Why do so many euros think we support the ESL?
Does it even matter what I type?
How in the world could anything I posted here come close to ‘sit down it will only hurt at first’?
Hinkie wasn’t close to the first GM to have a team be bad for 5 years, he was just the first to say that’s the goal out loud. It didn’t come close to killing the game.
I don’t want to turn it into a Hinkie discussion, but your point here while not accurate doesn’t matter to the point I was making.
(and no, no GM did what Hinkie did and ‘being bad for 5 years’ isn’t what Hinkie did. We can take it to the NBA discussion if you want)
The Oilers and Sabres did the exact same thing in the NHl at the time. Less eyes on the sport so people barely cared.
I know literally nothing about NHL so can’t argue. Hinkie’s plan wasn’t to ‘be bad’.
They tried to be the worst team in the league to get high lottery picks. The NHL teams discussed tried it for a generational, Lebron level player rather than Embiid, Simmons and some bums.
If that’s not the case then it’s a clear sign you need to rethink how you express yourself here.
Considering I’ve explicitly said I didn’t support this, never said I did and y’all missed it maybe y’all need to read and get over your euro bias.
It’s more complex than that. You are mixing tactic and strategy. Hinkie’s strategy, gone uninterrupted, would have destroyed the admittedly shaky foundation of American professional sport. It’s a funny discussion to have here, because it touches some of the problematic aspects of the ESL.
You basically just said you’d rather watch Madrid v Bayern rather than one of the group games where either of these clubs beat a minnow 5-0. That’s normal! The majority of people think like this.
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Cliffs? Thanks in advance 
I don’t agree, can pick it up elsewhere.
Here’s OK I think, most here won’t mind as it relates to the ESL anyway.
Sam Hinkie was the GM of the Philadelphia 76’ers NBA team.
Part of the ‘new generation’ of ‘analytical-driven’ managers in the league, grown under Daryl Morey, then of the Rockets.
His strategy was to use his team only as a mean to build a future championship contender. The tactic involved being bad in the short term, but it’s deeper than that. It meant to keep trading and cutting players based on his view if they can be a part of a championship team. Anyone who wasn’t had to be immediately cut/traded as their presence might interfere with the strategy.
There were plenty of “tanking” seasons before. Even multiple seasons. They were all a tactic to get better by getting a high draft pick, usually due to circumstances (a bad team, key injuries, etc). Hinkie’s plan wasn’t a tactic. It had no end date. It was a strategy based on the idea that there are only two acceptable scenarios for a sports team - win a championship or build towards one exploiting the system built to prevent it. Anything in between was meaningless
This is very cliffy because the strategy went deeper than that. The basic element that relates to us here is that Hinkie took apart a key fundamental, which is that a professional sports team should compete.
Because American sports system doesn’t have any immediate repercussion for not competing (aka - getting regulated), the league itself eventually decided to interfere and cause his termination.
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But that can’t go on in perpetuity. High draft picks get paid after their rookie deals are over. You either whiff on the picks and get fired, or pick well in the draft and the team gets better.
precisely the point. his view was that this is the best way to manage a sports team without a timetable. he might even be right, especially if he convinces an owner that being the Jazz and putting up a competitive team for two decades is not an acceptable route.
Hinkie also had a very different way of measuring what a whiff is.
Kinda hoping all the 14 other teams agree to go easy on Leicester & WHU for the rest of the season
Show Cess & Chelski what a closed shop actually means in real time. Cos off course we know UEFA & FIFA are just empty corrupt shirts and won’t actually bring any consequences (hope I’m wrong on this).
God damn North Americans are the worst. Champions League is awesome.
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It’s really been bad in recent years. Only ~6 teams have any shot at winning it.
They are getting pressure precisely because the owners don’t care Gary. Who should we try and pressure against this then, the fucking stewards?
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