I hate the concept and execution of tanking. I hate that it forces the team to, essentially, lie to the public to get them to buy tickets to watch a crappy product. I hate that active losing is rewarded.
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I hate that it is sometimes necessary.
Our own Andrew Feinstein wrote that the Nuggets should actively tank the rest of the season to ensure a better draft pick positioning. He provides sound reasoning, and quite frankly as someone who thought the Nuggets should have STARTED the season this way … I can’t say I can argue with him. Due to a flukey set of circumstances, and Brian Shaw fully showing that he is, indeed, a rookie head coach the team finds itself in the position where this is a subject of conversation.
I hate it. Bad basketball is unbearable to watch. Watching players play out of position and fumble and turn over their way to 30 point losses is excruciating. Forget the end game … which is a crap shoot, watching bad basketball is like that famous scene in Marathon Man in the dentist chair. (for those who are squeamish I won't relive the scene).
I don’t like that the Nuggets need to do this. You can make all the CBA changes you want, much of them are financially based and have little to do with “competitive balance” … it would still be the same. You need a star, group of all stars, or a superstar to get over the hump in the NBA. They don’t grow on trees folks, and as they say the best way to find that superstar is in the draft. Either you can be the Oklahoma City Thunder and hit on a once in a generation player … or you can be the Cleveland Cavaliers and make bad picks and get stuck with a star on an awful, awful basketball team. The latter happens far more often than the former.
Yet, it needs to be done. I've always been a reluctant tanking advocate, but in this case I can't see any other alternative for the Nuggets. Even though I can't see them losing enough games to get a top pick, you can see that they can lose enough to improve their selection slightly. Is that enough to justify watching the team that just got slaughtered each and every game on it's last road trip?
Sometimes it's absolutely the only thing you can do.
No matter what direction the Nuggets choose, this next week will be interesting. Will there be any moves to be made at all through the trade deadline? Will the bizarre Andre Miller situation be resolved? Will the Nugget finally have a point guard on the team so Randy Foye and Evan Fournier aren’t playing out of position?
I guess we will find out. Time to grin and bear it. Sometimes doing the thing you must means doing the thing you hate the most.
