The first reasonable post in the first pages.
Getting warmer...
Bingo. Grier has proven to be a very straight shooter. In his post firing interview he explicitly said that the decision wasn't made because of record and instead was because of what he learned in the "process" which heavily featured exit interviews.
It only took us, 8 pages to just listen to the dude explain himself. The org (Hasso, Grier) knew they were "going to take a step back to take steps Forward" and "things were going to get worse before they got better" (direct quotes). This wasn't a firing to save face, this had nothing to do with the record, this was an unexpected move because of likely terrible feedback from the players. There's a chance that the Lame Duck theory has merit too, but I think it's pretty easy to read between the lines here.
As for tanking vs rebuild, Pinkfloyd is applying a very narrow definition of tanking (intentionally throwing games) and weastern bias is applying a broader definition (intentionally constructing a team that is so bad that it has a legitimate chance to finish worst overall).
I happen to side with weastern, I think an organization can tank (ice a team on purpose with a clear and legitimate chance to finish last, a management decision, even if the players and coach fight every day for a win) without throwing games. You can rebuild without tanking, the Sharks are both rebuilding and tanking this year. Next year they won't be tanking but they'll probably still finish last or bottom three even with significant roster turnover.
