Race to the Bottom thread

^^ we are really the only "tanking" team not employing tactics like this... not only are they not "resting" players, but Domas was not extensively out with his injury (well, ok, they maybe trying to trade him)

But something tells me this team will still be the only team past this deadline not aggressively pursuing tactics like this..

you can call it sportsmanship or stupidity, not sure which (team has never embraced the tank under Vivek's watch fully, or has seemed to know how to)
 
Joshyjosh31 said:
Gonna be full next year if we draft anyone in the top six look at Dallas they almost burnt that arena down till silver gifted them Flagg. Now they get decent crowds and that city isn’t Sacramento and we didn’t trade an mvp out of nowhere
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I think it's difficult for the "average fan" to cope with a losing season like this one because their eyes just aren't on the draft. I don't imagine there are a ton of Kings fans who attend games and are vigorously tracking prospects and the tank race. But if the Kings are able to ship out a few more veterans in the off-season and draft a blue chip prospect, once the uniform is on, the fans will be locked back in to see the "new guy" and the fresh start that marketing materials will promise. The narrative this season was "gap year", and that's not an ideal way to sell tickets. There's no hope to attach to one's fandom. So I agree; next season should see at least some of the fans return to the Golden 1 Center.
 
LPKingsFan said:
Doesn’t help that prices did not take a “gap year”
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actually, they HAVE "lowered prices", just in a different way...

the asking price is still high (especially for STH), but go to the map for any game and the "pink dots" (resales) are QUITE a lot lower than the "blue dots".

buy pink - avoid blue

and of course, you can easily buy a cheap seat ($20) and sit in the lower bowl - ushers seem more reluctant to ask people, "may i see your ticket?" when it's on your phone and not so easily available ("it's here in my bag somewhere")

so, there are deals NOW, but they'll make up for it later,
 
pdxKingsFan said:
Shower thought: Can you imagine how hosed we would be right now had we made the playoffs in 2024 and given ATL our 24 draft selection, freeing us up to trade this year's pick to put the final pieces on the beam team?!?
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Well Harrison Barnes and De'Aaron Fox make up 2/5ths of the starting lineup for the #2 team in the West right now. So I think it would depend on what those final pieces were.
 
hrdboild said:
Well Harrison Barnes and De'Aaron Fox make up 2/5ths of the starting lineup for the #2 team in the West right now. So I think it would depend on what those final pieces were.
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I worry it would have been one of the rumored players we were already pursuing. I really think the pause in giving away a 27 pick was that Monte was worried if it bombed it would be the year we bottom out because Fox walks without re-signing. As it turns out, we (hopefully) bottomed out this year.
 
pdxKingsFan said:
I worry it would have been one of the rumored players we were already pursuing. I really think the pause in giving away a 27 pick was that Monte was worried if it bombed it would be the year we bottom out because Fox walks without re-signing. As it turns out, we (hopefully) bottomed out this year.
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Monte probably shouldn't have given the Spurs the right to swap picks with us in 2031 in the Harrison Barnes deal then. 5 years is a long time but that might end up being just as disastrous as simply trading away a pick.
 
hrdboild said:
Monte probably shouldn't have given the Spurs the right to swap picks with us in 2031 in the Harrison Barnes deal then. 5 years is a long time but that might end up being just as disastrous as simply trading away a pick.
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No - it was stupid and called out then as such. I admit to being someone who liked Barnes and thought he was a fair value contract. He clearly still has value in this league given he's slid comfortably into the role of being "the worst starter on a high seeded playoff team". uggh. We could have surely gotten that deal done without that pick swap and if not maybe just moved along.
 
Joshyjosh31 said:
Gonna be full next year if we draft anyone in the top six look at Dallas they almost burnt that arena down till silver gifted them Flagg. Now they get decent crowds and that city isn’t Sacramento and we didn’t trade an mvp out of nowhere
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Possibly. Hard to know. But if we draft another Bagley ... a high draft position on its own doesn't mean squat.

Silver didn't gift anyone anything.
 
I'm not sure we will be able to fend off Brooklyn for long, just no talent and not the easiest remaining schedule and on a roll like us (and how is Jordi doing who I know many liked?)

