Is tanking "cheating"? Poll added
- Thread starter JCTNKINGFAN
- Start date
As a moderator, I have now read the post in question in depth three times, once when it was posted, once when it was reported for moderation, and now, with you having specifically called it out. While the post takes a strong position, I still don't believe it deserved to be sanctioned. The writer made the case that tanking is cheating and that therefore if you are advocating for tanking you are advocating for cheating. I'm sure some will disagree in whole, some will disagree in part, and some will agree with this case, but it seems a fair point to raise.
It's true that the tone of the post was mildly combative. Then again, read through any discussion on tanking on KF.com in the last several months and tell me that the entire tone of the conversation is anything less than mildly combative, from both sides. The entire discussion is bordering on toxic, as evidenced by the fact that posters on both sides of the issue have either left the board or are threatening to leave the board over it.
Frankly, because of the toxic nature of the discussion and the seeming general inability of folks on either side of the issue to treat it in a restrained manner, I would prefer it if the entire discussion were off-limits for the time being. Of course, that seems to put us in the moderation business between a bit of a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if we allow people to lash out at each other, then everybody gets upset. But if we try to tone down the conversation then we've turned the place into North Korea, and we can't have that now, can we? Outside of everybody voluntarily deciding to treat everybody - EVEN THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH THEM - with respect, I don't think there's much of a way to satisfactorily solve this problem.
But I can't magically make everybody try to respect everybody else, and I really am at kind of a loss for what to do, so...here's a .gif of a puppy.
At least tell us that the writer of the post was warned immidiately. I got private messaged by a moderator because I called it unintelligent to argue against probabilities by naming one occasion even though that occasion is already included in the odds. I was told that I "have to stop with the insults". If I'm getting a warning for that, then that writer should get at least a warning too even if the mod possibly agrees with that ridiculous post. I really hope he/she got warned immediately because if not, the moderating is just horrible if its done by only warning people that disagrees with the moderator.
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jcassio
Starter
I must say, this is beginning to feel like a waste of precious time. I’ve criticized tanking in the past, but this year I chose to embrace losing for the obvious benefits of a better draft pick and the development of our promising youngsters. But our youngsters are doing better than I expected and we’re now playing ourselves out of a top 5 pick. So be it. I say embrace this team! Not the team you think you could have if all your planets lined up just right. Because we’ve got talent, and we will have even more talent next year. And that’s regardless of whether we tank our way to a top 5 pick or not.
A crippled Warriors team? how is this a sign that things are going down? By beating a crippled Warriors team twice?
No. Because it's no one else's business. Sometimes we'll post a Mod Note in a thread advising posters to stop doing X, but we don't announce warnings.
... And the only reason why anyone who's not a moderator knows that is because you said so. We're not in the practice of publicizing disciplinary action, and we're not going to start. And, lest it continue to be misunderstood, being PM'd by a moderator =/= disciplinary action.
You weren't warned. There is a formal warning process, and getting PM'd by a mod actually precedes that process, rather than existing as part of it.
Again, whether another poster receives any discipline is not going to be publicly disclosed to the board at large.
This message board is pretty much moderated in accordance with how the guy who pays the bills wants it to be moderated.
Well I hope that poster was contacted like I was. Would be pretty absurd if he was not don´t you think? (Yeah I know because of your policy you cant answer)
Well I don´t care what its called but this is a direct quote from one of the PMs "That's what the warning and infraction points were for and that's the only reason I started this conversation."
You dont want to call that a warning, fine I couldnt care less but my point was that hopefully that another guy also got messaged by one of the mods.
And btw (this is not directed at you but a general note), that ridiculous post got like 10+(?) likes. I´m not sure what conclusions I should draw from that but none of those conclusions are positive.
kingsfan1984
Starter
Well its pretty easy actually...Sampson and Cooley take all of ZBO and KKs mins and Bruno gets all the time Temple and Carter have had.....that would have at least ensured we dont pass up Chicago the Nets and Knicks.
Then, encourage Fox Skal and WCS to work on their 3pt shooting running plays for those shots so thry become more comfortable with that range for next year.
kingsfan1984
Starter
You're free to ask them yourself, so long as you're aware that you're not entitled to a response.
I'm not sure that anyone who disagrees with that post was meant to draw a positive conclusion from it. All I'm willing to say on the record is that the post has not been publicly endorsed by anyone on the Mod Staff.
sactowndog
All-Star
Only 4 teams have not had a top 3 draft pick in the last quarter century:
Sacramento, New York, Indiana, Phoenix
Not surprisingly all of those teams have struggled.
