TomRicardo said:
Awesome list ...
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You need to be lucky. A lot of teams suck for a while. Look at the Knicks. Until this year THEY SUCKED.
Point is tanking one year is not going to fix a problem. You need to tank three to five years then be lucky. After that it will take you two to three to collect talent around the core and see if you made it. So you are are saying the tanking method takes to 5 to 8 years to work.
At least the Bruins are good.
The problem I always have with the "we need to start afresh now" viewpoint is the tight focus on how a rebuild can work, with short shrift to the chance that a 5-8 year process delivers nothing memorable.
It seems that Ainge is not willing to keep the band together for one more try -- I interpret Doc's wandering eye as evidence that PP won't have his option picked up. Still, it ain't happened yet so let me state a rationale for keeping the current core together: that the odds of such a team being truely interesting are in the same ballpark as the best year in a 5-8 year rebuild.
Right now the current core is NOT bound to be a mediocre team -- there are several pieces that could be better. A healthy Rondo could start to make the Tony Parker evolution (developing a competent jump shot). A fully recovered Green, with starter responsibiltiy, becomes more consistent. A fully recovered Bradley plays like spring 2012. A repaired Sullinger plays like a top 5 pick. Judicioius use of PP and KG mean they play as well (per minute) AND are in good shape in the playoffs. Lee/Bass/Terry play at their average.
If much of this happens, that's an interesting team.
Of course, each one is a gamble (not all with the same odds), so the odds of all of them happening are small. But is this set of gambles worse than the set of gambles associated with a full blown rebuild? Gambles on either tanking well (not so easy, with the Phoenix/Charlotte/etc teams in the way), and/or getting the lottery balls to bounce your way, and/or choosing well in the draft. And doing this several times. Or doing a mediocre job of this, and getting lucky and being the team that gets to trade pieces for an impact player.
There may be a slew of ways of structruing a rebuild, each with its own set of risks. But even with a competent Ainge (and he isn't Auerbach in a league of checker players), what are the odds that the best team (after 5 - 8 years of this) is better than a 2014 team built from the current core? My gut feeling is probably less (I will aggree that the upside may be higher, but not by much)
So WTF is the rush? About the only rationale for rushing forward is that even a slight improvement in CHAMPIONSHIP is worth embracing. And although I am sure to hear aphorisms about the need to take risks to achieve greatness, to me it isn't an all or nothing world -- a good team with players I know (that has some hope of winning it all) is more fun to watch than a lousy one with a slightly greater hope several years down the line.
IOW: Why not entertain old fashioned (i.e.; reputed to be obsolete) loyalty and err on the side of keeping it together?
