Why teams today can't build without tanking(Suns case study)

[mysticbb]

Its an unfair assumption since a great many of the teams that elect to tank do so because their FA opportunities are so limited.

Well, which teams have elected to tank anyway? Dispite the ppopular belief, those GM are actually really think they have better teams assembled at the start of the season in order to at least compete for a playoff spot. And I also don't think that it is unfair when talking about that topic in general.

Talking about career value when the rest of the people in the thread are discussing bringing in as much talent in together is simply unfair.

No, that is what the thread is about, building a successful team. And for that, we have to consider the mid- and longterm implications as well. Just using the exceptions, where a rookie's playing level exceeds his contract value, is the mistake made here. Those players are the exception, not the rule, and that's exactly why the strategy of "tanking" is not per se superior like the op suggest.

Ideally, you bring a few young players in on rookie deals and a few FA so when it comes time to pay your young stars the team is good enough that they would want to stay and the team can go over the "cap" to kep the developing team together. Having one of your stars on a rookie deal allows you to accumulate talent. So while you are talking about obtaining a singular play, I am discussing the best way to maximize the team and to accumulate the maximum amount fo talent given the CBA and other limitations.

No, I actually talk about the reality, where 30 teams are in the league and compete for the talents. If the majority of teams not being a contender decide to tank, that would leave an awful lot of teams without getting a desired player, no matter how much they tanked. In reality, even if just 3 or 4 teams tanking, the odds are getting really slim that a team is getting a good player out of that. That the Thunder got 3 top player out of their high draft picks is not the rule, it is the exception as well. When multiple teams tanking, the odds of that happening again gets even lower. And that is the mistake by the op here, where he takes the anecdotal stuff in order to conclude something which is not in agreement with the reality.

[Durins Baynes]

The premise of the thread is that the superior strategy to build a team would be tanking. Therefore, having a top3 guy on a team while not drafting him is not included. As it was shown, the top teams have in fact in average not tanked to essemble the team they had success with (a 9th or 10th pick is not the result of tanking), but that they actually drafted well with mid or late 1st rounders, signed the right FA, made trades (especially trading away worse players and some sort of talent for better established players) and had luck with health.

So you're just going to ignore my posts again, to rebut something nobody is claiming basically. The idea that tanking means you get a top 3 pick is absurd. Lots of tanking teams end up with picks that are not top 3, you've just used a broken metric because you can't win the actual argument. And the claim is in the overwhelming number of cases, you need top 10 lotto picks to get anywhere (whether that is to use them to draft guys, or to trade them), and you're a lot better doing that than getting on a treadmill and hoping to luck out as your Rockets did. Of course, higher picks tend to increase the chances, so it's better to go with being worse than picks 10 if you can. The point is mediocrity rarely gets you anywhere, and the chances of it letting you become a contender are virtually non-existent.

If we look at the odds that a team is actually really getting a high level player in multiple drafts, we see that they are rather low. Even the team with the worst record has already a 75% chance of not getting the top pick of the draft. At worst it ends up with the 4th pick, a pick which in about 70% of the cases in the draft between 1979 and 2010 gave a player worse than Luol Deng (by 1/4 standard deviation, I spare the details of the used metric, because as I learnt before, numbers are confusing the op). Why using Luol Deng? Because that is about the average level of a #1 pick in the draft from 1979 to 2010. Btw, #2 to #4 where in about 66% of the cases worse than Luol Deng. What is the conclusion? Well, it makes more sense to sign someone like Luol Deng in FA than trying to tank for a higher draft pick, because the odds are saying that it is more likely to pick a worse player with those expected picks.

Changing the subject aside, I have no idea how you've come to this conclusion. The average #1 pick is Deng? How do you come to that conclusion. I went back 30 years myself, and the chances of getting a star type player to build around is about 70% at #1. Let's start with the 2012-2003 (which should be the most accurate era, given scouting advances and more focus on HS and international ball). I count 7 out of 10star type players you can build around (A.Davis, Irving, Wall, Griffin, Rose, Dwight, Lebron) which is the 70% I was talking about, and of the remaining 3 only 1 is a bust (Bargs), while 2 others were hit hard by injuries to different degreees. Bogut is actually still an all-nba type guy, while Oden would have been a lot better. Injuries can kill you no matter what plan you use. Let's try the next 10 years, from 02-93. I count only 6 star types this time (Ming, Brand, Duncan, Iverson, Webber and I guess kinda G.Rob though he's pretty shaky on this list), 3 busts (Joe Smith, Kwame and Kandi, though Joe Smith was a great role player), and 1 guy who was an all-star before injuries killed him (K-Mart). Don't worry though, because 92-83 brings us back to the average of 70%, with about 8/10 success rate. Shaq, Larry Johnson, D.Rob, Manning (injured or not), Brad D, Ewing, Hakeem all fit the bill, and for averages sake I'll call Coleman and Sampson 1/2 cumulatively (both were star type players for a time, Sampson less so thanks to injuries). The sole bust was Pervis Ellison. The remaining picks back to 1979 don't do you any favours- Worthy, Aguirre and Magic outnumber JBC (75% hit rate). To compare that ratio to "getting a Deng like player at #1" (who isn't as good as even one of the successful picks, not even G.Rob probably) is pretty comical.

