Even worse, we get the #1 pick and Stern decides that due to our tanking, we will have to forfeit the pick and pick last in the first round. Now I have this Gomes fiasco to worry about until we actually get to pick someone.

This team can’t do anything right.

What can he actually tweak in the future? Every other sport has the worst team getting the first pick. NBA already has a lottery to avoid tanking in a way. I can’t imagine they are going to give better teams higher picks.

There is nothing Stern can really do, nor is there anything he should do. Whenever I hear someone say something monumentally stupid such as “The team with the BEST record should have the top pick, then teams will have something to play for” I have to cringe. Lets give the best team in the NBA the best players in the draft. Then a team will have a shot at winning 8 in a row in our lifetimes. What more can they do really? In most sports the worst record gets the best pick. (Which would be great for us getting Durant) Now any team that didn’t make the playoffs has a shot at the top pick. Considering the worst team rarely gets the top pick anyway, it is a perfectly flawed system. There isn’t any better way to do it.

I really think this tanking thing is overblown, its just getting more attention this year because of Oden and Durant Kelly Dwyer of CNNSI.com had some interesting comments in one of his posts last week. Basically this happens, in varying forms, in every other sport. A couple of years ago the Pats obviously blew the final game of the season to get a more favorable playoff match-up. In baseball teams play September call-ups. In all sports you often see teams resting their best players before the playoffs. How is that any different? When it comes down to it, its ultimately the same thing the teams aren’t trying their hardest to win that game.

Gomes is an absolute moron and I wouldn’t be sad if he was cut, but Stern isn’t doing anything. It’s all window dressing to make Stern seem as if he’s doing something about all the “tanking”. If he was really that concerned, he could simply keep it private and contact Gomes through the Celtics front office and no one owuld ever know. Instead, all this hullabaloo on Sportcenter means it is all for show..

Stern can go fly his kite as far as I am concerned, it is his system, his lotto, and he help set the rules. If he doent like it, change it this summer.
They were all laughing during the 18 game journey thru hades. Now the lottery is near, they are crying wolf. Tanking has been happening since the beginning of the league, this is nothing new.

Gomes is not a moron. He was probably frustrated by the GM & Coaching staff holding players out for minor injuries. I thought that comment was uncharacteristic for Gomes at the time. You can’t blame him really. Do you want your players to be happy with losing?

Stern is just covering his butt a bit. The truth is that it goes on in every sport and there is no way to fix it without making it very hard for bad teams to get better; a cure that is worse than the disease. As far as the integrity of the game the fans are getting ripped off argument, I defy anyone who went to see say the last Hawks Celtics game and to say they were expecting a top flight NBA basketball game. Give me a break. Moreover, if you are going to punish the Celtics for resting their players in meaningless games, why not fine the Heat for not putting out their best effort last night? They are locking into the 4th seed and just mailed the game in trying not to get anyone hurt. Didn’t they destroy the integrity of the game and rip off their fans by doing that?

If I were Stern, I would be more worried about the fact that a rogue ref threw Tim Duncan out of a late season game with playoff implications for no apparent reason and oh by the way at the time he tossed Duncan the Spurs were ahead by 4 points, after Duncan left the Mavs came back and won the game won the game by five points. The point spread on the game? Dallas minis three. Interesting coincidence isn’t it? Now the Ref is out indefinitely, something that has never happened in my lifetime and Stern says that the ref says he no longer wants to be a ref in the NBA. This after 31 years as a professional ref. Something very strange is going on there.

The tanking talk didn’t start with Doc or Gomes. It actually started much earlier and it started with our own fans, and yes, Blogs like yours Jeff.
It started when we lost Pierce and then Tony, both legitimate injuries although you wouldn’t know it to listen to some people here and on other message boards snicker when they talked about it. It started because after the first 7 or so losses fans needed to console themselves with the thought that the youngsters that they had so much faith in when Pierce went down couldn’t possibly be so bad that they couldn’t win games against even the dregs of the NBA.
There had to be some underlying reason for all of these losses, game after game after game.
 We brought this scrutiny on ourselves because we overrated our talent and their ability to win games so much we were actually jaded by our own fandom.
 Fantanking indeed.

