What is the success rate for tanking?

[Roy H.]

The Celtics grabbed Pierce at 10th and Rondo at 21st and traded for KG and Allen.

What did the Celtics trade to get Ray Allen?

Do you think the Sonics would have turned us down if we had the 8th pick, instead of the 5th?  It's a hypothetical, I know, but if we'd played that season honestly I think we would have ended up in the exact same position.  The Sonics were looking to move on from Ray, and we were the team that wanted him.

[D.o.s.]

The Celtics grabbed Pierce at 10th and Rondo at 21st and traded for KG and Allen.

What did the Celtics trade to get Ray Allen?

"Game is Hard."

Roy's ignoring my post because he doesn't actually want to think about the question instead of avoid the fact that we're a dumpster-tier team right now and should potentially be looking to tank our way out of it. 

[Roy H.]

Roy's ignoring my post because he doesn't actually want to think about the question instead of avoid the fact that we're a dumpster-tier team right now and should potentially be looking to tank our way out of it. 

Tanking results in dumpster-tier teams becoming perpetual dumpster-tier teams much more frequently than it results in those teams becoming champions.

[D.o.s.]

The Celtics grabbed Pierce at 10th and Rondo at 21st and traded for KG and Allen.

What did the Celtics trade to get Ray Allen?

Do you think the Sonics would have turned us down if we had the 8th pick, instead of the 5th?  It's a hypothetical, I know, but if we'd played that season honestly I think we would have ended up in the exact same position.  The Sonics were looking to move on from Ray, and we were the team that wanted him.

Green probably doesn't fall past Minnesota. Granted, OKC was trying to divest their team of talent, but they wanted Green and the Celtics were willing to arguably overpay for him.

[D.o.s.]

Roy's ignoring my post because he doesn't actually want to think about the question instead of avoid the fact that we're a dumpster-tier team right now and should potentially be looking to tank our way out of it. 

Tanking results in dumpster-tier teams becoming perpetual dumpster-tier teams much more frequently than it results in those teams becoming champions.

Except it doesn't beyond the function of simple math: every year 29 teams fail to win an NBA championship, so clearly the odds are against teams trying to win, right?

The consistent throughline between teams that can successfully rebuild and teams that can't are, in this order: a good/competent/committed front office that are all on the same page, a commitment to a plan (tanking or not), and some luck in the draft and free agency.

That's really what people mean when they say 'trust the process', they just don't realize it/can't vocalize it for whatever reason. If you think Hinkie is doing the right thing, and clearly he has the favor of their front office, then you've got to let him do his thing while hoping for stuff like, say, Embiid healing correctly.

[littleteapot]

The Celtics grabbed Pierce at 10th and Rondo at 21st and traded for KG and Allen.

What did the Celtics trade to get Ray Allen?

Do you think the Sonics would have turned us down if we had the 8th pick, instead of the 5th?  It's a hypothetical, I know, but if we'd played that season honestly I think we would have ended up in the exact same position.

OK first of all, if you try to win in a year when many teams are tanking, you could easily end up with, oh I don't know, the 16th pick, which definitely won't get you the best shooter in history.

Also, we can't repeat the experiment, but I think if we had the 8th pick and any of the 7 teams with better picks than us were willing to give them up, we'd be in a really tough spot. As we just saw with the trades Ainge tried to make, conventional wisdom is that you look at the best asset being offered. So if we had offered pick 8 plus a future pick or something, we might not have beaten a team that was willing to give up pick 5. The bottom line is that we improved our assets by tanking, and we needed A LOT of assets including two really good ones to get KG and Ray. I don't think just having the good asset we got by having a pretty good draft pick and using it well (Al Jefferson) would have made it really tough to add two all-star caliber players. We couldn't really afford to give up draft picks + guys like Ryan Gomes for Ray, because we needed Al and a lot of those assets to get KG.

For the record, I think not tanking this year was worth adding Isaiah Thomas and Zeller, retaining Bradley and getting to develop Marcus Smart, but I do think tanking does work and it worked for us a mere two years ago.

