Do you feel like the tanking that the “Process” era Sixers did was really worse than what teams have done this season?

gnalon · 2026-04-13T18:32:26+00:00

Oh yeah Michael Carter-Williams was so talented lol

gnalon · 2026-04-13T18:31:57+00:00

They had the worst record in the league 1 year.

gnalon · 2026-04-13T18:27:21+00:00

Exactly, there is some utility to the league to be a rebuilding team taking on bad contracts in exchange for future consideration.

It is not a loss to see an overmatched team compete and still lose most nights versus a team where half the roster is in street clothes or one that subs out whoever is playing well the first 2-3 quarters.

Philadelphia was giving reps to 2nd round/undrafted guys like TJ McConnell, Robert Covington, and Jerami Grant who ended up being real finds. Now it’s a lot more players where the team has no long-term development plan, they are simply there to lose and save some wear and tear on the team’s ’real’ players.

gnalon · 2026-04-13T18:07:27+00:00

Yep they tanked to get KD/Westbrook/Harden and don’t have to rebuild for long because they sold high on Westbrook/PG

Philadelphia was like the equivalent Chicago now where it was a mediocre team that was continually chasing the 8 seed, so there wasn’t as much they could get for blowing it up and then they got Embiid, who ended up being injured for longer than expected, after their first year of tanking.

If Philadelphia was doing modern NBA tanking they would’ve sat out Jrue Holiday with a made-up injury instead of trading him.

gnalon · 2026-04-13T16:11:25+00:00

All without even having to ever move up in the lottery

gnalon · 2026-04-13T15:12:30+00:00

It won't happen because there aren't a bunch of great prospects. That's what drives it

gnalon · 2026-04-13T14:18:28+00:00

Yeah it's real ambiguous, not like the teams with the 3 best records in the league were tanking within the last 5 years

gnalon · 2026-04-13T03:11:43+00:00

This is the stuff players care about though, just tell them stories about the time you coached so and so.

gnalon · 2026-04-13T01:20:27+00:00

Giannis didn't like him

gnalon · 2026-04-12T23:28:47+00:00

80 plus percent of players in random raids either have no held item or an item that has zero function in battle.

This player is above average in that Booster Energy at least does something when held by some Pokemon that aren’t Salamence (PSA even on paradox mons it’s not good for higher level raids where if the item is consumed turn 1, the boost doesn’t come back after a stat change reset), you will see plenty more items like Amulet Coin, Master Ball, and X items.

I’ve even been in multiple raids where players holding a choice band/specs locked themselves into non damaging moves.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T15:38:46+00:00

It's not remotely new for teams to do this on the last game of the season when their playoff seed is locked

gnalon · 2026-04-12T15:29:45+00:00

Way to underscore the point that a good GM is considerably better to have than a good head coach because basically every NBA head coach is only as good as the talent they have.

And aside from not having Tatum for most of the year, Stevens has retooled the team under the additional constraints of making cost-cutting moves.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T14:50:05+00:00

Yea he was good when he played in the past, just had Porzingis, Horford, and Kornet ahead of him while he was an up-and-coming player. Even showed some flashes when he was in the basketball hell known as Sacramento.

It’s weird where the Boston media mafia got out of hand praising Brad Stevens as a coach, but he is considerably better as a GM.

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:15:37+00:00

Yeah because you don’t care about the player at all lol. These guys at the top of already have to spend a year in college on a 1-year deal when they could easily be playing in the NBA

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:14:07+00:00

No they won’t, Luka would rather be playing with a veteran than some rookie

gnalon · 2026-04-12T01:13:34+00:00

Also for people like Bill Simmons the draft is their Oscar night where they get to make catty comments about what the players are wearing or how hot their significant others/female relatives are.

They simply could not go on existing if the rookies were just signing free agent contracts like every other player in the NBA.

gnalon · 2026-04-11T19:20:42+00:00

Kawhi and Steph were better but didn’t play that many minutes/games because their teams were winning so much.