Stern has a pretty big stick. Just ask Kevin McHale.

Well he wasn’t letting us get 1 or 2 anyway. I hope he doesn’t take away the pick completely.

By the way, I think that would be completely wrong. The fans are the ones who suffer. Just impose huge fines on Ainge and Rivers. Gomes didn’t orchestrate the tanking.

Stern can listen to what Gomes has to say and leave it at that. Gome’s comments were made in the heat of battle and that should be taken into account. Stupid comments are made when players are asked “loaded” questions. Who was it that reported on Gome’s comments and what were the questions that Gomes was responding to.

A clever reporter trying to make (instead of simply reporting) news can ask leading questions that help make his case. An example in point….Did you stop beating your wife?….A “yes” or a “no” answer is equally damaging.

Bloggers are as guilty as reporters when they can’t seem to leave the subject alone. They too are trying to build a case or a story to prove their mettle. It’s an attention-ploy and also a tool for those with an axe to grind. For those fans that have been around sports for 25 or so years, the issue of “tanking” is nothing new because in various forms it’s a common practice.

Jaycelt – you are 100% correct. Well said.

No matter how you slice it: bad karma.

Gomes has already said something stupid, or has he said the truth? That is the issue here. Every other team that could be accused for tanking has kept its mouth shut and its players hasnt said anything along the lines of what Gomes has said. Now the Celtics will have to go into damage control; but dont accuse anybody but the Celtics for its name being dragged thru the mud. Whose fault is it, at the end of the day? Which third party are we going to blame this time?

“A Stern look, But is there a stick”? Loved your title, Jeff! Clever play on words that fit the subject like a comfortable shoe. Kudos!

My maternal grandmother had a saying: always keep a little lie in your pocket. Gomes will have to learn that lesson the hard way.

Brick,

Stern doens’t control the lottery. That really is a tinfoil hat, we didn’t land on the moon, kind of conspiracy theory. If he controled the lottery, every league owner would have to know about it and be in on the fix. There is millions of dollars on the line. If Stern were fixing the lottery you don’t think someone like Mark Cuban wouldn’t rat him out or extort him over it? No one controls the lotter. It really does work the way it is adervertised and the Celtics really do have a 39% chance of getting the top pick. Period. Unfortuneately, that means that there is a 61% chance the Celtics won’t get a top pick and you will still be able to claim that Stern controls the Lottery. As badly as I would like to see the Celtics get Oden or Durrant, I would like to see them win the pick even more so that it would finally put an end to the Stern controls the lottery and won’t let the Celtics win BS.

Well, Brick, Gomes is not the one thats going to suffer the consequences, if any, that his “indiscretion” may cause. Like someone already said: Stern made the rules and up till now, he hasnt done annything about them; He is not that stupid; He knows the rules, as they stand now, do not specifically prohibit what has happened over the last few years. Probably his lawyers recommended that he include a “catch all” clause somewhere in his Rules and Regulations that prohibit any conduct that is considered detrimental to the business of the NBA. I’d be surprised if it didnt exist. The issue would then be; Can he apply that rule to the Celtics when he hasnt applied it to other teams that certainly have engaged in conduct that at least should have motivated Stern to look into possible wrongdoing before now? There is such a thing as selective application of the law or discriminatory application of the law, if you want to give it another name.
Any action to remedy this obvious loophole in the distribution of the ping pong balls should be made prospectively; not retroactively.
But then, we may be drowning in a glass of water, after all. lol

It is just the NY controlled league and sports media wanting to tarnish further one of the most prestigous sport franchises in the history of sports. They hated Red and they will continue to find ways of trashing his passion, the Celtics.
They wouldn’t even give the Celtics cap relief after Lewis died; that says it all.
Screw them; the Celtics are going to draft a big man and make a trade for a stabilzing little guy and the Celts will be in the playoffs next year and an Eastern contender the year later.