Likewise, looking over the 10 year periods we have enough info about to fully assess them, there seem to be about 3-4 all-nba type guys every year in the top 10, from say 2010 to 2001 (to take the last 10 years about which we have reliable data).

But well, Mr. "confirmation bias" with his friend "intellectual dishonesty" will likely dismiss the facts ...

Dude, you've ignored virtually everything I wrote except the premise (which you change, in order to rebut better). If you want a real discussion, here is what you do-
1) Identify all the teams you consider to be contenders from 99 onwards
2) Make the case for the teams who you feel built their teams without top 10 picks (you know, the actual thesis I've proposed). I mean, usually the picks are higher than 10, and I've cited numerous examples already (the Spurs drafted Duncan 1, the Celtics got Ray Allen by trading the #5 pick which is what let them get KG, the Thunder of course, the Heat wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Wade at #5, Dwight #1, Lebron #1, Dirk #9- that's every finalist since 2006, except the Lakers who were formed in pre-99 CBA environment that couldn't be replicated again today).

I also find your refusal to engage with the issue by saying "it's not tanking" disingenuous. This is about being bad enough to get a top 10 pick (usually much worse though). We can't prove whether the team "tanked" or whether they were "just bad", and in some cases there is no meaningful difference anyway. You should address the actual substance, rather than saying "well, they didn't have a bottom 3 pick, so they weren't bottoming out like you advocate".

[DBoys]

I thinking tanking can be a useful strategy sometimes. But I believe the topic is deeper than what's been written here.
1 Tanking is DELIBERATELY being bad, when you had the choice to be much better. It's not simply the act of having a high draft pick.
2 How is success defined here? If you want to slam the Suns for not winning a title, then you can't praise the Pacers for successfully having a "nice team."
3 The premise that every team who ever got a top-10 pick truly "tanked" to do so, is (a) far from proven, and (b) almost certainly false. Some teams pick high because they are just not that good.
4 Tanking doesn't make The Difference in getting a title. It's getting a megastar player that matters.
5 That being the case, it's crucial to notice that every team that picks in the top 10 doesn't get a megastar. And some drafts don't even have a star to draft. So the question that's key, and not being addressed is: if you tanked every year to get a top 10 pick, what are the odds of getting that star this way?
6 How many times has any team SUCCESSFULLY tanked for a player who led them to titles?
7 Then you have to examine the odds of getting a star another way. Compare.
8 Ultimately, winning through the draft only works when it works. But you can alternately win by getting a star in free agency, and you can also do so by trading for the right player(s).
9 There's clearly a cutoff point, where you're smarter to try to shoot for the top with what you already have, instead of trying to shoot for the bottom.
10 Tanking to a high pick isn't easy. True "tanking" is as competitive as trying to win a title. Any fan of a team that's bailed on a season has discovered the truth that it's hard to move down in the standings, when you are tanking, because other teams are backstroking as fast as yours is.
11 Creating a culture of losing is hard to reverse. There is a price to pay for tanking, that has to be considered.
12 How did Miami win their last few titles? Tanking was actually a FAILED strategy they tried. Collusion and tampering was far more effective.

[Durins Baynes]

There's a lot in there, so I'll focus on the key points (most of which nullify the others):

1. Does it matter whether you "tank or purpose" or "just suck"
No. There is no meaningful difference. There is no difference in the front office having a guy held out with a fake injury, and the front office declining to sign the guy in the first place (or trading him for nothing). Maybe from a moral point of view you could push that (though I don't buy that either), but the front office is doing the same thing in both cases. Also, you can't prove conclusively when a team tanked "on purpose" or "by design" so who the hell cares?

