I don't see us tanking next season like the 76ers did when they spent three seasons not really attempting to win games, and trading almost anyone and everyone with any value for more draft picks. I can't see Dave Joerger, Vlade Divac or Vivek Ranadive going down that road and buying into that philosophy when they have spent the post-Cousins trade banging on about changing the culture of this team. It wouldn't fit the profile of a coach like Dave Joerger and I doubt he would want to stick around a team that is preparing to tank like the 76ers did. It wouldn't fit with a former player like Vlade who only missed the play offs twice in his career, he's used to playing for winning basketball teams and I honestly believe he wants to bring back a winning culture to the Kings and will not not sign off on losing for the sake of it. And it doesn't fit with a successful businessman like Vivek, he wants to win and granted his decisions haven't always helped, but his decisions were made on the basis that he thought they would help us win. With that in mind, tanking would go against what the people in charge have said since the Cousins trade went down.
Furthermore, it would be counterproductive to embrace tanking when their desire is to start a new positive era of Kings basketball. We are still in a long play off drought and have not had a winning season since the 2005-06 season. So the last thing we should do as a team is embrace losing for the sake of it. We can't afford for our players to get used to losing games. What we should be doing is building the foundations of what comes next. If we want to become a team that shoots more threes, has greater ball and man movement - like how the best teams in the league play - then that is something we should embrace and encourage on a nightly basis next season. The Brooklyn Nets have done that this season. Obviously they have lost a lot of games, but over half of those defeats were by less than ten points, so they competed and managed to do it by playing a style akin to the top teams in the league - the difference between them and the top teams is they lack the game changing talent. Could their head coach have organised the Nets differently and won more games? Perhaps, but it would have been a shortsighted approach. Instead, they used this season to build the foundations for future success. It was about developing their offense, their style of play, and the culture for the players that have a future with them and the players they will bring to their team in the future. The Nets have been the antithesis of the model team, but after years of doing things the wrong way, they now appear to be moving in the right direction. Sure they lost a lot of games, but they competed and played with grit and determination, with more quality the Nets would have won more games.
Now the main positive I take from our play after the Cousins trade is that on most nights our team competed and played with grit and determination. They went out onto that court and tried to win. There were times when they were simply not good enough and got beat - sometimes by quite a margin - but they never gave up and threw in the towel, they picked themselves up and fought on. At no point was there a desire to embrace losing in order to get a better chance of a higher pick. Instead, the desire was to compete. That is the desire we need to take into next season, along with embracing the process that needs to be put in place to play a style of basketball more akin to the top teams, and to implement a positive culture that can take us forwards. It is going to take time to build a winner, but at no point should we embrace tanking and losing for the sake of it. Instead, we should embrace competing, effort, and trying to win just like we did after the Cousins trade went down.
So for me, no we won't tank next season, but it is pretty likely we will end up in the 20 to 30 win range and end up with a high end draft pick. But as long as we play with desire and invest in developing our young talent, then hopefully we will be moving in the right direction and building a strong foundation for future success. As I said, the last thing we need to do is embrace losing. Tanking isn't the way forwards for this team and if we do we'll regret it.