Come on, the lottery is over a month away. The national sports conciousness lasts about 5 minutes. Will anyone remember or care about this whole episode on May 22nd? Of course not. There will nearly be the entire playoffs over by then as well as baseball and the NFL draft. NO ONE and I mean no one will remember or care about “tanking” in late MAy..

I note in passing that Atlanta beat Indiana 118-102 this evening in a game in which JO and Foster didn’t play. The tank-o-rama continues.

I still maintain they ought to reverse the lottery order. The lottery team with the best (not worst) record has the best chance at the #1 pick. I’d rather see teams 16-18 elevated into contention than continue to let the horrid franchises make terrible drafting decisions or neglect to develop the good players they do draft. The only #1 pick in the last gazillion years who won a championship with the team that originally drafted him is Duncan— and the Spurs were a 59 win team the year before they tanked. You’d see hard-fought games right through the end of the season.

Gomes is a complete moron for saying what he did.

I’ll do you one better, Brickowski: Instead of installing one new lottery system, you have a lottery of lottery systems. You basically don’t tell any of the teams what you’re doing for the lottery until AFTER the season. Then you hold a lottery with about three to four different lottery versions, pick one out of a hat, and then hold the lottery accordingly.
That way, a team doesn’t know how to tank!

Gomes is not an idiot and he will not lose his job, it is just sports analysts/writers/etc etc trying to find some dirty tidbits of news. Gomes should not have said what he said, but any intelligent person already knew that the Celtics could have won more games. Every team not in playoff contention tanks, and some times tankers tank better than other tankers and it just looks like a terrible game.

I am a Celtics fan, nothing more, and I watched every game and enjoyed 95% of them. The ones I disliked the most were towards the beginning of the year when some of the young players I liked were not playing up to my expectations… now they are with more experience under their belt. I am a happy fan, even though it hurt to watch them lose so much. Would I have enjoyed an above .500 year and a spot in the playoffs? Heck ya, but when that was out of reach I went for the next best thing to cheer for… player development and with Rondo, Dwest, Gomes, Jefferson, Perkins and at times the other players looking better, I can be happy.

I mean at least Mark Blount isn’t a Celtic any more.

CsfanNH

If Stern wants to stop the tanking, then contract about a half dozen teams. Fewer teams means better talent on each roster and less of a chance that one drafted superstar can make such a huge difference.

The Celtics are merely taking advantage of an awful system — brought about by Stern himself. Too many teams have no prayer of competing for the title each year, and to go from basement to championship contender you need luck more than anything else.

Enough with the hand-wringing and finger-pointing on the whole tanking thing. Why don’t you wring your hands and point some fingers at the fact that this franchise’s future has largely come down to a 40% chance at a top 2 pick. If you have not noticed by now – Wyc , Danny and Doc collectively have no clue on how to manage and run a successful NBA team. Moe, Larry and Curley have accidently backed into the possibility of getting a fanchise-transforming player. Unless that has been the grand scheme of their multi-year plan all along.

David Stern would much rather talk tough and answer questions about “tanking” than address the issues raised by the whole Joey Crawford situation.

they have to talk to gomes so the great american public can be assured that stern is ever vigilant for corruption. of course stern designed the stupid system which encourages what we have witnessed. also, big mouth doc had to put it out there that he was not tanking, which of course he was. dumb and dumber, but what do you expect from the man with all the complicated offense sets that wasted a lot of developmental time for the kiddies.

When bench players have not had much PT, how does one determine which players should be retained? It’s no secret that the Celtics need to make some tough retention decisions since our roster has so much unproven youth. When do these bench warmers get the chance to show if they belong?

Danny traded for Telfair and his early performance has been a disaster. Is Telfair’s problem due to a lack of confidence, deficient talent, difficult adjustment (chemistry) that PT will cure?

When the playoffs are a distant memory, when the starting lineup and key reserves are in “sick bay”, logic suggests that the time is RIPE for evaluating those players at the end of the bench. What better way than give them PT to discover their ceiling or theur cellar?