2. What is the actual point I'm making?
It is not "tanking is the only component of building a contender". Top 10 lotto talent (usually much higher than top 10) is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for building 90% of contenders in the modern CBA. Yes, you may need other methods too, like trades and free agency, but without top 10 picks that will fail anyway (handful of exceptions aside). The Heat tanked for Wade (#5 pick), without whom they would never have gotten Lebron or Bosh (or Shaq). It was an essential pre-condition to get those guys, but it was not a sufficient condition. Tanking isn't a guarantee of success, but the success rate is much higher, because teams who become contenders almost invariably need top lotto talent to do it, whether that's by drafting guys (like OKC did) or trading and drafting (as the Celtics did, which I already explained more than once on this thread. The Clippers are another example).

There are at least 2-3 dozen contenders post-99, and all but a couple of them needed top 10 lotto talent to get there (usually much higher). There's 1 James Harden in 15 years, but there's 3-4 all-nba type guys in the top 10 of the draft each year. The handful of exceptions are also unbelievably difficult to imitate (or flat out impossible in today's CBA, like the Lakers contenders post-99, whose seeds were assembled in 96 and couldn't be reassembled today even by the Lakers). This is about the most likely path to success, not some weird exceptions (though I'm happy to discuss both).

[mysticbb]

DBoys, thanks for making the effort, but I suspect it will fall on deaf ears.

Nonetheless, when examine the value of draft picks, we can't just abritrarily declare players as good or bad, just depending on the respective agenda. We have to use some objective measurement. Roland Beech done so back in the days on 82games.com. Here is his analysis: http://82games.com/nbadraftpicks.htm

Luol Deng scores 24.4 by this measurement, but exceeds already the average #1 pick by minutes played easily. This is obviously a bit misleading in Beech's approach, because he used the simple average.

I expanded on that by adding seasons (going from 1979 to 2010) and used the rest of the boxscore data as well (using quite a different formula to get a cumulated value, but that doesn't really matter). Then I normalised the values in regard to the average level of a Top30 pick. For the average minutes and games played, I just used players who already played at least 10 years in the league or finished their career already. I also looked into the performance level of the picks from the last 10 years vs. the draft years before and found no significant differences in terms of performance level.

The average #1 pick for that timeframe was 1.61 standard deviations better than the average Top30 pick, Luol Deng was so far 1.52 standard deviations better. An average #1 pick played 32.8 mpg (pretty close to the value Roland Beech found, which again suggest that with a big enough timeframe the differences are marginal), Deng played 35.9 mpg. Given that, the conclusion can be that Deng is about the level an average #1 pick from 1979 to 2010 had. Now, the distribution is not really normal for those picks and overall I found 18 players to exceed Deng's playing level by at least 1/4 standard deviation. The median level player was 1.8 standard deviations better than the average level of a Top30 pick, Yao Ming and Elton Brand are those two players who occupy the 16th and 17th spot among those 32 #1 picks. Nonetheless, 12 #1 picks were worse than Luol Deng in terms of average playing level by at least 1/4 standard deviation. That includes Michael Olowankandi, Kwame Brown, Pervis Ellison for example.

(And before someone complains that the boxscore would favor the offensive part, I should remind him that Luol Deng is among the better defenders in the league.)

Other than that, the average #2 to #5 is 0.8 +/- 0.1 standard deviation better than an average Top30 pick, #6 to #11 was 0.3 +/- 0.1, #12 to #18 -0.2 +/- 0.1, #19 to #30 -0.5 +/- 0.1. Simply speaking: Everything below #5 is just an average player to below average player (the average level of a Top30 pick is about the minute weighted league average playing level by the used metric). 85 players picked with the #2 to #5 pick over that timespan were worse than Luol Deng by at least 1/4 standard deviation, that means about 66% of the players picked in that range turned out to be worse than Luol Deng. Thus, if you want to get a good chance to get a player at least slightly better than Deng, you better get a #1 pick. And now the lottery comes in, which says that even the team with the worst record in the league has a 75% chance of not getting that #1 pick.

That is the reality about the draft. It is just a crap shot, and basically every team suffers the same problem by identifying the good players, if it is not some incredible great talents like James or O'Neal or Duncan. And even then you might end up with a player like Oden, who had all the talents in the world, just not the health. And no, we can't dismiss the possibility that this will happen as well. Just expecting a player to be healthy and basing the decision making on hope that this will be true, is just foolish.

