To Tank or not to Tank, that is the question

[Kizzle]

mcadoo or shabazz...hmmm

What if Stern cheats for NO again? We could be past 4 again

 

[Len]

What if Stern cheats for NO again? We could be past 4 again

O great just what we need another #4 pick.

 

[Dr. Gymbo]

What if Stern cheats for NO again? We could be past 4 again

O great just what we need another #4 pick.

[video=youtube;31g0YE61PLQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ[/video]

 

[CardiacCavs]

I've been thinking a lot about this question. Originally I was very much in favor of getting another high draft pick. Yet, i'm getting increasingly worried about getting stuck in a cycle of getting high picks, yet not improving like Sacto, Toronto, etc. I'm starting to think that losing so much can have a negative impact on the attitudes of players like Kyrie and Waiters. I think Byron and Grant should try their best to win games, and try to avoid situations where "Kyrie sits out with headache" or other classic tanking scenarios. There are only a few players left on the roster who were part of the Lebron era and the success that accompanied it (yes we didn't win a title, but we were still a successful team). These new players know nothing but losing, and I want them to experience a taste of success and have hope that this team could improve in the future.

It's close, but I suppose i'm placing more importance on having a "winning culture" then getting a top 5 pick.



edit: plus our bench is so bad that we will probably end up with a pretty good pick anyways. Not to mention if we trade Andy (which I hope we don't), we would probably get a good pick, or young player.

 

[tsteele316]

I've been thinking a lot about this question. Originally I was very much in favor of getting another high draft pick. Yet, i'm getting increasingly worried about getting stuck in a cycle of getting high picks, yet not improving like Sacto, Toronto, etc. I'm starting to think that losing so much can have a negative impact on the attitudes of players like Kyrie and Waiters. I think Byron and Grant should try their best to win games, and try to avoid situations where "Kyrie sits out with headache" or other classic tanking scenarios. There are only a few players left on the roster who were part of the Lebron era and the success that accompanied it (yes we didn't win a title, but we were still a successful team). These new players know nothing but losing, and I want them to experience a taste of success and have hope that this team could improve in the future.

It's close, but I suppose i'm placing more importance on having a "winning culture" then getting a top 5 pick.

this logic doesn't make a lot of sense. kyrie and thompson are in their 2nd year, and waiters and zeller are rookies. gee hasn't been around that long either. the cavs are only in year 3 of their rebuild, and most of the player that drove the tank the last two seasons are gone. so, how exactly is cleveland having one more bad year going to create this culture of losing, when most of the core pieces haven't been here that long?

the teams that continuously frequent the lottery tend to do so because they draft players that either aren't that good, or have no idea how to mesh and play team basketball. and they usually squander their cap space on pedestrian players. if the cavs are doing that in 2 years, then maybe this argument might start to hold water.

 

[Jack Brickman]

I've been thinking a lot about this question. Originally I was very much in favor of getting another high draft pick. Yet, i'm getting increasingly worried about getting stuck in a cycle of getting high picks, yet not improving like Sacto, Toronto, etc. I'm starting to think that losing so much can have a negative impact on the attitudes of players like Kyrie and Waiters. I think Byron and Grant should try their best to win games, and try to avoid situations where "Kyrie sits out with headache" or other classic tanking scenarios. There are only a few players left on the roster who were part of the Lebron era and the success that accompanied it (yes we didn't win a title, but we were still a successful team). These new players know nothing but losing, and I want them to experience a taste of success and have hope that this team could improve in the future.

It's close, but I suppose i'm placing more importance on having a "winning culture" then getting a top 5 pick.

This team is going to lose plenty of games without resorting to the obvious "weak injuries" that most tanking teams pull. We're going to lose just by virtue of our team being too young and inexperienced.

