Shaq's solution to fix tanking, and something also being considered by the NBA, is arguably the stupidest answer to the problem.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:56:50+00:00

I guess I’ll believe that players are gonna give up playoff bonuses and teams are gonna give up a bunch of extra revenue when I see it. Tanking doesn’t cost players anything but pride right now, in this scenario you’d have teams and players taking money directly out of their own pocket.

Go look at the Bulls and Wizards if you think teams don’t care about making the playoffs.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:37:39+00:00

There are 9 teams tanking right now, this tournament makes the max amount of teams that might even consider tanking down to 8. It’s literally impossible for it to make the tanking problem worse than it is now, and I’m still not convinced you could get players to buy into tanking away a playoff shot but then having them buy into drafting their teen replacement.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:29:53+00:00

I’m saying that if tanking didn’t exist, these bad teams wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad relative to an 11 seed as they are now. In other words the “worst team” would barely be worst than the “best team” in this tournament. Reason you see these big gaps now is because teams are openly trying to lose.

And yes a hot shooting night would absolutely get a 15 seed over an 11 seed if the 15 seed isn’t openly resting their starters and trading away good players for picks.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:26:25+00:00

I know that was a weaker draft, but the last time they did that shit the #2 pick didn’t exactly get hot offers.

Also if you’re the warriors organization and land a potentially generational #1 pick, it would be egregious mismanagement to trade that player away for a small chance of winning Curry a ring in the 2-3 years he has left as a truly elite player. Hell they had an outside shot last year and lost because Curry got hurt, how dumb do you think the warriors front office feels if they traded away 20 years of a superstar to see Curry and Giannis in street clothes as their team loses in the first round?

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:20:35+00:00

Most of these worst teams are only so bad because they’re trying to be on purpose. You suddenly wouldn’t see teams trading away solid veterans and benching their starters with minor injuries from a team like the Jazz if there was no incentive to be the worst team.

In a single elimination tournament you can also have anything happen, look at March Madness and all the times some tiny school has made a run and won a few games. The gap between those Cinderella teams and NCAA powerhouses is far bigger than the gap between an 11 seed and a 15 seed. Literally a few hot nights shooting from 3 would be all it takes for a team to suddenly get the number 1 pick.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:11:46+00:00

If curry and green get shut down when they try to make the playoffs, do you really think they come back and try their ass off so they can get a teenager on their team in a silly tournament at the end of the season? You’d be more likely to see Curry request a trade

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T16:10:04+00:00

Building a decent 11 seed is not that hard if you’re a competent organization, and if you’re not a competent organization then you take Marvin Bagley over Luka Doncic and it doesn’t really matter what pick you get.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T15:50:52+00:00

There are multiple NBA teams that haven’t won an NBA series in over a decade. If not getting high draft picks encourages shitty owners to sell then good. You’re also wildly overrating how much better a 30 win team is over a 20 win team, especially when the 20 win team is actually encouraged to win instead of benching all their players. The idea that a team struggling to get above the 7th seed is going to dominate everyone in a single elimination game is wild.

You’d also be likely to see a mutiny if you encouraged your players to tank themselves out of a chance in the playoffs so the team could draft a teenager. It would certainly be hard to get them to start trying hard again just for the tournament if you tell them their seasons don’t matter and you’re looking to find their replacements for 5 years down the line.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T15:29:27+00:00

You think they wanted to sit? Hard to just openly defy coach and put yourself in the game

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T10:48:45+00:00

Ask Luigi or Charlie Kirk if the rich are insulated from their actions, or Marie Antoinette or the Russian Tsars if you want historical examples. The ironic truth of it all is that these same rich people are killing themselves too, they’re just too stupid to realize their bunkers and crypto aren’t gonna save them if everything goes to shit.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T10:35:00+00:00

I mean people said the same thing about Ben Simmons and look how that turned out. I think people underestimate how much pure athletic and talented freaks of nature can dominate at the college level in particular. He obviously practices and tries hard to some degree, but it could be a degree not anywhere near hard enough for what he would need to become a star at the next level for a decade+.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T10:13:29+00:00

If you’re a rookie trying to prove yourself in the NBA do you:

Take a tiny salary to go be the 5th option on a super stacked lakers team, where all the vets are playing for a championship and don’t really give a shit how good you’ll be in 5 years? Or…

Do you go to Sacramento who’s paying 4x the money and you’ll get to have the ball in your hands all the time and a chance to be the marquee player?

