Phx-Suns.Net

re reading this Anonymous GM ( who many believe is mcdo) back in 2013

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/9893 ... n-magazine

The art of the tank
Oct 29, 2013

Jeff Goodman ESPN Insider

OUR TEAM ISN'T good enough to win and we know it. So this season we want to develop and evaluate our young players, let them learn from their mistakes -- and get us in position to grab a great player. The best way for us to do that is to lose a lot of games. This draft is loaded. There are potential All-Stars at the top, maybe even franchise changers. Sometimes my job is to understand the value of losing.

I know that sounds crazy, but if you're an NBA general manager like me, the last place you want to be is in the middle. There are only two outcomes there: Either make the playoffs and be first-round fodder for one of the premier teams or miss the playoffs and pick somewhere around 11th to 14th in the draft. Either way, the odds are that you stay in that middle range. It's a recipe for disaster.

You need superstars to compete in this league, and the playing field for those guys is tilted toward a few big-market teams. They are demanding trades and getting together and deciding where they want to go in free agency. It's tough for us to compete with that. So a high lottery pick is all we have.

How do you pull it off? First, you talk it over with ownership. I analyzed the team and told them what I wanted to do, the guys I wanted to get rid of and the guys with future value whom we wanted to keep. We obviously traded away some of our veteran guys who gave us a better chance of winning right now for future draft picks and young players. The owners didn't want to tread water any more than I did. They'd rather go down to the bottom with the hope of coming up, so they signed off on it. It wasn't a fight at all. In a different season, it might not make sense, but this draft certainly makes it more appealing.

Our coach understands that too. It's no secret what we're trying to do, and you can't lie to him anyway or you'll lose all trust. We never really had to tell him, because the handwriting is on the wall. He knows exactly what's going on, and he's good with it. What's hard is keeping it from the players. If you took a poll in all 30 locker rooms, regardless of how the roster looks, I bet they'd all say they are a playoff team. That's good, because you want them to play with effort and lose organically. You never tell the players not to try to win a game, but it's obvious that you're putting out a team that's just not good enough to win.

We're not alone. Look at the 76ers. Since the draft in June, I don't think they've signed a player or made a trade to add a legitimate player. A bunch of us realize that our teams aren't good enough talentwise to do anything. You're going to be bad. There's no way around it. And even if you finish 0-82, there's still a 75 percent chance you don't get the No. 1 pick. We're just going to take our lumps and hope our number gets called.

As told to Jeff Goodman

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Assuming that was McD, it's been 5 years of starting over with rebuilds, outright tanking, thinking we'll be competitive only to end up tanking. 5 years of bad trades, botched FA signings, lockerroom implosions, coaching firings, and draft picks that haven't worked out. No one's perfect, but his record at this point is pretty shoddy and we're not notably better except for the fact that we have Booker locked up (not insignificant) and the #1 pick coming to camp. The rest of the roster is a huge question mark.

Also, it's a bit ironic that with all that insight, that 13-14 team won 48 games, missed the playoffs but like 1/2 a game and McD and Sarver tried building a winner right away off that momentum.

I think it's more likely it's Mark Cuban or the Mav's GM. Cuban came out publicly about tanking.

"but if you're an NBA general manager like me"

"How do you pull it off? First, you talk it over with ownership"

"The owners didn't want to tread water any more than I did"

"We obviously traded away some of our veteran guys who gave us a better chance of winning right now" - We traded Dudley, Scola, Gortat that summer. The Mavs went out and signed Calderon, Devin Harris, Monta Ellis, Sam Dalembert and DeJuan Blair in free agency- all vets to help them win.

ShelC wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:59 am

Assuming that was McD, it's been 5 years of starting over with rebuilds, outright tanking, thinking we'll be competitive only to end up tanking. 5 years of bad trades, botched FA signings, lockerroom implosions, coaching firings, and draft picks that haven't worked out. No one's perfect, but his record at this point is pretty shoddy and we're not notably better except for the fact that we have Booker locked up (not insignificant) and the #1 pick coming to camp. The rest of the roster is a huge question mark.

Also, it's a bit ironic that with all that insight, that 13-14 team won 48 games, missed the playoffs but like 1/2 a game and McD and Sarver tried building a winner right away off that momentum.

I can't fault anyone that fell in love with that 13-14 team, because I certainly did too. The problem was not trying to keep winning, but the moves he made towards that goal. We needed a big man and instead he signed a third starting PG in IT. Great contract, great asset to have in a vacuum but terrible addition in hindsight because it messed up the rotation.

At the time I remember thinking it was either McD or the Orlando GM. I don't remember why exactly, but they made the most sense.

We were talking about Suns podcasts recently and I don't know if this one made the list. I haven't listened to this yet but it's supposed be a very good listen:

https://thetimelinepodcast.com/2018/09/ ... orts-98-7/

I want to punch these guys in the throat. They are STILL talking about whether Steve Nash deserved to win his 2nd MVP. Let it go, fellas!

https://www.sportingnews.com/au/phoenix ... 8ehgnuud0u

I'm biased toward Nash, but I think that his MVP wins were the ultimate examples of how you don't just hand out the award to the guy with the most points/game or gaudiest stats. Shaq almost won it the first year, if I remember correctly, and Kobe or Lebron or somebody almost won it the other year. Those guys put up more numbers than Nash. But Nash did the most to help his team be great; he meant the most to his team; and his team would have regressed the most without him. I think he deserved both awards. I also think it's dumb to relitigate it at this point. He certainly isn't the most undeserving MVP in the history of the award.