I also don't buy into the concept of a culture of losing. Teams like Sacramento stay bad because their organizations are terrible. Just look at the Kings roster. There is plenty of talent, but none of it really fits together as a team should. Their primary problem was too many ball-stopping wing players, so to remedy that they signed Brooks (a ball-stopping wing) and Thornton (hey, another ball-stopping wing). The Kings don't have a culture of losing. They have a culture of incompetence, terrible owners, and a crappy front office.

Look at it this way: would you have said the Sonics/Thunder had a culture of losing the season before they won over 50 games? Probably. They were very young and had almost no veteran leadership. In the end, talent and chemistry will win out over a fictional "culture of losing." If Grant drafts well and makes good trades and assembles a team of complementary players, the team will start winning games.

this logic doesn't make a lot of sense. kyrie and thompson are in their 2nd year, and waiters and zeller are rookies. gee hasn't been around that long either. the cavs are only in year 3 of their rebuild, and most of the player that drove the tank the last two seasons are gone. so, how exactly is cleveland having one more bad year going to create this culture of losing, when most of the core pieces haven't been here that long?

I still think we should refer to this as year two of the rebuild. That first year we had no draft picks and limited flexibility. The rebuild didn't truly start until the summer of 2011 when we drafted Kyrie and Tristan.

 

[CardiacCavs]

This team is going to lose plenty of games without resorting to the obvious "weak injuries" that most tanking teams pull. We're going to lose just by virtue of our team being too young and inexperienced.

I also don't buy into the concept of a culture of losing. Teams like Sacramento stay bad because their organizations are terrible. Just look at the Kings roster. There is plenty of talent, but none of it really fits together as a team should. Their primary problem was too many ball-stopping wing players, so to remedy that they signed Brooks (a ball-stopping wing) and Thornton (hey, another ball-stopping wing). The Kings don't have a culture of losing. They have a culture of incompetence, terrible owners, and a crappy front office.

Look at it this way: would you have said the Sonics/Thunder had a culture of losing the season before they won over 50 games? Probably. They were very young and had almost no veteran leadership. In the end, talent and chemistry will win out over a fictional "culture of losing." If Grant drafts well and makes good trades and assembles a team of complementary players, the team will start winning games.


I still think we should refer to this as year two of the rebuild. That first year we had no draft picks and limited flexibility. The rebuild didn't truly start until the summer of 2011 when we drafted Kyrie and Tristan.

Good points. The whole idea of a "losing culture" is hard to prove. If Grant is as good as we hope he is, then we won't have to worry about it because everything should work out. I was pretty much 50/50 on this poll. If we do indeed end up with a top 5 pick next year, then is it reasonable to expect a playoff appearance? I'm trying to think of a situation where a team had a shitty record one year, then jumped up to a 50+ win season the next other than OKC. It just seems very difficult to do. Of course, making the playoffs in the east won't require 50 wins but still.

 

[ajz20]

Well half of this roster needs to be gutted and there are serious questions as to whether AV and Gibson will be in Cle next year. Sloan, Samules, Casspi, Walton, Pargo, Harangody, and maybe even CJ Miles. I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THAT WE DONT HAVE ROOM FOR A THIRD ROOKIE in the draft come June. Our back 6-7 players are not NA caliber players. Lets get as much talent as we can this summer via draft. FA and trade. DO NOT WAIT until 2014 to try to compete. I understand the need to keep Cap space for 2014, but next year should no longer be a rebuilding year.

 

[Birdy89]

Look at it this way: would you have said the Sonics/Thunder had a culture of losing the season before they won over 50 games? Probably. They were very young and had almost no veteran leadership. In the end, talent and chemistry will win out over a fictional "culture of losing."

There is no transcendent Kevin Durant type figure on this roster, and I don't see one in the next draft.

People keep leaning on the OKC example on this board, but in that equation we have our Russell Westbrook (in Kyrie) but no one even approaching the level of dominance (or ceiling) of someone like Durant, who is essentially a 6'11 shooting guard/sf that other teams can't cover.