Well, Andrew Wiggins looks like a sure-fire player so far, we can just hope it turns out to be that way in reality. But at the end only one team will get that player, and with the lottery it can even be that team, which just missed the playoffs by one spot. Deliberately being bad might just cause you to not getting that player and being bad in the next season as well. And given the odds, it is a more likely scenario than getting the player. ;)

[Durins Baynes]

DBoys, thanks for making the effort, but I suspect it will fall on deaf ears.

Deaf ears? You've been refusing to reply to my actual points, yet you keep posting. It's pretty bizarre to be honest. Let me make this easy for you with a simple question:
* There would be about 2-3 dozen contenders in the post 99 environment. Looking at those teams, how many were assembled without top 10 lotto talent (either in the form of a player picked as part of your team, or as assets used to acquire said players)? And in the handful of cases which serve as examples, how many a) were assembled pre-99 (raising the question of whether it would be plausible to do it in today's NBA), and b) were actually emulatable by other teams? And since you keep harping on it, look at the top 10 lotto talent- does it more often than not tend to be closer to top 5 in the lotto than top 10?

Nonetheless, when examine the value of draft picks, we can't just abritrarily declare players as good or bad, just depending on the respective agenda. We have to use some objective measurement. Roland Beech done so back in the days on 82games.com. Here is his analysis: http://82games.com/nbadraftpicks.htm

I don't think I'm alone in not caring about Roland rating or arbitrary ratings of guys named Roland. I named you the top picks over the last 30+ years who I felt were star type players (70% of top 1 picks basically). Which of the guys in that 70% is Deng better than in your opinion? Just their names, and a justification, not a bunch of waffle about obscure metrics and standard deviation, which seems to hide from the issue rather than illuminate it (I mean, are you saying Deng is better than Yao Ming for instance? You imply it, but you are evasive).

[mysticbb]

Yao Ming, 1.81 standard deviations better than an average Top30 pick, Luol Deng 1.52 better than average Top30 pick. 1.81 > 1.52, thus Yao Ming better than Luol Deng. 18 players overall picked with the #1 pick from 1979 to 2010 had a better value than Luol Deng by at least 1/4 standard deviation! 12 were worse, two were about the same.

Obviously, the distribution is not normal, as I pointed out before. In fact, it is very top-heavy. The Top10 #1 picks from 1979 to 2010 are in average 2.7 +/- 0.4 standard deviations better than an average top30 pick. So, about every 3 years you can get a real great player with that #1 pick, the next 10 in line are already at just 1.8 +/-0.2, the last 10 are at 0.5 +/- 0.4. That means, you have as good as a chance to grab a 2.7 player as you have to grab a 0.5 player with your #1 pick. And again, the team with the worst record has a 75% of not getting the #1 pick in a given draft.

If we look further through the real performance level of the players taken in the draft, we see that in average the best player from a given draft was picked with the #8 pick. The 2nd best with the #12, the 3rd best and 4th best with in average #13, etc. pp. And the funny thing is that if we check the ranking of the previous season, we see that in average the team with the 9th worst record ended up with the best player from the respective draft. The team with 11th worst record in average with the 2nd best player.

Really, a successful tanking effort is the exception, not the rule. In average it is better to just be as good as possible and then use the pick you get to the best of your abilities. If a GM is smart, he actually gets the picks from other teams while trading for the better players. In that way, a team can end up with the young good players as well as the better talents they got from the trade. Just trying to deliberately being bad is not the superior strategy in general, as DBoys made pretty clear in his post as well.

[Durins Baynes]

Yet another post that ignores my earlier posts. I mean, why bother posting a reply? You didn't answer any of my questions, or even respond to the general tenor of my posts.

You talk for some time above about Ming, but fail to answer the only question I posed- is he better or worse than Deng? This is about the most optimal way to become a contender, not if using the lotto is universally successful.

[mysticbb]

Yao Ming, 1.81 standard deviations better than an average Top30 pick, Luol Deng 1.52 better than average Top30 pick. 1.81 > 1.52, thus Yao Ming better than Luol Deng. 18 players overall picked with the #1 pick from 1979 to 2010 had a better value than Luol Deng by at least 1/4 standard deviation! 12 were worse, two were about the same.

Reading comprehension FTW! :)

[Durins Baynes]

So why even mention Ming? You claimed Deng was better than most #1 picks since 1979. I went through and identified by name the 70%+ of guys from 1979 who were star type players. Which of those guys I named is Deng better than?

