Race to the Bottom thread

Padrino said:
Yeah, it's kind of hilarious to see Kings fans still fretting about "the tank", as if there's much else to be done in pursuit of it at this point in the season, with Domas done for the year (edit: oh, and LaVine and Hunter, too) Keegan unable to stay healthy, Schroder gone, and Carter and Plowden seeing more court time. Would I prefer DeRozan and Westbrook were bought out? Sure, but those guys have been more likely to lead the tank than get in its way.



Last night, they played a crummy Dallas Mavericks squad without Cooper Flagg. They actually managed a minutes distribution that favored their younger talent. They're 2-8 in their last 10, which is the same current win pace that Indiana and Brooklyn sport, while Washington is 3-7 in their last 10 and New Orleans and Utah have won enough to fall out of the tank race a bit. The Kings simply are not "working on" blowing their odds of a top-5 pick any more than the other bottom feeders. They remain positioned to finish with the worst record in the NBA in spite of their softened schedule.
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I think the 3 games against Indiana (1) and Brooklyn (2) become must Lins. We have a real chance of dropping to the seed which can easily drop you into 7 or 8
 
iowamcnabb said:
It’s not a poor job of tanking it’s the schedule. We played one of the hardest schedules through 3/4 of the season and now we are playing the likes of the Mavs, Pacers, Nets, Grizz every night (all teams trying to lose). I still think we end up 3rd or 4th. The reality is it’s going to require good luck no matter where we finish.
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The point is not counting on luck and being able to grab someone like Flemings.
 
iowamcnabb said:
Maybe the league would rather help middling teams instead of the very worst. Maybe the worst position to be in should not be the middle? If done right, helping teams stuck in the middle get into playoff contention might be better business then helping teams that are intentionally trying to lose.
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I haven't read all of this thread but I do feel its worth pointing out the reason we got this bad is because that is exactly who we were all this time. Picking in the back half of the lottery most of the time.

This is the first year since possibly 08-09 that a tank was in play. That year we clearly didn't enter the year with a tank, the Maloofs thought they had the Midas touch and started firing coaches left and right because the Golden Years were over.

We got "good" players in Reke, Boogie, Fox, Haliburton without needing a top 3 pick. I just wonder what the solution might be and if it would truly be a death sentence to us, or if we get one or two fringe good players that lead us to mediocrity, a new system could actually help us get to the next level.

The problem is : a) teams that reach a point of no return may never get to mediocre. b) would a team that trades their pick perversely have incentive to finish 10-14??? It might actually be easier to win 33 games than it is to win 18 and look like an honest team doing it.

It just gets you back to the point that maybe what we have now works. I think a few reasonable tweaks should be a) the Pacers or any team that makes it to the conference finals or better should be excluded from a top 5 pick the following year. b) a team like the Jazz (or 76ers) that has blatantly gamed the system should get the Hinkie punishment. Blackball GMs.
 
The_Jamal said:
We won off the back of:

2-way contract
23rd overall pick
42nd overall pick
Former lotto pick with like 800 career minutes
Guy we signed 3 weeks into the year because no one wanted him.
Former bust PG we signed 5 days ago


Again, how do we tank this harder?
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Players don't tank. If losing was the only objective our "good" vets were the way.

That's why this was the "perfect" tank, and probably done under Vivek's nose.
 
pdxKingsFan said:
Players don't tank. If losing was the only objective our "good" vets were the way.

That's why this was the "perfect" tank, and probably done under Vivek's nose.
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i said this before, but SOMEONE should explain to doug what the "timeouts" rule is.

i don't think he even KNOWS it, but it sets up a PERFECT way for doug to tank WHILE improving his "stature" as a "teaching coach"

this is especially true now that most of the "vets" are shut down.

the "timeout rule" is that you get seven per game, but one (each quarter) is a "mandatory" (to sell product during commercials) - if you haven't called one in the allotted time, the ref calls one at the next dead ball and assesses it to your team.

however, NOTHING prohibits a (smart) coach from using all his timeouts in the first half (or even the first quarter)

so, each and every time that max fails to rotate on defense or nique takes a bad shot when a "good pass" is available, or devin drives to the basket and loses the ball when there is a good three point shooter open in the corner, EACH AND EVERY TIME a young player makes a mistake that he can LEARN from, coach calls a timeout and speaks directly to that young player, with the rest of the team "all ears" (learning, learning) and VOILA, you get a reputation as a "teaching coach" (and your young players get a chance to "improve")

postgame, players get asked, "what did you learn when doug called his FIFTH timeout in the first quarter?"

and you know what the "penalty" is for doing that?

absolutely NOTHING.

in fact, they give you EXTRA timeouts.

you COULD (following the "rules") call seven timeouts in the first five minutes of the game and THEN you can't "call" any more (or it is a technical foul).

