JJ Jansen on tanking

[Dave Gettleman's Shorts]

1 hour ago, Doc Holiday said:

Dude, if the Dallas Mavericks somehow magically ending up with the top overall pick, isn’t one of the clearest signs of it being rigged that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what is.

like nobody is actually believing this right?

Mavs had a 1.8% odds of winning the number 1 overall pick btw

In 2008, the Bulls had a 1.7% chance of winning the top pick which ended up being Chicago native, D-rose

[CPF4LIFE]

A team that was in the finals last year won the draft lottery the next year..... I cant get over this poo.

[Shocker]

The Mavs getting #1 is a travesty no doubt but the Spurs and 76ers getting 2 and 3 is fuggin criminal 

[SurvivalSloth]

4 hours ago, SmokinwithWilly said:

The 4 countries tournament was one of the greatest sporting events I've ever seen in pro sports of any genre.

It had no bearing on the season but those guys played playoff level hockey for an exhibition.  

I'm a hockey casual and really on tune in to watch the Canes during the playoffs. But I was HOOKED on the Four Nations Tourney. We need more of that!

[kungfoodude]

4 hours ago, SurvivalSloth said:

I'm a hockey casual and really on tune in to watch the Canes during the playoffs. But I was HOOKED on the Four Nations Tourney. We need more of that!

I think it will come back but to be honest, it probably can't be every year. Eventually it will lead to injuries and then questions will arise.

As a Canes fan, I would have been FURIOUS had any of our guys gotten knocked out for the season and jeopardized our Cup chances. I care absolutely nothing about the US winning that tournament in comparison to the Canes winning the Cup. One is neat, the other is why I am a season ticket holder.

[Khyber53]

On NFL tanking, I've been saying this for years: There's too much at stake from management to coaching to players for tanking to happen. And if a team were actually caught doing it, like an actual conspiracy, then we're talking Shoeless Joe levels of condemnation.

Excuse me, what's that? They've now forgiven Shoeless Joe? What about Charlie Hustle? Him, too? Hmmm. We're living in a post-ethics world aren't we? $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family? I guess this is the new norm.

 

[Icege]

29 minutes ago, Khyber53 said:

On NFL tanking, I've been saying this for years: There's too much at stake from management to coaching to players for tanking to happen. And if a team were actually caught doing it, like an actual conspiracy, then we're talking Shoeless Joe levels of condemnation.

Excuse me, what's that? They've now forgiven Shoeless Joe? What about Charlie Hustle? Him, too? Hmmm. We're living in a post-ethics world aren't we? $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family? I guess this is the new norm.

 

My head is spinning from a lifetime of, "If you see somebody jump off of a bridge does that mean you should do it too?" to the current, "I'M ABOUT TO SWANTON BOMB A VEHICLE ON THE INTERSTATE BELOW, LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE FOR EARLY ACCESS TO MY NEW MEMECOIN!"

[t96]

9 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

The new cap rules make it more difficult to simply outspend and create super teams, actually. 

We are in the infancy of the impacts but most observers expect there to be somewhat of a shift in league behaviors.

Still it’s unfair, the massive markets will be able to spend way more than teams like the Hornets. Lakers, Celtics, etc. have a huge advantage

[WhoKnows]

16 hours ago, MHS831 said:

When the Pelicans were temporarily owned by the NBA in 2019, they had a 6% chance of winning the lottery.  Remarkably, obviously an act of diving intervention, they won the lottery.  This increased the value of the Pelicans. 

 

I easily believe the lottery is rigged. Dallas trades Luka to the Lakers to keep an aging Lakers relevant and surprise, beats the 1.8% odds. San Antonio has to be one of the luckiest stories and of course they got a big man after their history of big men (Robinson and Duncan). Cleveland gets LeBron.

Sucks yet again for the Hornets losing ground on the odds to miss out on Flagg and even the easy top 3.

[WhoKnows]

1 hour ago, Khyber53 said:

On NFL tanking, I've been saying this for years: There's too much at stake from management to coaching to players for tanking to happen. And if a team were actually caught doing it, like an actual conspiracy, then we're talking Shoeless Joe levels of condemnation.

Excuse me, what's that? They've now forgiven Shoeless Joe? What about Charlie Hustle? Him, too? Hmmm. We're living in a post-ethics world aren't we? $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family? I guess this is the new norm.

