Are we tanking this year?

[greece66]

'We are not tanking' but...
-we focus on developing young talent.
-we let Lee, J.Crawford, Humphries and Bayless go and get Zeller, Thornton and ET
-Stevens will work his magic on ET and he will become consistent offensively (just like Green last year I suppose)
-Same magic will transform Zeller into a good rim protector
-We have a very little chance of entering playoffs (rephrase: Everyone else except Boston fans thinks we have a very ...)
-If we really wanted to make it in the playoffs, the trade with the Nets is simply absurd.
-Signing Brad Stevens for 6 years only makes sense if you want to focus on developing talent.
-There is a trade off between developing talent and winning. (Unless you think Doc was an idiot for playing the veterans)
-If you get so many draft picks, logic says you plan to use at least some of them.
- Given the change in the lottery system it makes huge sense to be among the worst six teams of the League.
-Yes, we could not get K.Love but we could have got some of the other (less good but solid) players available in the market. That we did not even try suggests something.
-Ainge is a smart and a calculating person. He does not give a sh__ for the playoffs. He wants to rebuild a contender through draft picks and trades. This will take time.
-Trades like the one that got us KG do not happen everyday. (and guess what? we used a draft pick to get him)
- And yes the draft works- this is how the Bulls got Jordan, OKC Durant, Milwaukee J. Parker. (And we got a certain Larry Bird- maybe you' ve heard of him).

In short, lots of wishful thinking + ignoring the obvious= we are going for 35+ wins this year, and we can make it to the playoffs.

Time to face reality.

OK, so we might not call this tanking bcs it is a bad word and in any case we do not go to the extremes that Philadelphia does. Let's just call it 'rebuilding' same way we might call a really fat person 'well fed'.
And sure I do not think Brad or Danny gives the players phone calls and tells them 'Guys, we really have to lose this game'.
It is way more subtle than this. But this roster is built to be among the worst six of the League this year. And it will be.

[Jiri Welsch]

It seems you're answering your own question.

I think besides Philadelphia or, say, Milwaukee with horrible Kidd at the helm, there are few teams Boston is certainly better than. I think the law of percentages gives us at best a .500 record and even then the obvious injury problems the Celtics are running into even before the season starts points to them having a losing season.

I am looking at the preseason standings (not to gauge records but just as a means of looking at all the teams) and there really are no teams the Celtics are definitively better than besides Philly. And even last year we struggled versus them.

I expect, like many others on this site, about 30 wins.

[greece66]

If anyone has a reason to think Danny tried his best to build a playoff contender this year; then by all means guys share your thoughts.
I do not try to be obnoxious or insulting. But I do think that wishful thinking is not doing any good to the team. Or us fans for that matter- do we really want to get disappointed game after game same way we did last season? (Oh, yes ET will get better next game; sure, the chemistry will work at some point; Sullynyk will reach their peak next month etc). I mean, come on...

[Jiri Welsch]

I think there's a happy medium between unrealistically positive expectations and depressingly negative expectations.

The team is not balanced like a contending team. By that I mean there are too many logjams at positions and not enough capable players at others. There almost certainly will be a trade made during the season and the young guys will be exciting to watch. Yes, that includes Sullinger and Olynyk but also includes Smart and Young. Rondo is set to return for almost a full season and Bradley seems to be coming into his own as a player.

We won't be great, but there are still exciting things to look forward to as a Celtics fan. And it's okay to expect a loss but still root for a victory.

[greece66]

No reason to be excessively pessimistic either.
We are on track to build a contender. And we ve got plenty of good young talent in the team.

[SHAQATTACK]

Not on purpose . 
Gathering assets and waiting for the right opportunity to fall our way and LeBron decline
But LeBron ...draws all the stars or ex stars his way.....the best player gets any player he wants on his team ...only limited by cap space.   

We are at his mercy ....till he grows to old dominate the East or goes West to retire

Until Danny can put two or three stars on the floor this train is stuck.

[Celtics4ever]

We are passively tanking.   They will never admit it.   The roster has huge holes and they were unable to make a big splash in free agency or a trade.  I think we are developing assets and playing hard, we are just not a great team yet.   It will payoff during the road.   I watch the team good or bad, so while I want to see them do well, I will still watch them when they are less than ideal.   With this roster, which has some potential down the road, once the hard knocks of development are done, we are going to lose some games.   We have lost more than we have won and we have not played a real alpha dog team.  New season means optimism and some guys think we will make some noise but Vegas has us winning like 27 games this year and they make or lose money on that number.   Sometimes they are wrong but usually they are close. 