Washington/Indiana/Utah all got significantly better at the deadline, and hopefully New Orleans gets a brain, so thats good
 
They were talking about the Pacers on the Hoop collective today. They were speculating on what they might do. Do they tank super hard and give themselves a 50 percent shot at keeping the pick or do they win enough to get to 10th so that they get one quality player in this draft and push the pick to 31. We will likely know in a couple weeks what the plan is.
 
iowamcnabb said:
They were talking about the Pacers on the Hoop collective today. They were speculating on what they might do. Do they tank super hard and give themselves a 50 percent shot at keeping the pick or do they win enough to get to 10th so that they get one quality player in this draft and push the pick to 31. We will likely know in a couple weeks what the plan is.
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Tank super hard seems like the obvious choice here. This team without Hali kinda stinks, and they're 11 games out of the play-in with 31 to go. Swapping out Mathurin for Zubac isn't going to get them to the play-in. Trying to win games just increases the odds that they get a lower-level pick and have to give up an unprotected 2031 for it. I think they tank hard.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Tank super hard seems like the obvious choice here. This team without Hali kinda stinks, and they're 11 games out of the play-in with 31 to go. Swapping out Mathurin for Zubac isn't going to get them to the play-in. Trying to win games just increases the odds that they get a lower-level pick and have to give up an unprotected 2031 for it. I think they tank hard.
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That’s likely what they do but one clarification, they were arguing that they could go for the 10th pick, not the tenth spot in the post season. The idea being that 1/3 of the league is currently trying to lose and it would be easy to “fall” in the standings. Zubac and Toppin coming back will certainly make them better, we will see if they play them.

A bit of an all in move for the Pacers as they potentially cannot trade any firsts in 28-32 although they will have access to the ‘33 this offseason.
 
KingsRUs said:
^^ we are really the only "tanking" team not employing tactics like this... not only are they not "resting" players, but Domas was not extensively out with his injury (well, ok, they maybe trying to trade him)

But something tells me this team will still be the only team past this deadline not aggressively pursuing tactics like this..

you can call it sportsmanship or stupidity, not sure which (team has never embraced the tank under Vivek's watch fully, or has seemed to know how to)
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It's definitely not stupidity. Stupidity is purposely losing games when the entire point of the league, and sports in general, is for competition. Stupidity is resting healthy players despite fans paying inordinate sums of money on season and single game tickets.

The KINGS org is doing it right (about the only thing they do right). The other org's have zero integrity and zero competitive spirit. And make no mistake, it's the org's -- not the players. The players don't care about draft position and picks. They care about winning.

The fans that largely subscribe to this nonsense are also those with zero integrity, choosing the follow the cheating/short cut crowd at chow time, and those that most likely are not season ticket holders and not dumping much money into the team.
 
iowamcnabb said:
That’s likely what they do but one clarification, they were arguing that they could go for the 10th pick, not the tenth spot in the post season. The idea being that 1/3 of the league is currently trying to lose and it would be easy to “fall” in the standings. Zubac and Toppin coming back will certainly make them better, we will see if they play them.

A bit of an all in move for the Pacers as they potentially cannot trade any firsts in 28-32 although they will have access to the ‘33 this offseason.
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Barring a disastrous drop in the lottery, they're still 11 games out of getting into the 10th pick outright. That's why I mentioned the play-in, as they'd be basically one spot (and right now, zero games) out of the play-in if they got to the 10th pick anyway. I don't see them making any noise in the playoffs, but I figured that would be the goal, if they tried to win.

I guess they could actually be shooting for a best-of-the-rest at #10 with an eye on somebody like Hannes Steinbach or Brayden Burries or...? on the premise that 10 in this draft is better than unprotected in 2031 (and the future Stepien trade flexibility), but I sure wouldn't feel very comfortable doing that.
 
hrdboild said:
In response to talent evaluators, just like anything else in life it seems to me that the standard for who gets a job is rarely who is the most qualified. We've seen a lot of Kings front offices blow a lot of draft picks. A poorly run organization may be hiring the wrong people, not listening to them, failing to provide them the resources needed for them to do their jobs effectively, etc. Probably all of the above.