 

I don’t know why the tanking concept is not understood. Coaches and players are not involved at all. It’s always the front office. If we had actually traded players like we should have back in 2022, we would have effectively tanked and gotten a better pick than 9 so we lost all the draft picks to get Young. We traded CMC. We should have traded Burns for the haul and taken GB’s offer of a 1st for Moore. We could have easily traded anyone else.

We see it in every sport, every year. Trade deadlines where bad teams give up current assets for future assets. Unfortunately, we were stupid and decided we only wanted to trade CMC for peanuts even though we clearly had a plan to go after Young. We were dumb and there is no way you can tell me that we shouldn’t have tanked via trading away Burns, Moore and anyone else. We’d be a much better team right now had we had a fire sale and tanked the 2022 season.

Trading away your top players for future draft picks or prospects (baseball) is tanking. Shoeless Joe and the black Sox is not tanking. That’s point shaving/betting on your sport/team. Again, I just don’t get why this concept is so hard to get when MLB, NFL and NBA teams trade players for future assets every single year and usually end up with better draft slots (or at least odds since Hornets never win the lottery).

[Joe Bear]

19 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

I will say that the NBA lottery has been so obviously corrupt for years that it is disgraceful.

lol at “everyone” gets a chance at No. 1

[Icege]

33 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

I don’t know why the tanking concept is not understood. Coaches and players are not involved at all. It’s always the front office. If we had actually traded players like we should have back in 2022, we would have effectively tanked and gotten a better pick than 9 so we lost all the draft picks to get Young. We traded CMC. We should have traded Burns for the haul and taken GB’s offer of a 1st for Moore. We could have easily traded anyone else.

We see it in every sport, every year. Trade deadlines where bad teams give up current assets for future assets. Unfortunately, we were stupid and decided we only wanted to trade CMC for peanuts even though we clearly had a plan to go after Young. We were dumb and there is no way you can tell me that we shouldn’t have tanked via trading away Burns, Moore and anyone else. We’d be a much better team right now had we had a fire sale and tanked the 2022 season.

Trading away your top players for future draft picks or prospects (baseball) is tanking. Shoeless Joe and the black Sox is not tanking. That’s point shaving/betting on your sport/team. Again, I just don’t get why this concept is so hard to get when MLB, NFL and NBA teams trade players for future assets every single year and usually end up with better draft slots (or at least odds since Hornets never win the lottery).

I don’t think the issue here is that your perspective isn’t being understood. It’s clear imo - you’re suggesting that the front office should intentionally weaken the roster by offloading talent in exchange for future assets. If I'm misreading that, then disregard the rest because then that puts the disconnect on my side of the court.

But I believe the actual disconnect comes from the way it is being presented... as if tanking is always the optimal path forward. That framing overlooks very real consequences: financial losses from a disengaged fanbase, damage to team culture (say what you want about "culture-building" wins, but this team looks more united than it has since the Super Bowl run), and the difficulty in attracting/retaining talent when players don’t believe they’ll get a fair shot to compete during their already-limited careers.

Not every organization is in a position to go full teardown and when they gamble on the future at the expense of the present, they risk more than draft position... they risk credibility.

Edited 5 hours ago by Icege

[WhoKnows]

3 minutes ago, Icege said:

I don’t think the issue here is that your perspective isn’t being understood. It’s clear imo - you’re suggesting that the front office should intentionally weaken the roster by offloading talent in exchange for future assets. If I'm misreading that, then disregard the rest because then that puts the disconnect on my side of the court.

But I believe the actual disconnect comes from the way it is being presented... as if tanking is always the optimal path forward. That framing overlooks very real consequences: financial losses from a disengaged fanbase, damage to team culture (say what you want about "culture-building" wins, but this team looks more united than it has since the Super Bowl run), and the difficulty in attracting/retaining talent when players don’t believe they’ll get a fair shot to compete during their already-limited careers.

Not every organization is in a position to go full teardown and when they gamble on the future at the expense of the present, they risk more than draft position... they risk credibility.

I’m not suggesting that tanking is the right thing to do every time. I do think that if you have guys like Burns and Moore that you will trade anyway, then you should think about tanking and getting max value, especially if you want to grab a QB that might go 1st overall. We tried to do both. Trade CMC for picks but don’t take 3 1sts and a 2nd for Burns and Moore. Instead, we won a few games and then threw in Moore on a trade because we didn’t tank and we gave Burns away for a 2nd.

