Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big storyline. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
[…] Go back the past 10 years and look at all the teams that traded their best player. There aren’t a lot of quick trips to the finals to point to as examples.A quick story. The week I bought the Mavs I was asked by Nellie if I wanted to bag the season in order to get the best draft pick that we could. My response was “No. At some point this franchise has to learn how to win and develop a culture of winning. You don’t create that culture by tanking the season. I don’t know how many games we can win, but we are going to try to win every one of them.” Thank goodness we didn’t tank the season It wasn’t a very good draft. And that turn around for the rest of the season helped define who we were and are to this day.
Mark Cuban wrote a lengthy blog post about rebuilding his Dallas Mavericks and their failed pursuit of Dwight Howard. Part of that was this quick anti-tanking missive with which I agree wholeheartedly.
I believe guys should play when they’re healthy, and the goal should be to win games. I wouldn’t want to play in an atmosphere where the intentional losses are found acceptable.
I also don’t think it’s smart to trade players away who make the team “too good” in an effort to get a projected stud in the draft. I don’t understand the logic in saying “we’re too good.” The notion that one year spent on the fringe of the playoffs is somehow disastrous is false. The worst place to be is a perennial 4th of 5th seed. THAT is purgatory. Then you’re stuck so close to the top that you don’t want to mess with the squad, but not close enough to REALLY be a contender.
Cuban also says there’s another problem with tanking
I see quite a few teams taking what appears to be the same approach to building a team. I can understand why they are taking this approach. In the current CBA the value of a player chosen in the draft can be considerable because of the defined contract terms. And if you put together some great young players, it is very enticing to want to keep those players together for a long period.
[…] In addition, because of all the financial restrictions that the new CBA puts on teams, I believe more teams are going to be blown up and the new popular approach will be adopted by more teams. Which in turn will make that approach even more difficult to be successful with.
Few people talk about this aspect of it. But if a bunch of teams are going to be terrible this year (and no matter what the C’s do, there will be much worse teams out there), it makes it that much more difficult to accomplish the goal. And one thing you don’t want to happen is throwing away good players for a chance in a top-heavy draft, and then get stuck with a wasted season.
For those people calling this upcoming draft “deep”… Ainge doesn’t agree:
“Next year’s draft we don’t really see as loaded. We see it as top-heavy. There will be more impact players next year. … We always feel quality over quantity is important.”
So I believe Cuban has some great anti-tanking points. He also talks about why he’d never trade Dirk, which might just be lemon juice in the wounds of C’s fans stinging from the loss of Pierce and Garnett. But that’s also an easy call to make when you’re staring at about $30 million in cap space next year.
In other news, newly acquired center Vitor Faverani spoke about joining the Celtics. Here are a couple of select quotes:
it is obvious that the Boston Celtics is a team that is known worldwide and the players that have been part of the franchise are known to everyone. I sincerelly couldn’t believe it when I started working out for them this summer. I thought I was in a dream. I had to slap my face at times because I didn’t know if what was happening was real. The history, the amount of championships and the players that have been part of the Celtics…for me it is an amazing thing to start being part of this team. I will probably realize what I am living once I will be playing the first game and put my feet on the court and say to myself: ”Wow. This is the NBA and I am playing for the Boston Celtics”.
Of all the teams I worked out for, Boston was the one that convinced me more of the possibility of playing there. And it was because of the way they treated me. I was used of the way people treat you in Spain: they talk to you, they are kind, they are smiling, they make jokes all the time…and in Boston I felt home right away. They greeted me and from the first moment there is someone in the organisation, Austin, that talked to me in Spanish. We were talking for a while and then they treated me as if I was already playing for them. We did the medical check up and I started thinking that it wasn’t normal that they were treating me so well. It was unbelievable. ‘
As for the workout itself it was great. It was very unstressful. There were several coaches watching me practice, but there wasn’t any pressure at all in it. I didn’t feel like I had to score the ball because they treated me so well that it was impossible to miss a shot, you see? I was joking all the time with one of the coaches about this and they made me feel comfortable and at home all the time.
Fav also said he’s upset he didn’t get to talk to KG, excited about playing with Rondo, loves being physical in the paint, and likes to dunk more than anything else.
It’ll be interesting to get a look at him and see what he can do.
In other news… welcome to August, were almost nothing happens in the NBA. That’s it for links.
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