I used to be a proponent of tanking, but so many things have to work- you have to suck when an elite player is 10coming out, you have to win the lottery or have the teams drafting ahead of you make the wrong choice, you have to have enough other picks go well, then you have to convince the players to stay. Of course you can look at the Spurs who took Duncan number 1 in 1997 and haven't had to tank since, but the last 10 NBA champions are the spurs 3 times, the heat 3 times, the mavericks, the celtics and the lakers 2 times. The heat were built with free agency, the stars on the Lakers (Bryant 13th pick/trade) and the Marvericks (Dirk 9th/trade) didn't require tanking to obtain. The celtics big 3 were acquired via trade and the 10th pick for pierce (again no tanking necessary). You can go back to the spurs with Duncan, but even there the surrounding cast (Parker 28th pick, Manu 57th and Kawhi 15th) didn't require bottoming out. Compare that to the list of players taken 1 over all picks going back 20 years, the only ones who led teams to championships were Duncan and LeBron (but not the team that drafted him). The same holds true for second and third overall picks for the last 20 years- Pau helped lead the lakers, but they weren't the team that drafted him. Given that, I really question the logic of bottoming out in order to win a title- it just doesn't seem to work