The other thing that you need to consider is that a lot of people quit playing arena when they reached 2k to lock in their arena titles. They would maybe play 10 per week, but that's it. It's hard to climb up when there's nobody to step on. I strongly believe that if you played in the arenas from the beginning, you would probably have a high ranking right now.

Now if you tanked the team down with your mains then there is a flaw in my theory
I never mentioned anything about alts. I played the same toon the entire time.

Forget about the point-tanking for a sec... I've had 3 different 2v2 partners. In all cases, we all abandoned the teams and made new ones. I agree that if you join up w/ another person who has a high hidden rating, you will go up against highly ranked teams. The problem that I saw with this was when we did go up against these highly ranked teams, we would only win a few points and they would lose a ton. If they beat us, we would go down a little and they would gain a little. Their team rating was 1800+ and ours was 1500. It's obvious that we all had a similar hidden rating. If we kept playing like this, we would keep a low personal/team and anyone up at the 1800 would only drop if they kept playing.

I really think that there were way too many 1500 ranked teams w/ really high hidden ratings. You all fight each other and stay around the 1500-1600 range. The points exchange did not seem to be weighted on the hidden rating.

Back to the points tanking... My 2v2 partner and I bombed the team to 1100. We quit our team and made a new team on Monday night. On Tuesday, we almost got the hot streak achievement. 9 wins in a row. Quickly, the fights got harder and harder. In the end, our record was 30 wins and 50 losses, but we got an 1800 rating. This was when I mentioned that we stopped playing for the honor grind. I know a lot of people tried to do the same thing and it just kept everybody in this pit.