That’s the thing about the NBA. . . unless you give out a really awful long term contract or two (Joe Johnson, the deal Denver gave Kenyon Martin), you can always have a fire sale and put a “tank team” together pretty quickly. As long as you rebuild around draft picks and young vets with moderate deals, you can take a couple of seasons and see if you can develop a club like the Grizzlies, and still change course and blow it up pretty quickly if it doesn’t work. Any legit talent you do have can always be flipped pretty easily as long as the contracts aren’t crazy. There are always plenty of teams willing to get rid of an expiring deal for a useful piece or two– and if they’re young and not overpriced, you might even get a protected pick with a chance to still be fairly high in a year or two.

Being close to a playoff team this year, I don’t blame the Suns for getting the best young point guard they could, and seeing if they can stay on course and develop into a playoff team. Yes, they are in danger of becoming that perennial seven-eight seed and getting stuck there. But that team will generate plenty of revenue– it’s not a huge risk to management. Tanking can still land you at number four or five, and next year isn’t projected as a particularly deep draft. Why put your fans through a seventeen-win season when you could end up spending the number two pick on a guy like. . . well, Michael Beasley. Yea. Tanking only works if you time it perfectly right– more often than not, it just makes the organization suck longer. For every OKC (or maybe New Orleans as the next example), how many Washington’s and Charlotte’s are there? I don’t think Suns management or ownership deserves to be trashed for lack of vision simply for not going in the crapper immediately and intentionally. That one can be real tough to explain to your fans when the ping pong balls don’t go your way.