win totals for franchises last time they went from 25 or less wins to 50+ within ten years or fewer
Atlanta 13, 26, 30, 37, 47, 53
Boston 24, 66
Brooklyn 16, 31, 26, 52
Charlotte 20, 19, 26, 31, 44, 41, 50
Chicago 23, 47, 41, 49, 33, 41, 41, 62
Cleveland 17, 35, 42, 50
Dallas 24, 20, 19, 40, 53
Denver 17, 43, 49, 44, 45, 50
Detroit 20, 28, 46, 54
Golden State 23, 47, 51
Houston 14, 29, 48, 51
Indiana never made that jump within a ten year period
LA Clippers 23, 19, 29, 32, 40, 56
LA Lakers 19, 33, 25, 36, 54
Memphis 22, 22, 24, 40, 46, 41, 56

At which point, I lost interest.  But I think there's a decent chance that if you go from rock bottom to at least a borderline contender, you're pretty likely to spend at least a few seasons on the way up with wins in the 30s and 40s.