[mysticbb]

The average #1 pick for that timeframe was 1.61 standard deviations better than the average Top30 pick, Luol Deng was so far 1.52 standard deviations better. An average #1 pick played 32.8 mpg (pretty close to the value Roland Beech found, which again suggest that with a big enough timeframe the differences are marginal), Deng played 35.9 mpg. Given that, the conclusion can be that Deng is about the level an average #1 pick from 1979 to 2010 had. Now, the distribution is not really normal for those picks and overall I found 18 players to exceed Deng's playing level by at least 1/4 standard deviation. The median level player was 1.8 standard deviations better than the average level of a Top30 pick, Yao Ming and Elton Brand are those two players who occupy the 16th and 17th spot among those 32 #1 picks. Nonetheless, 12 #1 picks were worse than Luol Deng in terms of average playing level by at least 1/4 standard deviation. That includes Michael Olowankandi, Kwame Brown, Pervis Ellison for example.

Yao Ming was at 16th, Brand at 17th in the list, which represents the median in a 32 player sample of the #1 picks from 1979 to 2010. Ming has 1.81, Brand 1.77, which in average makes about 1.8.

18 players better, 12 players worse, 18 > 12, thus more players are better than Deng. 18 is actually 56% of the #1 picks being better by facts, not just arbritarily picking players.

Again, reading comprehension FTW! :)

[Durins Baynes]

1) The metric is arbitrary
2) The median was misleading to use if you agree most #1 picks are better (and usually much better) than Deng
3) You continue to dodge the question. Name the #1 picks from 2012-1979 who you feel Deng is better than
4) You continue to dodge the broader questions being asked in this thread (and indeed, the specific questions).

[mysticbb]

12 players listed as worse than Deng by at least 1/4 standard deviation based on career average value (based on facts, not on feelings):

James Worthy
Joe Barry Carroll
Ralph Sampson
Andrew Bogut
Kenyon Martin
Danny Manning
Andrea Bargnani
Joe Smith
Pervis Ellison
Greg Oden
Michael Olowokandi
Kwame Brown

The average level of those players was 0.7 +/- 0.5. Average minutes played per game: 28.6.

The average level of the #1 pick was 1.61 standard deviations better than the average top30 pick, the median is 1.8. Using the median is appropiate, because of the distribution. Luol Deng has 1.52 and 35.9 mpg.

The metric used is not arbritarily at all. In a retrodiction test it was used to predict the outcome of a season by using the previous seasons values. The scoring margin of the teams was successfully predicted with an average error of 2.06 in a sample from 2000 to 2012. The average error when using the previous season scoring margin of a team in that sample is 3.05, with an random value it is in average 5 (using 100 runs).

[Durins Baynes]

James Worthy is clearly much better than Deng. Bogut is clearly a more impactful player than Deng, and even factoring in injuries you'd take Bogut (probably an easy call). Manning had more of a career than Deng thus far, even factoring in injuries, and peaked as a better player too. Ralph Sampson pre-injury was much better than Deng (that's only 3.5 seasons of course, so cumulatively I guess you'd take Deng). None of which really touches on the core points of this thread, all of which you continue to dodge. Why reply if you're not actually going to engage?

[mysticbb]

James Worthy is perceived as the better player based on being able to score more points on better efficiency. That he is actually the worse defender, turned the ball over more, grabbed less rebounds and played rather equally as a distributer overall is not considered. And if Deng would have been fed in his career always by Magic Johnson, he may as well would have scored more on a better efficiency. Just a look at the drop of Worthy's efficiency with and without Magic (going from 53 TS% in 1991 to 49 TS% in 1992) should be enough proof of that.

The list obviously is in order from best to worst. Worthy is the closest to the value Deng had in average.

Anything else: In reality the players got injured, and it is to expected that there will also future 1st picks who are suffering injuries (Griffin just injured his knee!). That is something which needs to be considered, not ignored.

[Durins Baynes]

Anything else? You mean from all the points raised in this thread that you continue to ignore, while claiming to respond to? I guess not. Like I said, let me know when you're ready for a serious discussion of the issues I raise, rather than the straw men you responded to (which plainly were not the points I made).

[nodeal]

Slightly over paying a bunch of Deng's is not going to get you anywhere. The variance of the draft is one of the reasons its so appealing. You can land a player that will make a difference. To succeed in this league you need value contracts to build around.