[PhoSita]

Well let's look at the championship teams from the last 15 years

Here's where "Let's define tanking" becomes part of the discussion.  If you want to say that getting a top 10 pick, or picking in the lottery, isn't "tanking," then that's going to support your argument pretty well.


Warriors - Curry 7th, Klay 11th, Barnes 7th
Spurs - Duncan 1st
Heat - Wade 4th
Mavs - Dirk 9th
Celts - Pierce 10th, traded 5th for Allen


The Lakers and Pistons are your outliers.  The Lakers are the Lakers, which helped them get Shaq AND Kobe.  In their second Kobe run, they also had Bynum who was 10th.

The Pistons, the true outliers who always get talked about, are the exception that proves the rule.  You want to set out to build another Pistons team and win a championship that way, at least acknowledge it's got even fewer examples of success than the other ones.


I've said in the past, it's not all about getting the #1 pick, or a top 5 pick.  History tells us picks taken in the top 10 or so are the lifeblood of really good teams.

Anyway, this is small sample size theatre.  A more convincing take would be to do an exhaustive inventory of every team that's ever won close to 60 games or more and see how they were all built.  I don't have time for that, but my guess is they relied heavily on top 10 picks.

[PhoSita]

Tanking is the equivalent of a sculptor using crappy materials to make 5 really bad statutes in a row, in the hope that some benefactor will come along and bestow him with really great tools.

Whereas building through trade and free agency is a sculptor finding sticks in the woods or pieces of junk in a scrapyard and trying to turn them into concept art then displaying them on the street in the hopes that a block of marble walks up to him and says, "Hey, you're pretty good!  Sculpt me!"


Haha, okay, metaphor got stretched too far.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

Well let's look at the championship teams from the last 15 years

Here's where "Let's define tanking" becomes part of the discussion.  If you want to say that getting a top 10 pick, or picking in the lottery, isn't "tanking," then that's going to support your argument pretty well.


Warriors - Curry 7th, Klay 11th, Barnes 7th
Spurs - Duncan 1st
Heat - Wade 4th
Mavs - Dirk 9th
Celts - Pierce 10th, traded 5th for Allen


The Lakers and Pistons are your outliers.  The Lakers are the Lakers, which helped them get Shaq AND Kobe.  In their second Kobe run, they also had Bynum who was 10th.

The Pistons, the true outliers who always get talked about, are the exception that proves the rule.  You want to set out to build another Pistons team and win a championship that way, at least acknowledge it's got even fewer examples of success than the other ones.


I've said in the past, it's not all about getting the #1 pick, or a top 5 pick.  History tells us picks taken in the top 10 or so are the lifeblood of really good teams.

Anyway, this is small sample size theatre.  A more convincing take would be to do an exhaustive inventory of every team that's ever won close to 60 games or more and see how they were all built.  I don't have time for that, but my guess is they relied heavily on top 10 picks.

At some point outliers have to considered part of the equation. 2 in 15 makes it more common than a outlier.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing about the top 10 picks thing, but the question is whether or not the Sixers' route is proven and effective. I argue that it isn't.

And by the way, we do have one top ten pick on our roster, and next we might have more.

[PhoSita]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing about the top 10 picks thing, but the question is whether or not the Sixers' route is proven and effective. I argue that it isn't.

I do think there's merit to the idea that what the Sixers are doing goes too far.  They are going to have to try very hard to dig themselves out of the morasse they've created for themselves once they decide they've got the right group in place.  By that time, the fans might have moved on.

I just don't like the other extreme -- that there's no sense in aiming for a lower finish and that the only way to manage the team is to try and build towards respectability as soon as possible. 

We can admit that picking 16th as opposed to 8th or 9th or 10th, more often than not, hurts the rebuild, without having to agree that we should tear everything down and aim for as few wins as possible until we've drafted multiple superstar prospects.

[RAAAAAAAANDY]

What's the success rate of rebuilding without tanking?

 The Bulls didn't tank for Jordan

Yes, they did. They tanked a ton.

[BaronV]

Meanwhile, in the last 15 years, only one drafted in the top 3 has won a championship with the team who they were drafted by - Tim Duncan (unless you count Darko with the Pistons).

