And in any case, if draft picks do not matter, then why does Ainge keep making trades to acquire future draft picks?
I think you missed my point. Draft picks are nice, but I'm not a proponent of a strategy in which the primary goal is to lose as much as you can to get a chance at higher picks.
Fair enough.
But in this case also bear in mind that tanking in this strict sense rarely occurs. Purposefully losing games is a tactic rather than a strategy usually employed towards the end of the season, when you 'rest' your best players or ask your team to do silly things (like AB shooting 11 3's against Philly if I remember correctly).
Tanking (aka rebuilding) as a strategy has multiple rewards. For instance, this year's C's will play fast and shoot lots of 3's. IMHO this will not improve their win record (and strictly speaking since "the team is not doing the best it can to win" it is "tanking"). But it is reasonable to expect that over time the players will improve in playing this way and the strategy will bear fruits (say in 2015-16). Similarly, buying players cheap and then selling as soon as they start performing well (eg Crawford last year) is not helping you in the short term, but you can make the case that it improves the team's prospects in the long term.
So, tanking involves many things: experimenting with new strategies, giving more time to young talents, gambling with players' contracts, and when really necessary purposefully losing a game or two.
(I hope I did not miss your point again, if I did, by all means do correct me.)
Well, you are actually way off my original point, which was simply that of course I'm not anti draft picks. As to all the rest of it, now we are just into the semantics of what constitutes "tanking."
To me, what we are putting on the floor does not constitute a tanking team. It's possible that Ainge could have made some short term moves this off-season that would have helped us this year, but possibly set us back as far as the future goes.
If this fits your definition of tanking, then I guess we are tanking. My definition is a little different. For me, tanking is making losing the primary goal of the season. I don't think that's the case this year. I think everybody involved with the Celtics organization is going to make a concerted effort to get the current roster to perform at its top level and win as many games as possible.
Thankfully, this year these forums don't seem to be as inundated with the "Wiggins or Bust" type sentiments of last season. Most people don't think we'll be good, but less seem to be staunchly opposed to making an effort to win. That's a positive as far as I'm concerned.
I'm truly excited to see how the 2014-2015 season unfolds for our beloved Celtics.