Here are where the most valuable contracts come from.
1) The superstar - They are worth far more than the max.
2) The star coming off their rookie scale contract - They are worth more than the max and are restricted.
3) Players on their 1st contract, rookie scale or otherwise. Who are out performing their tiny pay check.
4) Ring Chasers 1) 2) are needed

With the exception of a few teams the only way to land these value contracts is through the draft or trade. If by trade you probably need some young assets acquired via the draft and/or draft picks.

Skill and luck play such a large role they skew the results, but if you cant just sign superstars the best way to build a contender is through the draft. Bottoming-out increases the odds you end up with a contender. Undesired markets dont need top 5 picks to build a contender, but the odds are greater. There is no denying this.

The Bottoming-out strategy isnt just 1) draft high 2) ? 3) Profit
1)Making your own pick a high pick is important. So is 2) trading vets for picks/prospects 3) using your cap room to acquire more picks/prospects without hurting your flexibilty(see utah) 4) Signing players that slip through the cracks or need an opportunity to prove themself to short/long value contracts and possibly flipping them for more picks/prospects 5) using your cap room to add free agents to your value contracts. 6) flipping multiple young assets for stars/young stars.

If a team does this except they ignore 1) and compete for 9th through out their rebuild. Does that increase or decrease the odds of them ending up with a contender? Morey would be the 1st to admit he got lucky, and had ownership let him bottom out the chances he builds a contender would have been greater and the end result stronger.

Morey went on to say that "bottoming out" is the highest probability strategy for rebuilding, and that he thinks a team like Philadelphia took the best path available, given the current CBA and draft rules.

[DBoys]

Baynes
A
1 What are you proposing? If you say it doesn't really matter how you get a good pick (and you did), then you're not really talking about "tanking."
2 So then, what are you trying to argue for?

B
1 What is the ultimate object of your thesis? I still don't see a clear delineation of what it is that you say can be accomplished by whatever it is that you are proposing. You're showing how to win a title? How to rebuild and make the playoffs? How to win more games than the prior season?
2 I would suggest that within your arguments are points you've made that contradict whatever that object is.

C
1 Once you define A and B, then how much of a guarantee of success (as you define success) will a team have by employing the strategy you propose? All the time? Sometime? Almost never?
2 And how does that compare to how successful a team can become by employing alternate routes to the same thing?

The pushback I'm giving you is not solely meant to argue against you - but rather to get you to take a closer look at what you're saying and not saying, so it becomes meaningful. You should only have used "data" that makes your point - but instead, there are lots of conflicts within the points and examples you offer. That tells me you're not sure of what you're trying to tell us (or else, you're trying to tell us something that can't be supported).

[Durins Baynes]

This nicely summarises my thesis.

2. What is the actual point I'm making?
It is not "tanking is the only component of building a contender". Top 10 lotto talent (usually much higher than top 10) is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for building 90% of contenders in the modern CBA. Yes, you may need other methods too, like trades and free agency, but without top 10 picks that will fail anyway (handful of exceptions aside). The Heat tanked for Wade (#5 pick), without whom they would never have gotten Lebron or Bosh (or Shaq). It was an essential pre-condition to get those guys, but it was not a sufficient condition. Tanking isn't a guarantee of success, but the success rate is much higher, because teams who become contenders almost invariably need top lotto talent to do it, whether that's by drafting guys (like OKC did) or trading and drafting (as the Celtics did, which I already explained more than once on this thread. The Clippers are another example).

There are at least 2-3 dozen contenders post-99, and all but a couple of them needed top 10 lotto talent to get there (usually much higher). There's 1 James Harden in 15 years, but there's 3-4 all-nba type guys in the top 10 of the draft each year. The handful of exceptions are also unbelievably difficult to imitate (or flat out impossible in today's CBA, like the Lakers contenders post-99, whose seeds were assembled in 96 and couldn't be reassembled today even by the Lakers). This is about the most likely path to success, not some weird exceptions (though I'm happy to discuss both).

Teams almost always need top 10 lotto talent, so they need to be willing to get worse short term in order to acquire such talent (sometimes a lot worse). Trying to win as much as you can each ear is absurd (and whether that's the GM making, or not making, moves designed to achieve this, or the coach playing bad rotations, it amounts to the same thing in effect).

What the Rockets and Pacers did is not something teams should copy. What the Suns did in the old CBA is not something teams can copy anymore. Those are not viable models.

[DBoys]

Teams CAN build without tanking. And whilst you concede that point with the heavy disclaimer that it's still rare....that leaves me wondering what the core point really is. Is it that teams can only compete if they manage their assets very well and repeatedly acquire good players for good prices?

Well, yeah. Obvs.