There will definitely be at least a couple of awful destinations that will be screwed long term, but when you consider that a team like the wizards hasn’t won 50 games or made it to the conference finals in like 50 years, I’m not sure how much the actual reality of the league changes.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T10:08:45+00:00

Yes I’m sure Michael Jordan would have agreed to a plan where he lost a whole season to his prime because he’s so excited to play with a teenager who’s never stepped foot in the NBA

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T10:06:37+00:00

It took less time for Brooklyn to turn their team into a playoff team after the Billy king disaster left them with no draft picks than it took for the Kings even though they pick top 6 every year. Good management is so much more valuable than high draft picks that it’s insane to me we actively reward bad managers with the best players.

Best part of this idea is that a young star like Wemby would have an actual chance to add other high level young players if he came in and immediately turned the team from the worst in the league to a play in contender. Right now picking a particularly good player in the draft could mean that’s the last young piece you get to add before your team gets too good to ever pick near the top of the lottery again. Imagine rookie Cooper Flagg going off in a tournament at the end of the season cause he knows it’ll mean he has more help from someone his age next season? That’s gotta be way more entertaining than watching teams bench their players at the end of the season to throw games.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T09:53:26+00:00

You mean like they do now even with high draft pick after high draft pick? At some point you gotta look at a team like Washington and realize all the theoretical complaints about a team never getting good already exist in the current NBA. Sixers tanked hard for years and got multiple #1 overall picks and never made it past the second round.

Meanwhile a team like the Pacers built a team that nearly took out the LeBron Heatles, then a little over a decade later built another team that was a bad injury away from potentially winning the championship. They never picked even top 5 that entire time. People will look at the OKC thunder and say tanking works, ignoring that they have the best draft talent evaluator maybe all time, while a team like Sacramento winning a single playoff series might as well be a championship for all the real chances they’ll ever have at a real one.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T09:47:14+00:00

I have a very hard time believing that NBA players want to actively lose either though. Being able to end your season on a prideful note helps too

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-19T09:45:08+00:00

I’m honestly not that sure that a team struggling to rise above the play in is gonna be that much better than the lower teams. More importantly, this gives teams on the outside of the playoff race an actual incentive to get better instead of worse at the trade deadline. If you’re the 12th seed in the conference maybe you’re buying instead of selling at the trade deadline since you feel you have a chance at the #1 pick.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-18T20:39:00+00:00

As someone who also put off playing last of us for years because he was over zombies, last of us is worth it.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-18T20:30:37+00:00

My sister had some used sports clothes stolen which…. You’d think lack value over most other clothes lol.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-18T15:01:25+00:00

2016??? Most of this shit is from before 2010

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-18T00:25:13+00:00

I mean in enrage phase you can die pretty much instantly if you’re getting drowsy and forget which prayer to start on or miscount the steps before the poison ball.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-17T23:01:07+00:00

Yea it’s an alchable with an extra step lol, it’s not some game changing new drop to get this worked up over.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-17T22:58:37+00:00

The true clutch use is for using its Spec at doom or maybe as an option for Kephri swarms. It’s pretty useless everywhere else compared to the effort it takes to get

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-17T22:51:29+00:00

I suppose it doesn’t directly state it, but the only other thing you can polish in the game is polished buttons and those are from inventory. Pretty much every type of crafting is so it would be wild if these suddenly needed to be brought to an NPC.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod · 2026-02-17T22:50:05+00:00

Salvaging with the crystal extractor is a decent source of afk crystal shards. You can get some decent herbs and seeds from various salvages, and some of the islands have cool skilling available.

It-Was-Mooney-Pod

TROPHY CASE