BUT the refs will continue to assess a mandatory timeout to your team in EACH quarter - theoretically, you could wind up with with ELEVEN (teaching) timeouts every game.

of course, silver will change the rules before every team that wants to tank but also look good in doing it follows this model.

imagine, it's a close game down the stretch but the other team has three times out, while you have NONE.

that's a pretty good "tankvantage"
 
Thinking about my last two posts... what if they came up with some mutually agreed upon composite player ranking and then sorted by lowest team score to assign draft entry selection order? It is similar to Cap's GM ranking idea, except it might be slightly more objective if it was done more analytically than feels.

Since players are almost always playing for their next contract even in a tank it would really make it harder to tank simply by not playing your best players because they would count against you anyways.

Although then you wonder how Deebo, Russ and Zach fit into such a metric.
 
eleventy said:
i said this before, but SOMEONE should explain to doug what the "timeouts" rule is.

i don't think he even KNOWS it, but it sets up a PERFECT way for doug to tank WHILE improving his "stature" as a "teaching coach"

this is especially true now that most of the "vets" are shut down.

the "timeout rule" is that you get seven per game, but one (each quarter) is a "mandatory" (to sell product during commercials) - if you haven't called one in the allotted time, the ref calls one at the next dead ball and assesses it to your team.

however, NOTHING prohibits a (smart) coach from using all his timeouts in the first half (or even the first quarter)

so, each and every time that max fails to rotate on defense or nique takes a bad shot when a "good pass" is available, or devin drives to the basket and loses the ball when there is a good three point shooter open in the corner, EACH AND EVERY TIME a young player makes a mistake that he can LEARN from, coach calls a timeout and speaks directly to that young player, with the rest of the team "all ears" (learning, learning) and VOILA, you get a reputation as a "teaching coach" (and your young players get a chance to "improve")

postgame, players get asked, "what did you learn when doug called his FIFTH timeout in the first quarter?"

and you know what the "penalty" is for doing that?

absolutely NOTHING.

in fact, they give you EXTRA timeouts.

you COULD (following the "rules") call seven timeouts in the first five minutes of the game and THEN you can't "call" any more (or it is a technical foul).

BUT the refs will continue to assess a mandatory timeout to your team in EACH quarter - theoretically, you could wind up with with ELEVEN (teaching) timeouts every game.

of course, silver will change the rules before every team that wants to tank but also look good in doing it follows this model.

imagine, it's a close game down the stretch but the other team has three times out, while you have NONE.
(that results in free throws) but the player makes the "chal;lenge" sign to the coach because he KNPOPWS the tape will show that the foull was on the other guy, but, guiess what
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as someone else pointed out, by using all your timeouts early, you protect yourself (as a coach) from having to "challenge a call", when, say, a veteran player has a foul called on him (that will result in free throws by your opponent), but the player passionately makes the "challenge it" hand sign but guess what?

the coach CAN'T challenge because he doesn't have a timeout - he has tied his own hands and instead of the foul call being reversed and YOUR team making a couple of free throws, the OTHER team gets the free throws (and your player's foul total increases).

now THAT is a "Double Tankvantage".
 
Say what you will, but if they end up with the 5th-7th pick in this draft for whatever reason, it's going to be tough to accept. If it happens to be 5th, less so, because one of the top lead guards will be available there.

Imagine going through this horrible season, winning 1-2 extra late season games with whatever justification, ending up with the 3rd worse record....and then getting the 6th or 7th pick
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
Say what you will, but if they end up with the 5th-7th pick in this draft for whatever reason, it's going to be tough to accept. If it happens to be 5th, less so, because one of the top lead guards will be available there.

Imagine going through this horrible season, winning 1-2 extra late season games with whatever justification, ending up with the 3rd worse record....and then getting the 6th or 7th pick
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Good chance of it happening.
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
Say what you will, but if they end up with the 5th-7th pick in this draft for whatever reason, it's going to be tough to accept. If it happens to be 5th, less so, because one of the top lead guards will be available there.

Imagine going through this horrible season, winning 1-2 extra late season games with whatever justification, ending up with the 3rd worse record....and then getting the 6th or 7th pick
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I'll ask you since the other guy cant answer the question.

How would you have tanked harder last night? Outside of purposefully telling the players to lose the game?

Do you bench Max for playing well? Carter or Nique? The 2way Plowden was great, do you bench him?
 
pdxKingsFan said:
Thinking about my last two posts... what if they came up with some mutually agreed upon composite player ranking and then sorted by lowest team score to assign draft entry selection order? It is similar to Cap's GM ranking idea, except it might be slightly more objective if it was done more analytically than feels.

