BBall Loyalty wrote:I don't include the Wolves because they only "blew it up" last offseason and they had been trying to win with Love.
I just chose teams that I felt had been rebuilding for a while.
I voted Jazz. I worry a bit that I'm blinded by Gobert at the moment but I've been quietly impressed with the Jazz for a while now.
As with most situations where I'm actually impressed, the Jazz did something I wouldn't have advised them to do: Cut ties with Deron Williams. I didn't expect the team to win titles with Deron, but a small market like the Jazz has to be content with merely being very good most of the time. Based only what I saw as a fan, I'd have tried to ride the Deron train through another big time contract before doing the dreaded rebuild.
The Jazz on the other hand seem to have sensed that Deron wasn't as good as he looked, and that he likely wouldn't age well, and they moved without hesitation on to the next thing despite the fact that would mean suffering for a few years even if they got it right. They then proceeded to draft well - and that's the most important part, but also the part most down to luck - so this is why I say I don't just want to give them the nod for Gobert. But what we can say at least is that the Jazz knew when it was time to start over, they did so without any drama, and when the time came to actually decide on pieces for their roster, they seemed to know what they were doing. Very impressive.
As to other teams:
Pelicans getting Davis should not factor in here. Someone has to get the #1 seed, and NO didn't even "earn" that #1 seed by having the lowest wins. They just got lucky, and then they haven't really impressed since then.
Celtics are good definitely. Ainge's philosophy here seems good. He was still ridiculously lucky with the previous Big 3 success, but he's earned his place as a guy who should get picked up immediately should the Celtic ownership turn on him.
Timberwolves have basically only made 1 move, and it's the move every single person in the world would have made, so it's like they haven't started.
Bucks - I really like that they didn't fall in love with Knight. This tells me they have a pretty good sense for what their actual foundation is.
Kings - Remember that Boogie was drafted under previous ownership, and the new ownership has made clear it is running the show and will treat the team like it's a bunch of 8-year-olds girls if it wants. The Kings may still end up in a good place because Cousins is so damn good, but there's literally no reason at all to have any faith in the management nor to praise them for their work so far. Strong candidate for the most incompetent in the league right now (although the Nets make it tough to have an actual debate).
Suns - I don't have faith in what they are doing. Hornacek seems to really want a 2 lead guard system. There's basically no track record for this working in all of history so far as I know, so this is really a question of whether Hornacek is going to start a paradigm shift or whether it will be a joke. Given that they just lost Dragic, I'm inclined to believe the latter. There's also the matter that this is the same ownership group that worked harder to get in its own way as a championship contender in the previous decade than I would have thought possible. If it had been one GM the whole time you could argue that GM was worse than Kahn in Minnesota, but instead its clear that it was a bunch of different GMs each of which is far smarter than the ownership...which was why they literally had a GM (Kerr) quit with no other job lined up. That never happens. Didn't even happen to Sterling in LA so far as I know.
