Analyzing Logic Behind Golden State Warriors Vying for Draft Pick vs the Ethical Quandary of Tanking

I'm going to guess when I say obviously, I mean, from a player's perspective, more specifically, is where I'm going to guess that tanking does not come into an individual's mind, especially the players of the Warriors have on this roster. A lot of them are fighting for contracts. They're fighting for a spot somewhere, if not the Warriors, another team next season. But I feel like logically, tanking is probably the way to go. And infamously, it paid off brilliantly for them back in 2012 when Mark Jackson, whether it was obvious or not, I don't know if anybody will ever admit it, but I think it was a safe to say kind of thing. They tanked. They made sure that they fell within the top seven because their pick was top seven protected that year. If it was eight or worse, they would have lost it, and they got the number seven pick that turned it to Harrison Barnes. Here we are 13 years later, and again, if you're looking at this on paper in terms of asset management, planning your organization and the best situation for success moving forward to me, positioning yourself for a high draft pick would probably make the most sense. I know that's not what goes to the mind of a player. What is your take on maybe that being a silver lining to losing tonight's game? I'm not a big fan of that. I never thought in my life about going out, thinking about we're going to lose the game to get a good draft. Is it right? Right. I'm going out to win. Okay. So it's hard to get the players about doing it. I think that's one of the most horrific things ever. I mean, you owe it to the fans to yes, I think you owe it to the fans. It's terrible for the league to be doing that. The teams are going to go out there and do that and not give the fans who are spending their hard earned money to come and watch these players perform and watch them go out there. Give anything less than their best effort. I don't know how you can live with yourself as a player to do that. So I don't know that happens unless it's so blatant and the coach is not playing players that should be playing. It's a horrible, horrible thing. And I just actually had a talk earlier today, I ran into a player, Jeff Ayers, who played at Arizona State and I coached him in the big three. He was here at this function that I'm doing down here in Mesa. And we talked a little bit about the tanking thing. I said, look, what put an end to tanking is that where the NBA and every major sport team sport in the world missed the boat decades ago. I was a big proponent of this and I'm talking many decades ago. This is professional sports and professional sports. It should be like the individual sports like tennis and golf. You only make as much money as you earn by how well you play. Every game should have money on the line for every player. If you don't win the game, you don't get that money. And that would change everything. Every game would be as hard fought and hard played as the seventh game in the NBA finals because every player has money on the line. The two worst teams in the league could be playing and they're going to be busting their hump because everybody wants to get played. Right. Think about the load management. Players are not going to be happy about not playing because they're going to lose money if they don't win. It's the same thing. You get an injury or doing something, you're going to bust your hump to get back and get healthy because you want to be out there so you can win and get the extra money. And the extra money, we're talking about nutty stuff, a guy like Steph, for instance. So you have a maximum of five million dollars guaranteed. That's the most anybody can get guaranteed. That's even a stupid number that I can't even relate to. Right. Five million. So how many wins should this team win? OK, so let's say it's 50. Make it a number. So if the Warriors should be able to win 50 games, so great for every game won by the Warriors. Steph Curry would make a million dollars. I look, it's that's an idea that I don't know if it's realistic in terms of implementing if a player association would agree to that. Well, here I put it back in the day. It could have been done. And if it's done right, great bargaining, they could agree to it and do it. And it should be that way. There is no way that you should be allowed to go play, give a crappy effort and you get still get paid. And I mean, you should you should be money on the line. Yeah, it really should be. I hear golf like you play. We do golf and people. Yeah. I put some money. I said, no, I'm trying to go golf hard enough as it is. I'm trying to go out and trying to have fun. The game is so freaking hard anyway. And then usually in golf, you have a bet. I tell people, I say, OK, look, if we're going to put money on the line, I'm going to become a different player. Absolutely. No, no, zero pushback, 100 percent agree with you. What I'm what I'm trying to articulate here is that until better rules are in place to prevent tanking in this current modern at this exact moment in time, you do have a lot of teams gunning for the best position imaginable, because what a lot of these, quote, unquote, experts, the folks who evaluate the players coming out of high school, internationally college for the NBA draft, what they're saying, and it's pretty universal opinion, is that there are four can't miss prospects coming out. And the odds right now, let's say like the Warriors decide, OK, we're not going to take things that seriously this year and we lose enough games to finish as the 10th worst team in the NBA. If you finish as the 10th worst team in the NBA, everyone brings up the lottery odds. And let's say you finish 10th worst, you would have a 3 percent chance of getting the number one pick. Those are shitty odds. However, your odds of getting the top four pick goes up to 14 percent. And what I'm what I'm saying here, I guess, Rachel, ultimately, is that with the current rules in place, do you see why there's maybe a little wisdom to look to the future and take the player part of it out? If you can, if you can't take the player perspective out, I understand, sir. But from a from from an ownership standpoint and trying to put together a team that can compete for a championship, it makes all the sense in the world. But it's bad for the game. You agree. No, no, no pushback there. I'm not saying it's good for the game. I'm just saying until they fix the rules, if you're going to be competitive and try to come back next year, a better team and and give the fans hope and, you know, just just actually apply some rhyme and reason to all this. I don't I just I guess I don't see what the alternative, like if you're playing to win games so that you can finish the eighth seed and they get bounced in the play. But here's the thing. It's like it's like it's like people go to jail and do stuff for throwing games, right? Well, this in the serious cases, 100 percent, people are making bets and doing something and somebody goes out there. That's what they're really doing. What they're doing. It's just it's just wrong. And so many levels from a business standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world. Just from being ethically in a way, ethically, it's it's not right. Again, really, I get I mean, I do think that it's a situation as a coach, not that I'm throwing games, but it's a great opportunity. If I know we're out of the playoff hunt, I think that's an ideal opportunity to maybe rest your star guys and play a lot of people to see what you have. I have no problem with that. But if you're getting to the point where you're trying to throw them to throw the games to lose to get yourself a better draft position, I have a real problem with that. I think it's the perfect time to play people to get a true evaluation of how a person can play for you. Make your decisions for whether you want them the next year, whatever it is, not to get a better draft position. That very well said. And again, I do hope the rules are amended so that we stop seeing this bullshit. I'm 100 percent with you. I'm just saying, like, like, given that how the rules are written and you have so many teams, right, like a third of the NBA rake has pretty much waved the white towel or the white flag either or and and they're gunning right now to hopefully land one of those top four picks. It's it's incredible. But I'm also at the same time, I'm absolutely with you in that this would be a great time to see what a lot of these young players look like. Case in point, tonight we saw a decent chunk of minutes from this from a kid named L.J. Cryer, who's been putting up some great numbers in Santa Cruz. He came out of Houston last year, was the runner up in the national championship game to another Warriors players team, Will Richard, when he was with Florida. And so we saw some 17 minutes from L.J. Cryer tonight. The other two way players on this team, a malefied Leone's and Nate Williams. I wish we saw more from them. Only seeing six minutes, 23 seconds from Leon's eight minutes, 35 seconds from Williams. That's where I feel like you could kind of you could allocate minutes more appropriately.