This whole subject of tanking seems ludicrous for those struggling teams trying to rebuild, especially when the building pieces represent such “raw” talent. Whether we see PT at the beginning, middle or end of the season still represents a NEED to discover what kind of gas we have in the tank. It just looks worse when PT is extended at the end of the season….which happens to coincide with lottery positioning. Besides, when your roster is as depleted as the Celtic’s, do we need to see Pierce or Jefferson play another 6-10 games to decide if THEY BELONG or has our priority shifted to screening players at the end of the bench.

Can Stern make the decision (as to who should play) for us or any other struggling franchise?? The answer is obvious.

Tanking guarantees no predictable drafting outcome! “End of STERN STICK”!

Maybe Gomes is dumb like a fox and trying to get out of his contract. He’s a bargain next year at a team option for 771K. If they waive him for making these comments, he could make alot more as a free agent.

All professional basketball players “crave” PT. It’s common practice for disgruntle players to “cry” to the media that thy are being “unfairly” teated and should get more PT. The Knick’s players have frequently done this. Their justification for more PT varies and in Gome’s case, his excuse coincided with experimental PT for other players at the end of the bench.

Powe got the chance to show that he has NBA talent. Telfair and Ray seemed to confirm that they don’t. Was this talent-no talent discovery of no value to the Celtic’s?

How quickly we forget the past! Gomes himself, due to roster injuries, got his chance at extended PT and as a result is now in a position to DEMAND MORE PT? Probably O.K., but to use “tanking” as HIS EXCUSE for not getting more PT? How soon he forgets how he got more PT…..

They crave money most of all.

They won’t wave Gomes.

They traded for Telfair knowing he had a gun in his luggage, he has the bling/shooting incident in NY, he’s a back up point guard and they still kept him.

Now, if it came down to a deal and they had to pick between two players of equal value, maybe then they remember his quote.

Any fool can tell the truth. It takes talent to lie.

He’ll be a trading carrot not because of what he said, but because his defense sucks and he’s undersized. Actually he’s more like a withered parsnip.

There is a stick… a three inch one max.

how to fix the lottery: reduce the step size a you go up from last.. so instead of being the current
   1. 250 combinations, 25% chance of receiving the #1 pick
   2. 199 combinations, 19.9% chance
   3. 156 combinations, 15.6% chance
   4. 119 combinations, 11.9% chance
   5. 88 combinations, 8.8% chance
   6. 63 combinations, 6.3% chance
   7. 43 combinations, 4.3% chance
   8. 28 combinations, 2.8% chance
   9. 17 combinations, 1.7% chance
  10. 11 combinations, 1.1% chance
  11. 8 combinations, 0.8% chance
  12. 7 combinations, 0.7% chance
  13. 6 combinations, 0.6% chance
  14. 5 combinations, 0.5% chance

do it like this:
   1. 11%
   2. 11%
   3. 11%
   4. 11%
   5. 11%
   6. 10%
   7. 9%
   8. 8%
   9. 7%
   10:6%

etc etc

this way there is little point on moving one or two spots down as the % difference is small… and the worst teams still get the best odds at a good pick…

????

Forget all this garbage about “tanking”. The most meaningful thing Stern has done, possibly for this whole year, possibly for this decade, was to suspend a referee, Joey Crawford. There are too many refs with their own agendas in the NBA. There are too many refs unqualified to ref in the NBA. Finally David Stern is doing something.

