Raptors social media has been begging for us to be terrible for 3+ years now. Just went through a thread on r/nba and there's a pile of guys crying about the Jakob trade last year because we could have tanked for Wemby!!!!!
The Raptors were a few games under .500 at the time and at "best" would have finished around 35-37 wins, so maybe slipped a whole...3 draft slots?
The model tank organizations are either teams that didn't really intentionally tank, or they're the teams no one should want to be (or they're the process....). To be clear, I mean a team that didn't just have a bad season or two, but a team that legit went into full rebuild. Traded the vets, sucked for multiple years more or less on purpose, full youth movement.
I'll rank the current rebuilds from best to worst rebuilds so far. Also, I'll list their 3 best players/prospects:
OKC - The golden boy of tank nation's everywhere right now....but they kinda never really "tanked" per se. They organically got bad because their star players demanded out and the 1st Team All NBA player they were forced into trading turned into their franchise player/MVP candidate and a bag load of other good stuff. The irony of OKC being the best of the tank teams is that they only got this way by trying to extend their competitive window longer than anyone thought they should have by making the Paul George trade in the first place. They were thoroughly mediocre but trying to get better instead of rebuilding. SGA, Chet, Dort
Spurs - I'm going to put the Spurs rebuild here despite it being a 1 yr tank job that tried to stay competitive and win games every year until last year when they blatantly tanked. Wemby is a fap worthy prospect who shows flashes of dominance every night but the whole package isn't ready yet, doesn't even look very close yet tbh. Wemby, Vassell, Johnson
Sacto - A team that trades Tyrese Haliburton to keep D'Aron Fox is the model for nothing. Not a bad team, but this is what a decade plus of being terrible was for? 27 yr old Sabonis & 26 yr old Fox? We already have a duo as good as that without being bad forever. Sabonis, Fox, Monk
Indiana - Haliburton was such a steal. But we shouldn't forget that they only got him because a previous failed rebuild generated Paul George, who was traded to OKC for Sabonis (who was the throw in, Dipo was the main attraction). Are they actually good though? They have a franchise point god, so that's a start but there's nothing else here but Myles Turner, kids who aren't ready and role players at the moment. Haliburton, Turner, and dunno...Mathurin?
Orlando - Nice start to the season, that D is officially nasty. But we're on what, rebuild #3 now with fuck all to show for it? The peak of their rebuilding efforts since Shaq left is a team with Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis and Jameer Nelson as it's 3 best players. Let's not even get into the almost 15 years between that one and this one. No superstar and I'd argue no star at all. Banchero, Wagner, and Suggs are going to win anything? This is what 10 years of tanking was for? Banchero, Wagner, Suggs
Nawlins - How's that generational Zion hype working out? Their best player is 32 yr old CJ fucking McCollum this year. Not only did this Zion based rebuild fail, but it had all the stuff they got from the AD tank job too. This is both tracks on the tank falling the fuck off. Zion, Ingram, McCollum.
Houston - Their rebuild was going so bad culturally that they paid Fred 40 million dollars to come in and be the team dad. Not joking. The depths of hell this organization would be in going forward if they didn't fluke into Sengun can't be overstated. Sengun, Jalen, Jabari
Memphis - I don't really know where to put this clownshow because who knows what it is going forward. Clock is ticking after this write off of a season. Jah, Bane, JJJ.
Charlotte - LOL. This deserves exactly this many characters and no more. Ball, Bridges, Williams
Pistons - Yeah, a worse rebuild than Charlotte. Ball is a legit all star level talent, Detroit hasn't managed to get one of those yet. Cade has shown no growth at the NBA level, Jaden Ivey is on the bench and their 2 best players according to every major metric are two defensive specialists. Cade, Ausar, Duren
Teams like Portland & Utah are too early into the planned rebuild to grade yet imo.
So I said all that to say this. If you take the best player/prospect on each rebuilding team, put them in a pile and rank them with who you would take if you were starting a team today it looks something like this...bonus points, let's add the Raptors top 3 players into the discussion now.
Best:
SGA
Wemby
Haliburton
Scottie
Jah
Sengun
Sabonis
Ball
Zion
Banchero
Cade
2nd Best:
Bane
Chet
Fox
Siakam
Ausar
Vassell
Ingram
Wagner
Jalen Green
Turner
Bridges
3rd Best:
JJJ
OG
Suggs
Dort
Duren
McCollum
Williams
Johnson
Jabari Smith
Monk
Mathurin
So I might see the argument from the tankers for wanting to turn Pascal into a younger version of Pascal....but other than that, what the fuck are we tearing down and rebuilding for? We already have a better core than most of the 1/3rd of the league that has been on the rebuilding treadmill for the better part of a decade, and it's not old yet.
