Golden State Warriors: How They Managed to Screw Up Tanking

When a professional sports franchises fully embraces "tanking" and everything that encompasses, the general result is some mixture of change, uneasiness and plenty of hope.

For the Warriors, they have the uneasiness part down.

Cheering for your favorite team to lose will never sit well with true fans. And it shouldn't. It's against human nature, and it's against the competitive spirit that draws so many fans to the sports world.

But the uneasiness is deeper than that. It's also those lingering "what if" feelings that prove so hard to shake. Like "what if" the Warriors throw the season and can't even sneak their way back in to the draft? Or, perhaps worse, "what if" the Warriors do find their way in to the draft's top seven and find the bust in this talent-laden class?

Luckily, the always-optimistic (and always-waiting—they to go hand-in-hand) Warriors have plenty of hope to help waver those "what if" feelings. That hope stems from logical thoughts, which can be a rarity in most tank jobs.

But the Warriors do have reasons to hope. Sure, the team's resting a lot of their hopes on the oft-injured bodies of Stephen Curry and Andrew Bogut. But for the first time in years (decades, even), the team has the makings of a complete lineup: potential franchise point guard and a legitimate post presence on both ends of the floor. Considering they can surround those two with a solid shooting guard (Klay Thompson) and one of the NBA's best 20-10 threats (David Lee), it's stand to reason that this may be a new Warriors franchise.

How, then, is the team failing in its tanking movement? It'd be easy to point at their record last week (2-2) and say that's where the tanking has gone wrong. But considering they've won just twice in their last 10 games, it's tough to say their winning is jeopardizing the tanking.

NBA franchises are forbidden from tanking. And not everyone will support losing. Not a rookie coach (Mark Jackson), who's staking his career coaching record (at any level) on this season. Not the blue-collar Lee, who only knows how to play the game at top-speed. Not free agents who are auditioning for a contract next season (Brandon Rush, Dominic McGuire and Nate Robinson) from this franchise or another.

So, it's understandable that they'd win games here and there. But the team's biggest problem with this tanking is the players who are getting the minutes in these games.

Take Lee, for instance. He's a former All-Star who's made a living out of maximizing his natural ability with 100 percent effort every night. The 28-year-old is also a crucial piece on next season's team. Given that he'll always give maximum effort and is nearing the typical age for an NBA lifer to show some signs of wear, it's at least puzzling that he'd logged over 38 minutes in 10 consecutive games before Monday's blowout loss to the Denver Nuggets.

It's not just Lee, though. Jackson's rotations have been the biggest sign that this franchise (who has seen more than their share of losing) doesn't really know how to "lose the right way."

There's Rush, Robinson and Richard Jefferson matching rookies Thompson and Charles Jenkins minute for minute. Rush and Robinson will both be stretches to return to the Warriors, and Jefferson figures to have, at most, a reserve role. Thompson, meanwhile, is the team's shooting guard of the future—the Monta Ellis trade made that clear as day. And the team has just 10 games left to decide if Jenkins is worthy of being Curry's backup, a role that could evolve into major minutes if Curry can't stay healthy.

There's even the 15 to 25 minutes given to Andris Biedrins each night while Jeremy Tyler struggles to match that. Sorry, folks, but if you need to see any more of Biedrins to see what he can bring next year, you must have missed the past three Warriors seasons. Tyler entered the season with a lot of intrigue, and unfortunately, his future in the NBA remains as cloudy as it was at the beginning of the season.

Jackson needs to sacrifice his career coaching record for the moment and fully embrace the youth movement that this tank job needs. If the young players bring some "costly" victories, at least the Warriors benefit next year from their added development.

If it's the veterans that start racking up more ill-advised wins, the Warriors may enter next season with more questions than answers.