Since players are almost always playing for their next contract even in a tank it would really make it harder to tank simply by not playing your best players because they would count against you anyways.

Although then you wonder how Deebo, Russ and Zach fit into such a metric.
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I think this would be similar to my idea. It's not exactly the same, but one thing that it would do is that it would remove the direct connection between team record and draft order. In that sense it works towards the same goal.

Basically, this is an objective way to perform a *part* of the subjective rankings that I have proposed. I would expect teams (GMs, front offices, owners, whoever would actually rank) to take a few more things into account that simply aggregate player ranking, though I imagine that a subjective (or even, team-internally, an objective) aggregate player ranking would be a large part of what would go into a team's list.

Additionally, I would expect contracts and cap status to be factored in (could potentially be included by making a more complicated ranking system that accounts for that). I would also expect that teams would account for expected improvement/aging of players in the future. Haliburton is worth "nada" this year, but teams know he's coming back. Can any composite player ranking actually capture that? Another thing that teams can do is they can subjectively punish teams for tanking, if that's what they want to do. Did you blatantly tank by, I don't know, trading Luka for AD? Well, shoot, maybe some teams will downgrade your slot on the list for that.

Another thing that does worry me about *any* objective metric is that if a team knows the metric, they can tank to the metric. Under a proposal like this losing games is no longer relevant - but players playing poorly is! We don't believe that players "tank" - but do we really want front offices to exhort their players to do so anyway? I'd be at least a bit worried about that. "Hey, Zach, can you come up short on 1 of every 4 threes you take, just to give us a nudge? We'll make it worth your while in your next extension..." That does worry me a bit - and honestly something like that worries me a lot more than "All the teams will vote to give good picks to large markets because reasons."

So there are a few aspects of a proposal like this that I think come up a bit short relative to my suggestion, and it does seem like implementation is a bit trickier in the sense that a mutually-agreeable composite player ranking (potentially very complicated, if it is going to deal with some of the issues I brought up) has to be developed in the first place.

I suspect it probably would be better than what we have now, though!
 
Capt. Factorial said:
I think this would be similar to my idea. It's not exactly the same, but one thing that it would do is that it would remove the direct connection between team record and draft order. In that sense it works towards the same goal.

Basically, this is an objective way to perform a *part* of the subjective rankings that I have proposed. I would expect teams (GMs, front offices, owners, whoever would actually rank) to take a few more things into account that simply aggregate player ranking, though I imagine that a subjective (or even, team-internally, an objective) aggregate player ranking would be a large part of what would go into a team's list.

Additionally, I would expect contracts and cap status to be factored in (could potentially be included by making a more complicated ranking system that accounts for that). I would also expect that teams would account for expected improvement/aging of players in the future. Haliburton is worth "nada" this year, but teams know he's coming back. Can any composite player ranking actually capture that? Another thing that teams can do is they can subjectively punish teams for tanking, if that's what they want to do. Did you blatantly tank by, I don't know, trading Luka for AD? Well, shoot, maybe some teams will downgrade your slot on the list for that.

Another thing that does worry me about *any* objective metric is that if a team knows the metric, they can tank to the metric. Under a proposal like this losing games is no longer relevant - but players playing poorly is! We don't believe that players "tank" - but do we really want front offices to exhort their players to do so anyway? I'd be at least a bit worried about that. "Hey, Zach, can you come up short on 1 of every 4 threes you take, just to give us a nudge? We'll make it worth your while in your next extension..." That does worry me a bit - and honestly something like that worries me a lot more than "All the teams will vote to give good picks to large markets because reasons."

So there are a few aspects of a proposal like this that I think come up a bit short relative to my suggestion, and it does seem like implementation is a bit trickier in the sense that a mutually-agreeable composite player ranking (potentially very complicated, if it is going to deal with some of the issues I brought up) has to be developed in the first place.

I suspect it probably would be better than what we have now, though!
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I am not a wizard at this stuff. maybe I should ask an AI to build a fool proof model lol. My thoughts are you would account for a player like Haliburton somehow as still a top 20 talent, based on some expectation of post-injury return and age. The only way to completely wipe a good player off your books while keeping them on the roster would be like what Ainge has done to Lauri.

Maybe introducing a human element but one that can't be gamed would be acceptable. Blind the data somehow and put everyone in a room for a day with no internet or smarty phones and let them vote and weigh that in. But once people know who they are voting for they can game it.