Can you honestly say that fully tanking, by trading away all our best guys who weren’t in future plans, in 2022 wouldn’t have made our team better now? We wanted a rookie QB and we didn’t extend the main guy we didn’t want to trade. We were 100% in full tear down and we could have been a playoff team last year if we used the 4 extra 1sts or 3 1sts and 2 2nds (counting picks saved on Young by being pick 3 or 4 not 9) on D.

Culture building is funny. It took three coaching changes to seemingly get there. Morgan and Canales weren’t in charge when we “protected” our culture. We still traded Burns and Moore, we just lost 3 first round picks in the process.

Also, do you think the Eagles are in a bad place because of their coach clearly tanking a game for a draft pick? Remember that? It was obvious and the coach was fired. The funny thing is that this is something teams do all the time but they add their stars (like Cam in 2016, CMC, Burns, etc.) to IR or rest them in week 16/17. Pederson was just dumb and made it obvious. He could have just sat his starters to start.

Anyway, did that incident tank risk their credibility? Did Barkley decide to not sign with them? Seems like their SB win and other SB visit say they are just fine. Winning makes culture, picking the right coach makes culture, trading away guys who are on other teams in a year for top picks and keeping more picks by having a better starting pick to trade up, does not impact culture. If it helps you win, culture will be fine, ask the Eagles.

[Icege]

10 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

I’m not suggesting that tanking is the right thing to do every time. I do think that if you have guys like Burns and Moore that you will trade anyway, then you should think about tanking and getting max value, especially if you want to grab a QB that might go 1st overall. We tried to do both. Trade CMC for picks but don’t take 3 1sts and a 2nd for Burns and Moore. Instead, we won a few games and then threw in Moore on a trade because we didn’t tank and we gave Burns away for a 2nd.

Can you honestly say that fully tanking, by trading away all our best guys who weren’t in future plans, in 2022 wouldn’t have made our team better now? We wanted a rookie QB and we didn’t extend the main guy we didn’t want to trade. We were 100% in full tear down and we could have been a playoff team last year if we used the 4 extra 1sts or 3 1sts and 2 2nds (counting picks saved on Young by being pick 3 or 4 not 9) on D.

Culture building is funny. It took three coaching changes to seemingly get there. Morgan and Canales weren’t in charge when we “protected” our culture. We still traded Burns and Moore, we just lost 3 first round picks in the process.

Also, do you think the Eagles are in a bad place because of their coach clearly tanking a game for a draft pick? Remember that? It was obvious and the coach was fired. The funny thing is that this is something teams do all the time but they add their stars (like Cam in 2016, CMC, Burns, etc.) to IR or rest them in week 16/17. Pederson was just dumb and made it obvious. He could have just sat his starters to start.

Anyway, did that incident tank risk their credibility? Did Barkley decide to not sign with them? Seems like their SB win and other SB visit say they are just fine. Winning makes culture, picking the right coach makes culture, trading away guys who are on other teams in a year for top picks and keeping more picks by having a better starting pick to trade up, does not impact culture. If it helps you win, culture will be fine, ask the Eagles.

Sure, there's definitely a chance that a fire sale in 2022 could've paid off but I don't think that's a certainty. It's not just about stockpiling the picks and bettering odds; it's about hitting on those picks, having a stable coaching staff to develop them, and keeping the locker room engaged. We didn't exactly have a model front office nor stable coaching staff in 2022.

It's worth noting that part of the reason that DJ had to be included in the trade up for #1 was because the Bears needed an immediate, proven WR1 to help Fields. It was him or another immediate first-round pick, not a future one like what was being offered for Burns (whom teams knew that things were shaky with and that they could afford to wait).

As for the Eagles, they recovered because the foundation was already in place. Pederson got flak and was ultimately fired (and was just fired again this offseason from the Jags). Their recovery was quick because the foundation was already in place: Howie Roseman and a solid roster (that included a stacked OL, a second year QB, and a veteran defense). Philly had a margin of error that just wasn't available to Carolina.

I'm not against using the draft to rebuild, but a full-on teardown comes with real consequences: fan disengagement, a fractured locker room, poor development, a losing environment... and I don't believe that we had the necessary leadership at the time to cleanly navigate it. That's a gamble that I want no part of. 

Now that we do have a staff that seems to be in complete alignment and building for the future rather than fighting for their jobs, I'm more inclined to observe their process and see where it leads rather than backseat driving with "perfect" hindsight.