I mean, I wouldn't be so sure. We started out the season in line with Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago but have slowly pulled away from them in the standings. Memphis and Orlando are in freefall, Clippers are injured, Brooklyn, Lakers, Phoenix, and Charlotte are not good teams to begin with. All of a sudden, we're in the same area as these teams, and that's not even getting into the tanking shenanigans that teams get into post all-star break and that we are notoriously slow to follow. Remember Joerger chasing wins down the stretch of last season half the time while other teams shamelessly tanked ALL the time. We were lucky to get Fox to begin with.
Tanking doesn't guarantee a #1 pick, but being a bottom 2 team this year guarantees you a pick in this year's top heavy draft, it doesn't really matter the exact position as long as we're looking at a Top 5 and are discussing who between Ayton, Doncic, Porter, or Bagley we should pick, rather than Knox, Bridges, Jackson, or Sexton like we're on a path to doing.
And I do think that was the way to go, for just one season. This one. We have no incentive to tank next year, gotta make this one count because it's essentially the last big piece we can add. We don't have a 2019 pick, and it's kind of a big deal. Everyone likes to act like we can take it super slowly, but time's still limited. A couple of things happen the longer we wait. One, these guys have to eventually get paid. Two, prospects will eventually start to lose their shine.
We were in position to do what Chicago was doing this year after the draft and check so many boxes. But then free agency happened and coupling that with this particular coach and his habits and things have become muddled.
So, me and some others will moan and be negative in the threads because this season seems like we're wasting our time, compounded by the fact that we're already playing against a stacked deck with next year's draft. And then the people who bought the narrative about vet leadership and earning minutes and this and that will snark at us and say we're unpleaseable. I can't speak for everyone, but I can handle 46 point Atlanta losses if we're checking the boxes we should be doing right now. But we're not.
By the 2020 draft we should know who's worthless and who isn't. We may even being starting over again.