You are using a statistical model to grade an end product (VORP) which makes no account of anything that happens between the draft and the sum total of a player's career. Obviously the situations are different but what is the same about the draft model you've proposed and the hypothetical production studio scenario I proposed as an analogy is what I am intending to communicate to you. If you have a statistical model which takes point A and point Z and eliminates everything in between as irrelevant, I feel personally that I cannot determine anything useful from that model. You also seem dismissive of the concept of an analogy in general. It's simply a rhetorical tool to communicate a concept without getting bogged down in trying to first agree on all of the relevant terminology involved. I'm not going to try to use the terminology of statistical analysis with you because I don't know the definitions of those words precisely enough not to bungle them.

The concept of "best player available" is itself a misleading phrase. In order to know that definitively you would have to know the future. Ah, but you say, we do know the future! At least in regard to players from past drafts, right? No we don't. We know one small slice of it -- what happens when each player is drafted to one particular team. That makes up a tiny percentage of the possible outcomes. I would call that statistically insignificant in relation to the percentages of possible outcomes which are not represented. And that's what you're basing all of your data on. We say we want the BPA but since we're talking about players who then need to be part of a team, their fit is always relevant to outcome. Tyrese Haliburton, for instance, may finish his career as the best player by VORP from the 2020 draft. Your model would credit the Kings for drafting him even though nearly all of his career will have been played somewhere else. Why would a team trade a player they deemed BPA in the draft less than 2 years into his career? Roster balance, a desire to compete sooner, maximizing the value of another player who plays the same position. In short: fit.



This reads to me like you're just assuming your own conclusion. If I'm picking at #6 what do I care that most BPA are picked in the top 5? I'm not interested in most, I'm interested in who do I pick at #6. I get that this whole exercise is meant to point out that according to you if I'm not picking at #1-5 then I'm more or less screwed. Or at least I think that's what this was about. I think what it actually shows is that NBA teams on average are pretty good about determining who the top 5 most talented players are in a given draft year if not the precise order. And the typical talent distribution of a single draft class is such that the remaining 55 players taken are much more dependent on the fit situation in order to find success in the NBA. So if I were a front office executive, I would spend my time and energy focusing on what I can control which is: (1) the process I'm using to determine who will succeed in my team situation both in the immediate future and long-term and (2) all of the other factors which make up that team situation in the first place.
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Compressing this quite a bit; I'm not looking at this from the perspective of a front office exec or a talent scout, I'm looking at it from the position as a fan. As a fan, it's useful for me to know whether the team is headed in a good direction or a wrong direction.

As a fan, one thing I don't assume is that I can judge from the outside how good or bad a given front office is, as so much of those decisions are internal, and as you pointed out, teams replace their front offices every 5 years or so. The least presumptuous position to take is that the front office is average, so I'm measuring likely outcomes based on average performance.

I have already granted that I am assuming that teams picking in the top 5 are looking for BPA instead of best fit. (If you're picking in the top 5, it's generally expected that your team sucks, and you don't have other pieces you're trying to build around, that's the whole point of the draft.) Corollary to that is the assumption that BPA exists, that some players are simply better at being pro basketball players than others (again, why even have a draft if this weren't at least somewhat true?) I'm curious how much you'd push the opposite belief.

If you're picking at #6, then hopefully you're doing it as part of a multi-year project to rebuild, or you're already on the upswing after nabbing a franchise cornerstone type player previously. Because there's usually only one or two players that rise to that level every year. In order to feel happy about it as a fan, you're probably going to need to zoom out and have a longer term outlook.
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(I don't think there's anything particularly impressive about VORP compared to other career impact metrics, it was just conveniently available, and seemed to correlate with my intuition in dividing very good careers from great careers. Take it for what it's worth.)

And I don't have any particular problem with analogies as an explanatory tool. Often complex concepts are usefully explained in terms of the dynamics of simplified systems, (sports analogies are popular!) But if we're already talking about a topic that's used for simplified examples, it's of dubious value. At that level, I suspect the analogy is less about explanation, and more about obfuscation.
 
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