POD: 2025 FA Day 1 recap/off-season talk

[Joe]

Grade: 250 each for jwoo, merv, heimer, wes and clinton

[Joe]

re: Merv's thoughts on us tanking, I briefly considered it during the season last year, just because there were zero sellers, but: acquiring a bunch of assets and sitting around (potentially to just drop in the lotto, in very unknown drafts) waiting to cash them in 1) isn't fun, and 2), the fact that the drafts are unknown and the odds are flattened means that tanking itself is de-powered as a strategy...

...which means that there's a good chance the league remains highly competitive and no one wants to blow their team up or trade their superstar for your big stockpile of assets, and you just have to make a bunch of those picks, pay to camp them, a bunch don't pan out, etc. Given we just got two good lookin lotto rookies and have a bunch of young quality starters, I would much rather overpay to keep our best player and bank on some natural improvement and existing sack of 8 picks and prospects to get to the playoffs, which we missed by a game last year making zero moves

[Jordo]

not enough Tingis Pingis talk!

[Merv]

re: Merv's thoughts on us tanking, I briefly considered it during the season last year, just because there were zero sellers, but: acquiring a bunch of assets and sitting around (potentially to just drop in the lotto, in very unknown drafts) waiting to cash them in 1) isn't fun, and 2), the fact that the drafts are unknown and the odds are flattened means that tanking itself is de-powered as a strategy...

...which means that there's a good chance the league remains highly competitive and no one wants to blow their team up or trade their superstar for your big stockpile of assets, and you just have to make a bunch of those picks, pay to camp them, a bunch don't pan out, etc. Given we just got two good lookin lotto rookies and have a bunch of young quality starters, I would much rather overpay to keep our best player and bank on some natural improvement and existing sack of 8 picks and prospects to get to the playoffs, which we missed by a game last year making zero moves

Just for argument’s sake, couldn’t the draft being an unknown also mean that it’s better than any of these recent classes? Not sure why that makes it de-powered. Won’t be like Ashes makes all the fake players shitty.

[Joe]

re: Merv's thoughts on us tanking, I briefly considered it during the season last year, just because there were zero sellers, but: acquiring a bunch of assets and sitting around (potentially to just drop in the lotto, in very unknown drafts) waiting to cash them in 1) isn't fun, and 2), the fact that the drafts are unknown and the odds are flattened means that tanking itself is de-powered as a strategy...

...which means that there's a good chance the league remains highly competitive and no one wants to blow their team up or trade their superstar for your big stockpile of assets, and you just have to make a bunch of those picks, pay to camp them, a bunch don't pan out, etc. Given we just got two good lookin lotto rookies and have a bunch of young quality starters, I would much rather overpay to keep our best player and bank on some natural improvement and existing sack of 8 picks and prospects to get to the playoffs, which we missed by a game last year making zero moves

Just for argument’s sake, couldn’t the draft being an unknown also mean that it’s better than any of these recent classes? Not sure why that makes it de-powered. Won’t be like Ashes makes all the fake players shitty.

Of course not, I'm not saying the draft itself is worse - but the relative value of getting top lotto odds is less, because a) the odds are flatter and b) it's not going to be obvious who the top picks should be in unknown drafts (that's the depowering of tanking). So I'd rather try to compete - if I fail I get the 12th lotto odds or whatever (which is now reasonably valuable given b), and if I succeed then we compete for a title or at least make some noise in the playoffs!

[Tyler]

Just finished the pod! Sorry for my outburst lol

Free agent and general strategy talk was fun. Might make a seller out of me if the water is hot enough!

[Hoff]

not enough Tingis Pingis talk!

I can't believe as a Knicks fan you want this scumbag

[Merv]

re: Merv's thoughts on us tanking, I briefly considered it during the season last year, just because there were zero sellers, but: acquiring a bunch of assets and sitting around (potentially to just drop in the lotto, in very unknown drafts) waiting to cash them in 1) isn't fun, and 2), the fact that the drafts are unknown and the odds are flattened means that tanking itself is de-powered as a strategy...

...which means that there's a good chance the league remains highly competitive and no one wants to blow their team up or trade their superstar for your big stockpile of assets, and you just have to make a bunch of those picks, pay to camp them, a bunch don't pan out, etc. Given we just got two good lookin lotto rookies and have a bunch of young quality starters, I would much rather overpay to keep our best player and bank on some natural improvement and existing sack of 8 picks and prospects to get to the playoffs, which we missed by a game last year making zero moves

Just for argument’s sake, couldn’t the draft being an unknown also mean that it’s better than any of these recent classes? Not sure why that makes it de-powered. Won’t be like Ashes makes all the fake players shitty.

Of course not, I'm not saying the draft itself is worse - but the relative value of getting top lotto odds is less, because a) the odds are flatter and b) it's not going to be obvious who the top picks should be in unknown drafts (that's the depowering of tanking). So I'd rather try to compete - if I fail I get the 12th lotto odds or whatever (which is now reasonably valuable given b), and if I succeed then we compete for a title or at least make some noise in the playoffs!

Yea, I was asking more in a vacuum on that one than Celtics related. I think it’s so fascinating how a lot of us have relatively similar backgrounds and look at the same problems so differently. Humans are interesting beings and SLN is such a fun study in human behavior.

[mantypas/CavsCzar]

Getting to listen to this in the airport. I overpaid to keep Franz because i thought Jordo might give him some dough. He’s young and would be a good fit with the young Black Dick. And I also thought he’d be a potential good running mate with SGA

[Clinton]

Really appreciated the talk around the teams at risk of the Tanking Rule. It’s a very tough time trying to buy right now, with so few sellers.

Just want to put it in writing here that Clinton (I think it was Clinton) said I am offering big for superstars! Want it to be well known that I am trying to compete

I gotchu, with all the talk about no trades, i know that one of the ex tankers is trying. Go RB!