Quote:You really don't see a big difference between fielding a young team and attempting to lose on purpose to gain a better draft pick?

 

If you are playing a worse team intentionally, then you're tanking that season.  You have no idea what their reasons are, and they just don't matter.  If you have a choice to field a stronger team and choose not to, it really doesn't matter why you do that, the outcome is the same.

 

For some reason, saying you're playing marginal players over better players for a reason like getting them experience, or for evaluation (etc) is deemed acceptable.  Doing the same thing for a better set of draft picks is deemed unacceptable.  But the only way to know the difference is to be a mind reader.  So obviously if someone wanted to do the latter, they'd still claim they were doing the former.  While I won't make a claim as to how often this really happens, I do claim it is not 0% of the time, and thinking it is seems incredibly naive.

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