Remember those Reggie Jackson - Andre Drummond teams that were average at best and usually below average? That was around the same time that Philly was doing their stupid process thing and a lot of our fans jumped on that bandwagon. I remember constantly hearing the argument that being an 8th seeded team was actually the worst thing in the world because it meant we got bad draft picks while also having no hope of a championship. I sometimes wonder if that faction is keeping that same energy right now and are still watching this disgrace of a product every game.

I won’t claim to speak for everyone but I actually liked it when I could watch a Pistons game with the expectation that they might even win!!!

Tanking as a team-building strategy is flawed. It’s like treating powerball tickets as a business investment. You are relying on luck: luck that the lottery balls will favor you, luck that you hit on the right player, luck that said player will actually want to stay with your team past the rookie contract (because remember you suck monkey butt on purpose). We got the first pick and got a player who has certainly shown flashes of greatness (Cade). But what good does that do us if our team sucks monkey butt? It’s only a matter of time before he wants out.

Even in the ‘successful’ tanking case (Philly), they were fortunate enough that Embiid was hurt his first year and they could suck monkey butt for an extra year and get Ben Simmons. Also Philly hasn’t gotten past the second round since Iverson’s MVP year so their example doesn’t really jive with the whole ‘championship or bust’ mentality of the tanking faction. Despite these evident flaws, tanking is treated as some kind of necessary step in team building. It’s not. There are three ways to build a basketball team: drafting, free agency, and trades. All three are important. A competent front office values all three.

Anyway I’m not gonna watch these games anymore. Not until there is actually a realistic possibility of them winning. I used to watch every Pistons game. Now I don’t even want to watch the highlights.

I am not gloating about their failures btw. As soon as the Pistons started tanking, I WANTED to be wrong about tanking!!! But sadly that appears to not be the case.