Sacramento despite being one of the worst franchises over that time has picked 5-10 11 of those 25 years. We are well on pace to do so again. Sacramento is the definition of organizational bad luck and stupidity.
KingsFanSince85
All-Star
I just read through the last couple pages of this thread. I see there’s a lot of unnecessary drama going on. I don’t get why some take dissenting opinions so seriously or would threaten to leave the board over it. Lots of folks don’t agree with me and I don’t agree with many others, but I wouldn’t leave the board over it nor would be want anyone to leave because of me.
I agree with some of the mods who have stated that the key is remaining civil and showing at least some respect. That’s not at all a difficult thing to do. But whatever.
The main thing I wanted to restate is my view on ‘tanking’. IMO, tanking is losing on purpose. Or fielding a team that you are certain will lose aka a G league roster. I’m against all of that.
I don’t want the Kings players to purposely try to lose. I don’t want Joerger or the front office fielding starting lineups of Jakar, Cooley, and some G league call ups and letting them get 30+ minutes per night just to maximize the potential to lose. At the same time, I don’t want to see vets with no long term future getting the same type of burn, including shots down the stretch.
I want the team to play the kids they’ve hitched their future too. I want to see Jackson, Skal, Fox, Bogie, WCS, Mason, and Hield playing 30+ and on the court during crunch time taking the big shots and making the decisions.
If the Kings are good enough to win these games doing that, I’m totally ok with it. I just don’t want them playing their way out of the top half of the lottery on the strength of Zach Randolph, VC, Kosta, or Temple. Those guys shouldn’t be playing meaningful minutes at the end of games or having plays called for them. Win with the kids or not at all. But in no way lose on purpose.
That’s my take on it.
I agree with some of the mods who have stated that the key is remaining civil and showing at least some respect. That’s not at all a difficult thing to do. But whatever.
The main thing I wanted to restate is my view on ‘tanking’. IMO, tanking is losing on purpose. Or fielding a team that you are certain will lose aka a G league roster. I’m against all of that.
I don’t want the Kings players to purposely try to lose. I don’t want Joerger or the front office fielding starting lineups of Jakar, Cooley, and some G league call ups and letting them get 30+ minutes per night just to maximize the potential to lose. At the same time, I don’t want to see vets with no long term future getting the same type of burn, including shots down the stretch.
I want the team to play the kids they’ve hitched their future too. I want to see Jackson, Skal, Fox, Bogie, WCS, Mason, and Hield playing 30+ and on the court during crunch time taking the big shots and making the decisions.
If the Kings are good enough to win these games doing that, I’m totally ok with it. I just don’t want them playing their way out of the top half of the lottery on the strength of Zach Randolph, VC, Kosta, or Temple. Those guys shouldn’t be playing meaningful minutes at the end of games or having plays called for them. Win with the kids or not at all. But in no way lose on purpose.
That’s my take on it.
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Hansel
Bench
I agree with you, totally.
But, being honest, these are not "real games". That's the problem.
What's the pro in beating Warriors bench? Or the Grizzlies/Hawks/Suns?
I'm not pro-tanking with a young team, I really don't know what to wish for.
Everybody (or at least almost everybody) seems to agree on some things:
-Never ask any young guys to "half ass it"
-Never win these meaningles games because of vets
-Draft position is very important
I think these three things can be combined to a principle: Play mostly young guys and sit the vets as much as possible.
I think most of us can agree that acting upon that principle is mathematically and logically the smartest thing to do. Thats not the fun ideological way of thinking where you can fool yourself into thinking that we are already so good that we dont need to draft a franchise player and therefore we can have more fun trying to get to 30 wins. Unfortunately usually dismissing the math and the facts doesnt lead to smartest actions so I really hope we can be a bit smarter for the rest of the season before its too late
Gliesian
Bench
Problem is that already happened at the beginning of the year. We have at least 5 extra wins from Zbo hero ball. The vets mentoring helped the young guys' confidence and development at the cost of a high draft pick.
Imo, the kids could have done that on their own, but it would take another half year at least. Coincidentally (or not), the mentoring method fits in with Vlade's time frame to be good.