Nice analysis.  I was going to do research the same thing when I saw you already did.  One thing to note, which i saw in your line regarding the Cs and may apply to others ... we did have a 'tank' season which resulted in the #5 pick, which became Jeff Green, who became the trade fodder for Ray Allen.  Having the good pick did help us trade for the star.

One question for me is 'tanking' as a strategy, rather than because of circumstance.  When the Spurs got Duncan, as quoted above, they were already a good team.  Then Robinson missed the season with an injury.  That set them up for one bad season, which led to a top pick, which led to a dynasty.  The Larkers did something similar this year.  They didn't sign Kobe to that stupid contract to finish in last place.  Then Randle got hurt, Kobe got hurt, and they filled the floor with D-League players for one year.  Gave them a chance to evaluate some young guys and get another high pick.  That's not losing on purpose.  There wasn't anything they could have done in-season to improve the team into the playoffs once those guys got hurt.  At that point, you take advantage of the circumstance, and get better for the next season.

Philly on the other hand isn't even trying to pretend they're putting a quality product on the floor.  They have 27 young, high pick centers and a bunch of guys no one's heard of, a coach who isn't trying to build a team.  They've been crappy for years, will probably continue to be crappy for years, and aren't building a culture that is going to make all their young top picks want to stay with the team once their rookie deals expire.  In the meantime, they probably have about 5 fans left, and no free agent in their right mind would want to sign there.  That's tanking. 

-V

[DefenseWinsChamps]

Agreed. The other difficult thing is quantifying playoff experience. This is was the 4th youngest team in the NBA last year, and they got to learn their weaknesses and strengths against the eastern conference champion. That might have propelled a summer of aggressive training for many of the young players, and a better awareness of their own abilities.

All in all, I would have loved to have Winslow, but this team might look a lot different development-wise by tanking the end of the season to get a top 10 pick.

[Moranis]

Roy's ignoring my post because he doesn't actually want to think about the question instead of avoid the fact that we're a dumpster-tier team right now and should potentially be looking to tank our way out of it. 

Tanking results in dumpster-tier teams becoming perpetual dumpster-tier teams much more frequently than it results in those teams becoming champions.

But a lot of that is just poor/cheap ownership. 

Memphis, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Chicago, LA Clippers, Golden State, and Miami all successfully tanked in recent seasons to varying lengths of tank time and varying lengths of success.  San Antonio tanked 20 years ago and is still reaping the rewards.  Boston tanked in the Duncan draft and was still bad from that tank the next year to get Pierce.

This notion that tanking doesn't work is just silly, but as with all methods of possible success, you can mess it up, you can end up unlucky (wrong draft, lose lottery, injuries etc.), or you can you end up just being cheap and not keeping everyone. 

Portland seems like a team that tanked perfectly, but then just ended up unlucky.  In 03/04 Portland won 41 games and just missed out on the playoffs (they selected Telfair 13th that year).  After the season they let Randolph go and made some other moves contrary to winning i.e. they tanked.  The following season 04/05 they won 27 games and ended up with the 6th pick.  In a weak draft they took Martell Webster.  They were still awful and ended up 4th the following year, but were able to trade that pick (Ty Thomas) and a future 2nd for #2 (Aldridge).  In addition that same draft they turned Telfair (and the extra year of LaFrentz) into Brandon Roy.  They were still bad and completed the tank by landing the 1st pick, which of course was Oden.  Imagine if Roy and Oden had actually stayed healthy.  That team would have been an unstoppable force.  Now sure looking back you can say that was an unsuccessful tank job because that team never got out of the 1st round, but that would be a silly premise given the talent acquired.  That was a successful tank that just didn't work as a result of bad luck. 

[Roy H.]

This notion that tanking doesn't work is just silly,

Prove it, then.  Show me all of the successful franchises that have become contenders due to tanking, especially of the type most commonly advocated for on CelticsBlog (intentionally losing as many games as possible over multiple years to build a young core).

Then compare that to the teams that, rather than intentionally trying to lose, signed free agents and made trades in an attempt to make themselves better in the short term.

My hypothesis is that teams that are in the latter group are more successful than teams in the former bracket.