A neat side effect of doing it this way would be trade demands to one team and buyout market could get very interesting. Would Spurs want Fox if they knew they'd be out of the lottery after making that trade, and if they did would it have compelled them to offer what many of us thought would be a fair package in return? Would the Wizards have taken AD and Trae and shelved them? 🤔🤔🤔
 
The_Jamal said:
I'll ask you since the other guy cant answer the question.

How would you have tanked harder last night? Outside of purposefully telling the players to lose the game?

Do you bench Max for playing well? Carter or Nique? The 2way Plowden was great, do you bench him?
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One thing that stood out during the action, is that I wouldn't have brought DeRozan back in to potentially hit some critical tough shots, had the game come down to the wire. A way to tank smarter, is to not close with any of the experienced players
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
Say what you will, but if they end up with the 5th-7th pick in this draft for whatever reason, it's going to be tough to accept. If it happens to be 5th, less so, because one of the top lead guards will be available there.

Imagine going through this horrible season, winning 1-2 extra late season games with whatever justification, ending up with the 3rd worse record....and then getting the 6th or 7th pick
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Something something winning culture so it’s all good!
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
One thing that stood out during the action, is that I wouldn't have brought DeRozan back in to potentially hit some critical tough shots, had the game come down to the wire. A way to tank smarter, is to not close with any of the experienced players
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He didn’t even get a chance to take a shot when he came back in though. He literally just stood there and watched as Devin, Precious, and Plowden went insane.
 
ShastaKingsFan said:
One thing that stood out during the action, is that I wouldn't have brought DeRozan back in to potentially hit some critical tough shots, had the game come down to the wire. A way to tank smarter, is to not close with any of the experienced players
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Derozan took 3 shots and a complete non-factor in a limited 25 minutes. Now if he played 36, took 20 fga and scored 32? Sure, lets talk about it. Monk played only 19, did take 12 shots, but was horrible.

I guess all the people complaining are being stupid and refuse to look at these games in context. Its hard to throw a more "tank" rotation out there than we did last night. The guys played well and we won. So literally, outside of his intentionally losing the game, we did everything we could on our end.
 
The_Jamal said:
Derozan took 3 shots and a complete non-factor in a limited 25 minutes. Now if he played 36, took 20 fga and scored 32? Sure, lets talk about it. Monk played only 19, did take 12 shots, but was horrible.

I guess all the people complaining are being stupid and refuse to look at these games in context. Its hard to throw a more "tank" rotation out there than we did last night. The guys played well and we won. So literally, outside of his intentionally losing the game, we did everything we could on our end.
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It's something to consider for more than just that single game. Could it possibly make a difference down the stretch? I'm looking ahead
 
The_Jamal said:
How would you have tanked last nights game harder? Outside of intentionally throwing the game?
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Exactly. The NBA better reward the Kings because what some of these teams are doing with this much season left is shameful. If it turns out the Kings have some legit young talent then that's definitely >>> being the worst team in the league. Just have to stay in that top 3 as far as lotto balls. The word is on the Kings is they have "nothing" right now. Well, if the young guys show out then that could mean a disappointing draft lottery night isn't a death sentence. That's not a bad thing. Just have to hope for the lucky bounce and the youth to continue to show out.
 
SacTownKid said:
Exactly. The NBA better reward the Kings because what some of these teams are doing with this much season left is shameful. If it turns out the Kings have some legit young talent then that's definitely >>> being the worst team in the league. Just have to stay in that top 3 as far as lotto balls. The word is on the Kings is they have "nothing" right now. Well, if the young guys show out then that could mean a disappointing draft lottery night isn't a death sentence. That's not a bad thing. Just have to hope for the lucky bounce and the youth to continue to show out.
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How can they reward the Kings, when a huge law firm is in charge of the random ball machine process? ;)😆
 
Tetsujin said:
Has a team tried actively shooting on their own basket yet?
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It might be time for Doug to institute a new offense where the players wear their jerseys over their head.

Doug Christie can go from the worst coach in the league to just playing the young guys and letting it ride. He's rubbed sand in his own face this season for no reason. If they lose they lose, if they win they win. People will buy that, not riding near 40 year olds in iso. That just leads to one of the most barren offseasons this franchise may ever have had. They have to build towards something before the year is over otherwise a single draft pick ain't saving ****. Some type of glimpse of the future has to be shown and it was in the Mavs game. Now, keep going.
 
Tetsujin said:
The Kings literally just lost for a month straight. If the bigger picture strategy is to lose for the tank, it’s been working perfectly.
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Would you plan ahead or make any sort of adjustment in how this is managed going into the last 20 games, if you thought there was a chance that a guaranteed top 5 pick, could be a difference of 1-2 games? or just let the chips fall where they may, because they've lost the most in the first 62 games?
 
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