this thread is disgusting. I get harassed for calling people bad fans, but come on. We are well into the season and over .500 with one of our best players out. This is not NBA 2k. A better title for this thread should be, "trade everyone for picks and simulate the season."
Some of you guys don't realize how lucky we are. We just very recently blew up a team that had won a title and now we are over 500 with a lot of guys with real upside a ton of picks, a good coach and a happy team. Yeah lets go mess with that for a very outside chance at a player that gives us no guarantee that we would be any better with him than what we have now.
There's no need to call anyone a bad fan. That's just uncalled for. However, I completely agree that threads like this are ridiculous. We are fine the way we are and things are more likely than not going to get better. The pro-tankers go off the premonition that "tanking" is fool-proof, and it really isn't. Playing the lottery in the NBA is more or less,
playing the lottery. When you tank, you have to keep three things in mind:
1. You are competing with other teams who are also hoping to get the top pick in the draft. No matter how many times you lose or what cushy situation you are in, that doesn't mean you will automatically get it. We know that as Celtics fans. Tim Duncan anyone?
2. Even if you do get a top pick does not mean that guy is going to be an elite talent in the league. Way back when, people thought Derrick Williams, Evan Turner, and OJ Mayo were going to be stars in the league when they were drafted, and that wasn't the case was it? Though you do have the chance to get a Kevin Durant, there is also the chance you get a Greg Oden.
3. Even if say your pick pans out to be a special talent, we all know it takes more than one special talent to win in the NBA. Just because you nail your pick one year does not mean you're going to nail it the next one. Good examples of this are Kevin Love in Minnesota and Demarcus Cousins in Sacramento. Minnesota became a borderline playoff team but that was close as they got before they dealt him and had to rebuild AGAIN. Sacramento has stayed in the irrelevant zone and nothing has changed until they added talented players like Rudy Gay and Rajon Rondo where they could hypothetically make the playoffs.
Tankers like to point to OKC as proof that tanking will work. What I say to them is, 1. How many championships does OKC have? and 2. For every OKC, there is also Sacramento, Washington, Minnesota, Charlotte, and plenty of others who have spent years in the lottery and have come up short until some of them finally nailed their selection, and those that haven't done so have to wait until they do.
The Celtics have rebuilt quicker than we expected, and some point to Danny making the "wrong moves" when really he's made basically all the best moves he can make at this point post KG-trade. They are blaming the wrong guy in their mindset. The guy they should blame is our head coach. Brad Stevens is a wizard and makes this team as good as it is. No matter how well we may be playing, the matter of the fact is the Celtics don't have any elite talent on their roster and shouldn't be this good on paper, but Brad makes this team overachieve exponentially. On paper, the C's shouldn't be any better than Portland right now, but they are much better because of Brad. He's absolutely the ideal coach for this team going forward, and I hope we never lose him. If tankers want the Celtics to start tanking, they're going to have advocate for Danny to fire Brad for that to happen, and if anyone wants Brad fired, then they are total idiots.
The reason why I bring this up is because if say Danny does blow this team up the way it's currently constructed, it sends a message that Danny completely disregards all the work that Brad has done. You think Brad is going to be happy with Danny getting rid of what he's built? Go through more frustrating losses? The league already knows how good of a coach Brad is considering the praise he's gotten from other coaches. If Danny does this, what's to stop Brad from ditching the Celtics to go coach another team that has more talent and won't get rid of guys that will help them win (Like say, Minnesota).
The Celtics will be fine. They have an ace in the hole with Brooklyn forking over their picks for the next three years. They are not a contender, but they have the assets to become one. Just give it some time.