lol, I agree. If you're tanking for better positioning & matchups, you're not winning the championship.
It's pretty amusing that you perceive my posts as "meltdowns"..."angry"...
lol
Just stating facts...
lol, I agree. If you're tanking for better positioning & matchups, you're not winning the championship.
Many past champions became champions because they were able to avoid bad playoff matchups.
I get the whole bring it on mentality but i don't know if Spurfan realizes they don't get Duncan without tanking and they probably dont get 07 without the Warriors beating the Mavs.
Your posts are classic, textbook meltdowns. That you think otherwise just shows the level of your delusion.
Two things in the 2007 season in the West:
1. Dallas had the regular season locked up for some time before the playoffs hit.
2. Golden State snuck in the playoffs on the final day of regular season.
There was no tanking involved there.
My point was that positioning for seeding is a smart move. But positioning doesn't necessarily mean tanking.
Pretty sure GSW sweeped Dallas in the regular season that year so Dallas knew they were a matchup issue. And Dallas let the Warriors sneak into the playoffs by losing to them late in the season by resting their guys.
If Dallas won late in the regular season and kept the Warriors out of the playoffs then they probably ring that year.
It's a non issue. Tanking games for strategy is not against the law. People only remember rings. Rings are all that matters.
I always post with a tongue planted firmly in cheek and always enjoy pulling people's strings....
Pretty amusing...maybe it looks like I am an angry poster but most of the time it is all in fun....
... your strings are always easy to pull...
So you're just pretending to be an angry, hysterical fool.
Gotcha
Kurt Rambis, Skip Bayless and Jemele Hill had an interesting discussion on this topic on First Take, prompted by Shaq's admission last night that the Lakers tanked games in his day to avoid playing the Jazz. It should re-air next hour.
Thanks, I'll try and catch that. It will be interesting to see what Rambis has to say, especially. I have no doubt that the Lakers tanked out the 04-05 season, which got them Andrew Bynum. Boston tanked 06-07 (Ryan Gomes even said so) which ultimately got them Ray Allen and Glenn Davis, and their latest championship. And Miami tanked 02-03, along with several other teams trying to get LeBron - their consolation prize was Dwayne Wade.
I don't buy that. Maybe Shaq is talking about some other Lakers coach. PJ has specifically talked against tanking and called Pop out for it. He was surprised when Pop tanked that last Lakers game last season. He's said that the league doesn't like it because it's not fair to the fans. Why do you think Kobe has played all 82 several seasons? He used to routinely play Jordan, Pippen all 82.
Well, I just saw the segment. Rambis did exactly what I expected, and showed why he's a talking head and not a coach.
I'll keep it short. Rambis doesn't believe that the Lakers ever tanked games to avoid a matchup (Shaq must have made that up?). He doesn't believe that Memphis tanked last year, to get San Antonio in the first round. And he doesn't believe that what happens in the regular season determines what happens in the post-season. So just because a team sweeps you in the regular season, there's no reason to try to avoid them in the playoffs.
I just can't figure out why the Lakers didn't make him permanent head coach.
Yeah, I didn't care for him calling shaq a liar about tanking. But, as someone who endured the '95 elimination to the Rockets after sweeping them in the regular season, I remember that regular season success does not equal playoff success.
Yeah I would take even less from a regular season series between an eastern and western conference opponent. The sample size is way too small. So many things can impact it such as travel, injuries, schedule.
I've been an advocate for this idea for long time. The best records should be rewarded with their choice of opponent. Outside of helping with the playoff position tanking issue, it will also create interesting matchup/bulletin board material when, for example a number 1 seed chooses someone other than the 8 seed.
Also, I think there needs to be some $incentive$ for each individual game. Not only for the players, but the coaches and owners.
Another thing the league can do is change the draft completely.
Set it up to where everyone gets a chance to have a number one pick.
Do it in a cycle where every team gets to pick at every position once, then repeat. BUT don't do it in an announced schedule, so college players declare/not declare based on knowing the draft order. Do it in a form of lottery. Once a team is randomly drawn and receives the top pick, they're removed from getting the top pick until the cycle completes.
Well, let's see. In Shaq's first two seasons in LA, the coach was Del Harris, and the Lakers lost to... wait for it... the Utah Jazz in the playoffs. His third year was the lockout season, coached by Kurt Rambis (and Rambis says that HE never tanked). So who else is left? Every other season Shaq was in LA, the coach was Phil Jackson.
After losing to the Jazz twice in the playoffs right before that, Shaq's story makes perfect sense to me. Of course, when I go look at the actual game logs, I can see that he was kept out of some games near the ends of seasons. It's hard to say, without doing a lot more work than I'm willing to do, whether it was done to try and manipulate seedings, or if it was just to give him some rest. They weren't the last couple of games, but maybe the seedings had been determined by then.
There's no way to prove any of it. Shaq sounded like he meant it, and it makes sense that they would have preferred to avoid Utah. Ryan Gomes sounded pretty believable when he said Boston tanked. Would doc rivers do that? Who knows?
No, you're right. It doens't always mean anything. But you're a lot smarter than Kurt Rambis, and when you say it there's a reason.I just think Rambis is a total meathead.
For the record, I do think Dallas had a pretty good reason to have avoided Golden State (and Don Nelson) if they could have. And we all had a pretty good idea that Memphis was going to be a problem last year, based on the regular season. And I believe that the Lakers knew that Utah had the best shot at taking them out of the playoffs. Did they tank to avoid the Jazz? Who knows? Did they have reason to? Definitely.
Not EVERY post season since our 2007 le, Spurs have had a of a path to the FINALS I remember having to PLOW through PHX and THEN the Dallas CUBANS then only to play the FAKERS in the WCF. It was EXHAUSTING, and we'd play fairly tired and flat. Meanwhile the FAKERS were given nearly a Red-carpet CAKE-WALK to the WCF for several years and be primed and ready to throw their best 4 games at the Spurs.
It's time that Spurs get the "Royal Treatment" in the post season, and if it means tanking a few games to get there, SO BE IT.
It's NEVER how you START the post season, it's the journey there and how you FINISH.
ALL HAIL POP!!
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