 I think we are 2 good players away from being a good team.  Right now, we have the role players.

Thornton some nights is easily the best guard we have and yet he does not start?  Now I know some guys will say we need firepower for the bench.   But with scoring as anemic as us at times, that is a joke.  That might matter on a good team, but on a bad team you just want to get guys who deliver.

[the_Bird]

I'm not sure yet.

I'm optimistic because they signed Evan Turner, a guy that actually seems to make the team a little bit better.  Last year, Danny was actively getting rid of decent-but-not-great players, guys who were helping the team a little bit.  Thinking of guys like Courtney Lee and Jordan Crawford.  They were helping the team out, they were jettisoned for not very much in return and that actively made the team worse in the short term.

This year, Danny seems to be bringing in guys who might actually help the team win games.  He didn't NEED to sign Evan Turner.  He didn't NEED to trade for Zeller.  Neither guy is costing the team too much, but neither were Lee and Crawford last year. 

Now, if the team's on a 25-win pace halfway through the season, things may change and a full-on tank job may reappear.  Right now, though, it seems like Danny's made some (smallish) moves that should result in a better team this season.  The intention seems to be to try and get a few more wins, at least right now.

[Moranis]

If we were tanking Rondo, Bass, and Green would not be on the team.  Neither would Turner.

That said, Boston is going to be bad.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 wins and if Boston is going to be that bad, I'd rather just go all in on the bad and be a 20 win or less team.

[Jiri Welsch]

If we were tanking Rondo, Bass, and Green would not be on the team.  Neither would Turner.

That said, Boston is going to be bad.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 wins and if Boston is going to be that bad, I'd rather just go all in on the bad and be a 20 win or less team.

All of them (minus Turner) were here last year when we didn't necessarily try to win. Also it's been said countless times but the difference between 20 wins and 25 wins is nothing now that the lotto system has changed.

[Celtics18]

I'm not going to expect the team to make the playoffs, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility, and I will be rooting like heck for the team to get there. 

So, no, I don't think we are tanking.

[Fred Roberts]

If anyone has a reason to think Danny tried his best to build a playoff contender this year; then by all means guys share your thoughts.
I do not try to be obnoxious or insulting. But I do think that wishful thinking is not doing any good to the team. Or us fans for that matter- do we really want to get disappointed game after game same way we did last season? (Oh, yes ET will get better next game; sure, the chemistry will work at some point; Sullynyk will reach their peak next month etc). I mean, come on...

The first point about danny doing his best to build a contender seems ridiculous to me. do you want danny to make a pitino trade like, oh let's see . . .Joe Johnson for 1/2 a season of Rodney Rodgers? danny could certainly trade in the draft picks and young players for middling veterans who could help us win a few more games this year. Call me crazy, but I think draft picks still have value even if they're not in the top 10. Some of our picks (BKN, CLE, LAC) do not depend on our record, so tanking is irrelevant to this argument.

The Celtics are building for SUSTAINED SUCCESS over the long term. Do you want a quick fix to have a short term non-contender playoff team? Why?

The perfect trade scenario wasn't there this off season. Thank God Danny didn't do something  short sighted and premature to stunt the growth of the team. There is a sneaky talented foundation developing for the C's, and the draft picks will be handy whether they tank or not.

I think Danny realizes that tanking is simply not worth the pain. Particularly, with the way the rules are going to change. Last year I do believe we tanked. I don't think it happens again. Once a decade is acceptable. No more.

[slamtheking]

If we were tanking Rondo, Bass, and Green would not be on the team.  Neither would Turner.

That said, Boston is going to be bad.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 wins

This

if Boston is going to be that bad, I'd rather just go all in on the bad and be a 20 win or less team.

NOT this.

I really only see Philly and probably Utah as worse teams than us this year in terms of talent.  I think 27 wins is probable with no more than 3-4 teams with worse records (I think it' really just 2 teams).  We'll be in the top 5 for a pick this coming draft and get a solid foundation player for the future if not a franchise player.  preferably Okafor or Towns but there's other players that figure to be good enough to be key building blocks.

[wdleehi]

This team will try to play to it's talent level.



Just think that the talent level is lotto level in the NBA. 



The team needs the young players to grow fast and really needs to find that star to go with Rondo if they want to get out of this level. 

[greece66]

The Celtics are building for SUSTAINED SUCCESS over the long term. Do you want a quick fix to have a short term non-contender playoff team? Why?

Ehm, I think you misunderstood what I wrote in the original message, bcs what you write above is exactly what I think too.