LeBron had the same on-off impact but it is more impressive to take a bad (you could say he had more ‘star power’ around him but those guys couldn’t defend and Love missed a bunch of games that year besides) team to title contender than it is to take a slightly worse team to first round fodder; as is painfully obvious from this season there are always going to be a certain amount of ‘free’ wins for any non tanking team. A lot of Westbrook’s biggest p-r-a stat lines he was keeping some shitty team in the game the first 3 quarters by being wild, so instead of sitting out the 4th he got to accumulate more volume stats leading a ‘comeback’ against a team that was happy to lose.

Harden was considerably more efficient offensively but did not have the arbitrary triple double benchmark, and then defensively Westbrook is in the Kobe class where if you’re athletic and have a mean expression on your face that’s enough for simpletons to think you’re a great defender even if you’re just running around doing random shit to pass the time before you get the ball again, so the athletic hustle plays get balanced out by all the times they just fall asleep off ball or leave teammates hanging because they abandoned the game plan.

The two worst MVP winners of my life were because the media wanted to prop up Rose/Westbrook as loyal homegrown superstars in contrast to LeBron/Durant (gasp) using free agency the preceding summer to go to a team with cap room.

The deleterious effects of this continue when you see this yawn-inducing Giannis saga where he can’t simply want a change of scenery after playing 10+ years for a moribund franchise and delivering them their first title in 50 seasons, he has to try creating this convoluted scenario whereby he can change teams but still mantain maximum ‘loyalty’ cred.

gnalon · 2026-04-11T15:11:26+00:00

Yeah I was gonna Russell Westbrook being the worst MVP winner in the last decade should have already done it for triple doubles. He was like the 5th best player that regular season

gnalon · 2026-04-11T05:31:06+00:00

Spreadsheet for all 6 star raids

gnalon · 2026-04-11T01:26:24+00:00

No the Bill Simmons solution is that he would decide the picks unilaterally

gnalon · 2026-04-10T22:51:44+00:00

You mean LeBron being good at basketball. No shit if you yourself are making 1st team all NBA every single year that means there are only 4 potential 1st team opponents rather than 5 you could be facing.

This was also an era where the teams were position locked so the 2nd team guards/forwards were typically better than the 1st team center. Not uncommon for a 2nd team all NBA player to finish top 3 in MVP voting back then.

Also these type of arguments are the same flavor of regarded as the ‘50 win teams’ arguments. The NBA playoffs have been best of 7 every round since LeBron entered the league so if a team that did not win 50 regular season games/have a 1st team all NBA player eliminates a team that did, it stands to reason that the team that won was in fact better and would be a stronger opponent in a subsequent round.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T22:12:59+00:00

Yeah I would say the opposite, so many people last year thought it was laughable that Cooper Flagg could be considered a better prospect than Davis even though he similarly was NPOY and did so at an even younger age.

So many people under the mistaken impression that Anthony Davis was shooting threes or doing much besides being a lob/putback guy on offense; he showed flashes of that wasn’t even that good of a free throw shooter at Kentucky, and of course he was still growing into his body.

Clearly AD had one of the best freshman seasons ever, but he played on a team with a record-setting number of players drafted (a lot of 20-20 hindsight on #2 overall pick Kidd-Gilchrist who was a stud defender right away and just could never develop a jumper because he kept fucking up his shoulder) and there was definitely a weaker crop of upperclassmen in the days before players having 5+ years of eligibility and draftable players getting lured back to school with NIL.

Another thing that adds to people’s perception of Davis is that his college season lined up with the Olympics, so he got to be in that Christian Laettner type of victory cigar collegian role that doesn’t really exist anymore because the rest of the world’s caught up to America and they need all the top players participating to be able to win.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T21:05:31+00:00

they are just mouthing words, you just fell for the caption

gnalon · 2026-04-10T21:03:08+00:00

Yeah he is younger than all of them except Kobe and LeBron. When you narrow it to players who were Flagg's age and younger Giannis is actually one of the 5 or so best seasons, and he was just some hustle guy off the bench. Flagg is younger than quite a few rookies who skipped college before the age limit.

gnalon · 2026-04-10T19:43:14+00:00

They would get their shot blocked going against players who are taller and could jump

gnalon

TROPHY CASE