We have built with draft picks the way OKC did, but that is about the only similarity between our situation and theirs because they had a Lebron caliber X factor on the roster that we don't yet have....and I don't see where we are getting it from.

 

[pr26]

Not sure if were going to have to worry about "should we tank or not". This team is just going to have trouble winning games. I have concluded that to win, we need an excellent game out of Kyrie, an above average game out of both Dion AND AV, and we need the bench to just be mediocre. I'm not convinced that we are not going to be getting that many nights this season. Get stoked for the future when we see the rare game like the Clippers game, and embrace the suck otherwise.

 

[Jack Brickman]

Good points. The whole idea of a "losing culture" is hard to prove. If Grant is as good as we hope he is, then we won't have to worry about it because everything should work out. I was pretty much 50/50 on this poll. If we do indeed end up with a top 5 pick next year, then is it reasonable to expect a playoff appearance? I'm trying to think of a situation where a team had a shitty record one year, then jumped up to a 50+ win season the next other than OKC. It just seems very difficult to do. Of course, making the playoffs in the east won't require 50 wins but still.

If we land a top five pick that pans out as expected, I don't think the playoffs are unrealistic next year. However, if I were a betting man, I'd wager our first post-LeBron playoff berth to be in the 2014/15 season. That's assuming, of course, that the Cavs don't make any big moves via trades or free agency, which is impossible to predict.

There is no transcendent Kevin Durant type figure on this roster, and I don't see one in the next draft.

People keep leaning on the OKC example on this board, but in that equation we have our Russell Westbrook (in Kyrie) but no one even approaching the level of dominance (or ceiling) of someone like Durant, who is essentially a 6'11 shooting guard/sf that other teams can't cover.

We have built with draft picks the way OKC did, but that is about the only similarity between our situation and theirs because they had a Lebron caliber X factor on the roster that we don't yet have....and I don't see where we are getting it from.

Your logic is flawed. You don't need Kevin Durant to win games. 29 teams in the league don't have Durant, and a lot of them do just fine without him. And if you don't see Kyrie Irving as having the potential to be a transcendent player, you're obviously not watching the same Kyrie Irving as the rest of us. The problem you seem to have is one of seeing us building a roster identical to OKC's. We're not doing that. We're building our own roster using a similar rebuilding blueprint (building through the draft).

 

[The Process God]

Both. We'll draft Shabazz with our top 3 pick, and then we'll draft McAdoo with the Toronto pick once we get it from OKC. :chuckles:

 

[CleveRocks]

There is no need to Tank. We have the worst defense in the league, until that gets fixed we will lose often. I do think we will improve over the season, or at least until the andy trade....

 

[The Process God]

There is no transcendent Kevin Durant type figure on this roster, and I don't see one in the next draft.

People keep leaning on the OKC example on this board, but in that equation we have our Russell Westbrook (in Kyrie) but no one even approaching the level of dominance (or ceiling) of someone like Durant, who is essentially a 6'11 shooting guard/sf that other teams can't cover.

We have built with draft picks the way OKC did, but that is about the only similarity between our situation and theirs because they had a Lebron caliber X factor on the roster that we don't yet have....and I don't see where we are getting it from.

I don't know what games you've been watching or what stats you've been looking at, but Kyrie's rookie season shat on Durant's rookie season. Kyrie's ceiling is easily at the Durant-level.

 

[Kizzle]

I say out of a 4 year rebuild you need 2 stars out the draft. If we draft 4 future bonifide starters and like 3 role players that stick in 4 years of drafting ill say we came out EXTREMELY lucky. But since we are stockpiling picks and doin so many drug deals I'm putting that as our goal. If grant would've kept his 3 picks instead of being lazy and just getting Zeller we probably would've been very close to getting the role players part at least. I like Zeller tho, but you can't tell me 3 guys that were on the board or that WOULD'VE been still on the board won't together outperform Zeller