Tanking obviously is a relative term…A team who has clinched isn’t tanking when they rest they’re team for the playoffs…a team isn’t tanking when they juggle their regulars facing a back to back and certainly a franchise isn’t tanking when they take a long hard look at the players on the bubble going forward…
I get a kick out of the supposed pundits that flippantly toss the tank word around as if they were privy to something (see “Wink-Wink, Nudge-Nudge”)…In most cases the only thing they are privy to is their keypad…
Gomes’ statements point directly to the fact that the Celtics were not openly losing at all…He was frustrated perhaps by his recently diminished role, who really knows and yet when given an opportunity to shine in the Miami game, he came up lackluster…Was he tanking?, No chance, he just couldn’t cut it on that particular nite, it’s that simple…
Stern can do whatever he thinks is right, but the lottery as he has it set up is the best possible system for a competitive NBA…It is not ideal, nor is a democracy, but it is one of the cornerstones of this global influence which the NBA is beginning to enjoy…
Finally, to think that every team in the league is going to go 100% every moment of every game is akin to thinking that every horse that leaves the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby is trying desperately to go to the front “Out-of-the-gate”…In a word, it’s nonsense and we supposedly are adults who know that children just might not come from buttercups…It involves a process…
We, in Boston, have endured a horrible, frustrating, and debilitating season…In order to preserve our sanity, it’s tempting to think that we could have won many more games had we wanted to…I suggest that that thinking is wishfully faulty at best…
The top two picks in this draft have damn near reached mythopoeic dimensions as far as franchise players are concerned…Is it the responsibility of the worst teams, the foundering franchises, the embarrassed ones who just might have a shot at the “golden ring” to heroically don the overall image of the NBA with absolutely no concern for their future as a viable enterprise: a “Team.”…The very essence of that proposition is Hitlerian!…(and stupid)…C’est la guerre!

Well said. I don’t know what “mythopoeic” means and am too lazy to look it up, but that’s my problem.—-“the making of myths” (I did look it up because I thought I knew what you were saying and it is a pet peeve of mine). I put a post in another thread about this and am really upset that we (not me and, if I understand you correctly, not you) and the media and shoe companies are making too much of Oden and Durant, while we ignore the accomplishments of Al Jefferson. Maybe Oden and Durant will turn out to be what people are saying about them, but Al Jefferson is already there and more. I don’t see this season as a total loss. I see it as a step in the process of moving forward.

Here’s an idea for how to change the system that I think might work. I’d be interested in feedback.

Keep the ping pong ball system the way it is, but instead of determining priority based on total losses for the season use pre-All Star Break losses plus post-All Star Break wins. This would only apply to teams that miss the playoffs, order for playoff teams would be the same as it is now.

Here is what the current order would be under this system:

Philadelphia76ers53
BostonCeltics49
CharlotteBobcats47
MemphisGrizzlies47
LAClippers43
MilwaukeeBucks43
SeattleSupersonics43
PortlandTrailBlazers42
NOrleansHornets41
AtlantaHawks40
SacramentoKings40
NYKnicks39
MinnesotaT-wolves34
IndianaPacers31

No one starts out the season to tank, so teams with bad records at the break (64% of the way through the season) should be legitimately bad teams. But it would then give teams incentive to keep playing their hardest through the rest of the year instead of tanking.

I really like the idea of “groups” by whomever posted that above, that’s a smart idea. If 1-5 all have the same odds, you at least shift the tanking to the 5-6 and maybe 10-11 range, which will impact fewer teams and really just not matter as much.

Anyway, I don’t see why teams shouldn’t be allowed to tank. To be honest, I’d argue that the Celtics owners and staff are doing their duty to us as fans by sitting these guys down the stretch. Players like Paul Pierce are multi-million dollar investments. The risk of Pierce getting injured when the team has no conceivable shot at making the playoffs, and, thus, a championship simply isn’t something that should be taken on. Why bother? Teams should protect themselves by sitting key pieces once the season is effectively over, and evaluate other guys for the next season’s roster. It makes sense from a business perspective, understanding that it does piss off fans who pay for seats to see these players play.

Also, I hate that the Celtics have become the bullseye for this because of what Gomes said. Mike and Mike this morning were going on and on about it and how they hope we don’t win the pick. The Celtics really avoided tanking more than most teams, unless you count the continual employment of a coach who knows better than anyone how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but I honestly think it comes natural to him. Milwaukee, Memphis, etc all were worse than we were in terms of this, but Gomes says something dumb and we become the poster child for the “problem”