I agree. In the last 20 games of the season, losing teams will play young players. Playoff teams will rest star players. Other teams will give out NBA tryouts to GLeague players. In this year's special case, we have 6-7 tanking teams who are purposely trying to lose games. How does getting a win vs. any of these teams help us in the future? I'd like to hear a serious answer from all the people who think linners are over their heads.
In previous years, I saw a lot of people who say that these wins will carry into the next season...but we know that it obviously didn't. We also saw a lot of people say that it would create a winning culture...which it obviously didn't. What makes this year different than those years? We had a young DeMarcus Cousins, Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Isaiah Thomas, Ben McLemore, etc too.
What makes this year any different? Blind hope? Fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What about when you get fooled the 10th time? Being a Kings fan is hard.
I can't complain about last night because the young guys won the game.
It's just the Lin side of me is shaking his head because at the end of the year when we come across a no doubt loss type game....of course the Warriors are missing 3 of their top 4 players and we come out of it with a win.
The Kings are going to wind up winning against the tanking teams and the teams resting their players for the playoffs. Part of it is the stupidity of the franchise and the other part of it is because our "scrubs" are better than the scrubs on the rest of the tanking teams. I former I've complained about but you can't complain about the latter.
It's just the Lin side of me is shaking his head because at the end of the year when we come across a no doubt loss type game....of course the Warriors are missing 3 of their top 4 players and we come out of it with a win.
The Kings are going to wind up winning against the tanking teams and the teams resting their players for the playoffs. Part of it is the stupidity of the franchise and the other part of it is because our "scrubs" are better than the scrubs on the rest of the tanking teams. I former I've complained about but you can't complain about the latter.
sactowndog
All-Star
Fair enough but if you want to get and exceed in the playoffs that is how the game is played. It’s not a shock most of the playoff teams have picked in the top 3, 3 or more times with Philly leading with 9 times in the past 25 years. The Kings with zero top 3 picks are likely a perpetual 35 win team. With 5-10 more coming years of futilely picking 7-15 with statistically predictable results.
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I was all on the "well we're young and are going to lose a lot" version of the tank.
But yeah - this is the point. The idea of playing the kids with vets and getting everyone meaningful reps is that it is better than practice. Throwing 2-3 keepers out with 2-3 garbage players means you may as well cancel the season and just practice. The other team doesn't play hard, you aren't drilling meaningful game situataions, and nobody gives 100. You also encourage the kids to play hero ball and develop bad habits.
This is why bad teams stay bad. Not because they tried too hard and wound up missing the next MJ. That happens once a generation and anyone who thinks Ayton is that guy didn't watch Thursday night.
The next MJ? Only Lebron holds that title. Also, basing Ayton's stock on 1 game is a bit silly.
I'm guessing it's not working out for Philadelphia right now...or the you know..Spurs and Tim Duncan.
Where do you get this stuff from? If you have some analytics or data to support those things, I would like to see it. We cant do anything about what the other team does, so why on earth would playing younger players like Cooley or Jakarr instead of vets mean that we arent "drilling meaningful game situations"? Why would it change so dramatically? And another weird assumption that the kids would "develope bad habits". Coach dictates the style of play and players will execute it. No reason player would develope bad habits because of that.
And again where did you get this from? Trying hard can mean a lot of things. For example in philly it ment playing a lot of different young dudes and advocating for tough style of play. They had a respectable coach that kept the guys playing hard, got rid of those who didnt (Okafor) and kept the flyers that they found and played hard (Covington, TJ, Holmes ect). Again I dont know who are you and the people that agree with you arguing against when you talk about trying hard. No one has suggested here that we shouldnt try hard. The principle has been clear: Look at the odds->Draft position is very important->Dont play the vets so at least they wont hurt our draft position. If you argue something, argue against that thought process instead of arguments no one has ever said.
I don't think that anybody has figured out how to quantify "meaningful minutes" yet. But I also don't think that absence of evidence is evidence of absence in this case, since there's no metric that I'm aware of that proves that meaningful minutes aren't a thing. It's possible that they just haven't figured out how to express it mathematically yet; it seems like something that could be quantified, but we don't even know if anybody's actively working on it. It would first require a standardized definition of what "meaningful minutes" are, and I suspect that whatever definition that you're working from differs from the one @pdxKingsFan is.
And, again, this requires defining parameters. Nobody's figured out how to quantify this yet, so you're basically arguing that he's wrong based on a definition that you're using, which may or may not be completely unrelated to the definition that he's using.