With all the talk and accolades that people are giving to Nash and D'Antoni for revolutionizing the game, it bums me out that they didn't try to push it further. Instead, they bowed to the naysayers on saying that they need to slow it down more in the playoffs and such. They obviously should have resigned JJ and if that was the case he would probably be on his way to the HOF too. A lot of what ifs happened. If JJ doesn't hurt himself against Dallas, I really think the Suns sweep them and are ready and waiting for San Antonio. I think the Suns beat them then. Having a tougher series with Dallas and being without JJ hurt them and then the NBA only allowing 1 day rest between playoff series just felt like a favor to San Antonio, who got 3 days rest I think.

Nash could have easily taken more shots and gotten more points like Kobe and LeBron. I agree that it's silly to relitigate this again.

That '06 Suns team plus JJ would have been absolutely devastating. And then if we had not traded away our draft picks so many years during that era... Ah, what might have been.

If we had just kept our pick that summer, drafted Iggy, signed Nash, extended JJ, and used the Q money to sign some bench depth, we could have locked down a Nash-JJ-Iggy-Marion-Amare core for a long time

In other news, I thought this was a good article. We could see a significant defensive bump this year.

https://twitter.com/DaveKingNBA/status/1038591000111808512

Split T wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:27 pm

In other news, I thought this was a good article. We could see a significant defensive bump this year.

https://twitter.com/DaveKingNBA/status/1038591000111808512

With Booker, Anderson, and Ayton?

No. Just... please lay off the hard stuff.

As an aside, if Dinwiddie's available, you have to take a long look at him. He's a very good distributor, and makes everyone around him on offense better, with an elite A/TO ratio.

Wormwood wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 8:37 pm

Split T wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:27 pm

In other news, I thought this was a good article. We could see a significant defensive bump this year.

https://twitter.com/DaveKingNBA/status/1038591000111808512

With Booker, Anderson, and Ayton?

No. Just... please lay off the hard stuff.

As an aside, if Dinwiddie's available, you have to take a long look at him. He's a very good distributor, and makes everyone around him on offense better, with an elite A/TO ratio.

Ayton is going surprise you, and the article wasn't about Booker and Anderson.

Wormwood wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 8:37 pm

Split T wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:27 pm

In other news, I thought this was a good article. We could see a significant defensive bump this year.

https://twitter.com/DaveKingNBA/status/1038591000111808512

With Booker, Anderson, and Ayton?

No. Just... please lay off the hard stuff.

As an aside, if Dinwiddie's available, you have to take a long look at him. He's a very good distributor, and makes everyone around him on offense better, with an elite A/TO ratio.

You realize we were the worst defensive team last year right? Is Booker, Anderson, Ayton worse than Booker, Chriss, Chandler? We added Ariza, Bridges, and Melton. All should be good defenders. Ulis, Payton, Daniels were all abysmal defensively and are either gone or won't be playing very many minutes this year. Replace those guard minutes with Harrison/Melton/Bridges and that's a big shift.

Split T wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 8:54 pm

Wormwood wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 8:37 pm

Split T wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:27 pm

In other news, I thought this was a good article. We could see a significant defensive bump this year.

https://twitter.com/DaveKingNBA/status/1038591000111808512

With Booker, Anderson, and Ayton?

No. Just... please lay off the hard stuff.

As an aside, if Dinwiddie's available, you have to take a long look at him. He's a very good distributor, and makes everyone around him on offense better, with an elite A/TO ratio.

You realize we were the worst defensive team last year right? Is Booker, Anderson, Ayton worse than Booker, Chriss, Chandler? We added Ariza, Bridges, and Melton. All should be good defenders. Ulis, Payton, Daniels were all abysmal defensively and are either gone or won't be playing very many minutes this year. Replace those guard minutes with Harrison/Melton/Bridges and that's a big shift.

Facts don't matter if you don't read the article before complaining...

In2ition wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:15 pm

With all the talk and accolades that people are giving to Nash and D'Antoni for revolutionizing the game, it bums me out that they didn't try to push it further. Instead, they bowed to the naysayers on saying that they need to slow it down more in the playoffs and such. They obviously should have resigned JJ and if that was the case he would probably be on his way to the HOF too. A lot of what ifs happened. If JJ doesn't hurt himself against Dallas, I really think the Suns sweep them and are ready and waiting for San Antonio. I think the Suns beat them then. Having a tougher series with Dallas and being without JJ hurt them and then the NBA only allowing 1 day rest between playoff series just felt like a favor to San Antonio, who got 3 days rest I think.

Nash could have easily taken more shots and gotten more points like Kobe and LeBron. I agree that it's silly to relitigate this again.

JJ's skull might disagree. Stackhouse hit him up high and threw his trajectory off. There is a reason it was called a foul.

Indy wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:54 am

In2ition wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:15 pm

With all the talk and accolades that people are giving to Nash and D'Antoni for revolutionizing the game, it bums me out that they didn't try to push it further. Instead, they bowed to the naysayers on saying that they need to slow it down more in the playoffs and such. They obviously should have resigned JJ and if that was the case he would probably be on his way to the HOF too. A lot of what ifs happened. If JJ doesn't hurt himself against Dallas, I really think the Suns sweep them and are ready and waiting for San Antonio. I think the Suns beat them then. Having a tougher series with Dallas and being without JJ hurt them and then the NBA only allowing 1 day rest between playoff series just felt like a favor to San Antonio, who got 3 days rest I think.

Nash could have easily taken more shots and gotten more points like Kobe and LeBron. I agree that it's silly to relitigate this again.

JJ's skull might disagree. Stackhouse hit him up high and threw his trajectory off. There is a reason it was called a foul.

I realize it wasn't self inflicted. Bad choice of words.

Check out this dude obviously repping the Suns before the Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies:



Note the fortuitous purple flowers in the foreground as well.