It's like having a discussion about being clutch: it was completely amorphous and pointless, and utterly dependent on "gut feelings" and the "eye test," until we settled on a standardized definition of "clutch" that enabled it to be quantified. But "clutch" was always a thing, even before we knew how to express it numerically. I tend to look at "meaningful minutes" and "trying hard" the same way. The math hasn't caught up to the conversation, but that doesn't mean that we need to table the conversation until it does.
And thats pretty much my point. In the mean time since we dont have any data or larger analysis, we should stay away from having such absolute opinions. Especially on cases like this that base soley on the assumption that playing vets instead of hard playing guys like Jakarr or Cooley would change the situation dramatically.
And same goes with all these abstract theories that assume that the benefit of doing something is so great that it automatically overpowers the proven large benefits of getting a good draft position.
That seems like an optimal way to run a classroom, but kind of a pointless way to run a sports-based message board.
This presupposes that all fans should be in it for "good draft position," which is perilously close to the "No True
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I was quite content to win under 20 games this season if that's how bad we were. I thought we were that bad. I didn't think so many teams would be actively trying to be as bad as they are. I just draw a line at we should do dumb horrible things to make sure we lose. I don't think it's a lack of failing to see the big picture, so much as what appears to be a disagreement that culture is real and that maybe, just maybe we are taking the right steps in that direction, acknowledging it and saying "ok, cool, I'm ok with what we're doing".
But on the other hand, one thing I find consistently funny is that so many who laugh off the culture thing say "well we're the Kings so..." If that's not an argument that culture is real, then I don't know what is.
eta: I guess for further clarification: I think that what we did this year was precisely what I expected. And other teams have for whatever reason (there's no LeBron/Duncan/Shaq can't miss guy that is worth destroying your season over) other teams have decided to just blatantly lose games. And yes, I do think "cheating" is an apt term to describe teams that have put 4 players on the court or intentionally taken a 5 second violation in a one possession game. I'm proud we won't sink to that depth and are seeing our plan out, even if that has lead to some unexpected wins and thanks to the blatant tankers we may pick 5-8 instead of top 3. That all remains to be seen. It's funny because I think most people believe that the NBA influences the lotto results and yet nobody wants to believe the Kings have earned any good karma here.
But on the other hand, one thing I find consistently funny is that so many who laugh off the culture thing say "well we're the Kings so..." If that's not an argument that culture is real, then I don't know what is.
eta: I guess for further clarification: I think that what we did this year was precisely what I expected. And other teams have for whatever reason (there's no LeBron/Duncan/Shaq can't miss guy that is worth destroying your season over) other teams have decided to just blatantly lose games. And yes, I do think "cheating" is an apt term to describe teams that have put 4 players on the court or intentionally taken a 5 second violation in a one possession game. I'm proud we won't sink to that depth and are seeing our plan out, even if that has lead to some unexpected wins and thanks to the blatant tankers we may pick 5-8 instead of top 3. That all remains to be seen. It's funny because I think most people believe that the NBA influences the lotto results and yet nobody wants to believe the Kings have earned any good karma here.
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I dont see why sports discussion is so different from other conversations. Refraining from absolutes in situations where you dont have absolute proof or data sounds pretty good to me even in sports discussion.
Because taking the emotion out of sports discussions is kind of pointless. Discussing sports in no context other than "absolute proof" and "data" rather defeats the purpose of consuming sports-as-entertainment. Fanaticism and speaking in absolutes kind of go hand-in-hand.
Really, most people believe that? I think that's a reach. Good draft karma hasn't ever helped us in the past. But I agree with pretty much everything else you said. Good post.
I saw us winning 23 games this year and we got there a little faster than I expected but you can chalk that up almost entirely to Fox's late game heroics. I also didn't anticipate the fervor with which other teams would attack the tank but given recent history I probably should have.
Taking the emotion out of this discussion would be perfetct. This is about the direction of our franchise so there is no need for emotions. This discussion is about what our franchise should do in order to be as good as possible in the next season and in the future so the less emotion the better and thats obvious. Uneccesary emotions just leads to a conversations where its easy to dismiss math and facts ect
Good luck trying to take emotion out of the conversation. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't. FANS should be emotional, it's who they are and what they do. This board is all about FANS talking about the team they love, emotions and all. If our fans weren't emotionally invested in the Kings, they would have given up talking about them a long time ago.
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