Which team has done the best job of rebuilding so far

[HawaiianJazzFan]

didnt deron basically say he was going to resign with brooklyn so trade me ??

No the trade came out of nowhere.

Exactly. It was a total shock. The Melo debacle had been in the headlines for basically forever at that point, and then boom, Deron gets traded to one of the teams hoping to get Melo. The Jazz basically used the context of the league to not simply sell high on Deron based on his peak, but based on when teams were already looking to make a deal for a new franchise player.

At the time, as I said, it wasn't a clear cut win in the eyes of most because there didn't seem to be any need to get rid of Deron. But in retrospect it looks quite sharp indeed.

It was a COMPLETE shock. I remember exactly where I was when it happened. I was sick, and my brother who isn't a big Jazz fan texted me and asked me what I thought of the Deron trade, and I 100% thought he had his facts wrong. I wasn't really pissed about it, I was seriously just surprised. They did kind of get roasted when it first happened on local radio but once the details came out about Sloan and other things, I think most Jazz fans were happy that we got literally as much as we could have, at almost any point in his career.

[gaspar]

ITT: recency bias in full effect.

[BlackKnight]

Celtics: they've got a crap ton of future picks and I think they're best positioned to trade for superstars with the assets they have.

[dautjazz]

For people asking about Minnesota, they've gone from 40 to 15 wins. For all the crap that Love gets, the team isn't any better this year, QUITE the opposite. Wiggins looks to have a bright future and all, as do some of their other players, but the thread asks for the best rebuild, and they certainly can't be better than some of the other options.

[giberish]

IMO Orlando's the most overrated rebuild. People talk about Orlando having a lot of talent, but they're 3 years in and still only a 25-win team. Even Philly's likely to pass that pace (the 76er's are a year behind in their rebuild timetable).

Their older long-term players - Vuc and Harris - haven't made the transition from 'being talented' to 'significantly helping their team win'. They don't have any lineups with both solid defense and credible shooting - notable as their 2 rookies can't shoot at all so it's going to be tough to play them together. They've got a lot of depth of mediocre players, but that's kind of a bad thing as the easiest way to improve is to replace a horrible player in your rotation with a mediocre player.

Payton and Olipido give them some hope going forward, and NYK and LAL look like suckers that could wildly overpay for Vucevic.

[DanTown8587]

1. New Orleans
2. Utah

That's it IMO. All be it Utah took a lot more skill where as New Orleans basically lucked into Davis.

[DarkAzcura]

1. New Orleans
2. Utah

That's it IMO. All be it Utah took a lot more skill where as New Orleans basically lucked into Davis.

NO has done a pretty terrible job balancing the roster around Davis. Not sure why they should be on the list over teams like the Bucks, Celtics, and even the Magic who have actually made some sense of their rebuilds in terms of balancing and managing their assets. That's the only way to truly evaluate rebuilding, imo. We've seen teams draft top talent for years and never do anything with it because of poor management. NO has shot themselves in the foot too many times after lucking out on Davis.

[Frank Dux]

1. New Orleans
2. Utah

That's it IMO. All be it Utah took a lot more skill where as New Orleans basically lucked into Davis.

NO is a one man show. The rest of the roster is poorly constructed. The Jazz on the other hand have done a tremendous job building around their 3-4-5 positions. Once they get their backcourt settled, they'll be a contender.

As for NO? There's not much to get excited about besides AD. They have a rag tag group of decent players who don't exactly fit together well.

[DanTown8587]

1. New Orleans
2. Utah

That's it IMO. All be it Utah took a lot more skill where as New Orleans basically lucked into Davis.

NO has done a pretty terrible job balancing the roster around Davis. Not sure why they should be on the list over teams like the Bucks, Celtics, and even the Magic who have actually made some sense of their rebuilds in terms of balancing and managing their assets. That's the only way to truly evaluate rebuilding, imo. We've seen teams draft top talent for years and never do anything with it because of poor management. NO has shot themselves in the foot too many times after lucking out on Davis.

I'm not saying that NO deserves to be better but their luck counts to it. They're already a 40-45 win team in the West with Davis in his third year, one of the worst rosters 5-15 in the league, and no pick this year. Just imagine if they say trade Anderson for more depth and then let Evans walk.

We can sit here and say "hey, they lucked into Davis". Well, the point is that they have Davis.

[Leslie Forman]

Fundamentally you have to remember to grade on a curve based on the opportunity the team has actually had. Minnesota should get no credit for Wiggins just as NO should get no credit for Davis. Those were obvious moves if you lucked into being in the situation where you had the opportunity to acquire them.

By contrast, any time you can draft at the 9th spot and get a player who turns into someone as good as Hayward, you done good.

It's worth noting of course that there's luck involved in the draft and that might be the dominant factor here when all is said & done, but the reality is that the Jazz really haven't had any draft picks where there was a sure thing available to them, and so if they end up a contender, you have to look at that as doing very well.

Sure but at the same time a better player who plays the exact same position was taken with the pick right after. Then there was the Kanter pick, which ended up useless. Trey Burke looks like trash. Combined with Exum, Favors and Burks, that's two #3 picks, a #5 pick, two #9 picks and a #12 pick. That should be plenty to reload a team.

I don't think Utah has done a bad job, I just don't think they've done anything particularly great at all either. If it wasn't for Gobert alone the roster wouldn't be very good at all.

And I don't get why Minny shouldn't get at least some credit for Wiggins, I'm sure Cleveland tried to play hardball on Wiggins but Saunders did a pretty good job of making it seem like there were better offers out there for Love (there really weren't, nobody was offering much because of his contract situation).

IMO Orlando's the most overrated rebuild. People talk about Orlando having a lot of talent, but they're 3 years in and still only a 25-win team. Even Philly's likely to pass that pace (the 76er's are a year behind in their rebuild timetable).

They've only had two years of actual picks though. Vucevic was only a 16th pick and Harris, while a robbery of a trade, was only the 19th pick. Oladipo, Gordon and Payton are the only lottery picks that aren't old vets on their team right now. The fact that they even have five guys that already project as at least decent starters is pretty good for what they've had to work with so far. They do need to get at least a really good starter out of their pick this year though.

[Doctor MJ]

Fundamentally you have to remember to grade on a curve based on the opportunity the team has actually had. Minnesota should get no credit for Wiggins just as NO should get no credit for Davis. Those were obvious moves if you lucked into being in the situation where you had the opportunity to acquire them.

By contrast, any time you can draft at the 9th spot and get a player who turns into someone as good as Hayward, you done good.

It's worth noting of course that there's luck involved in the draft and that might be the dominant factor here when all is said & done, but the reality is that the Jazz really haven't had any draft picks where there was a sure thing available to them, and so if they end up a contender, you have to look at that as doing very well.

Sure but at the same time a better player who plays the exact same position was taken with the pick right after. Then there was the Kanter pick, which ended up useless. Trey Burke looks like trash. Combined with Exum, Favors and Burks, that's two #3 picks, a #5 pick, two #9 picks and a #12 pick. That should be plenty to reload a team.

I don't think Utah has done a bad job, I just don't think they've done anything particularly great at all either. If it wasn't for Gobert alone the roster wouldn't be very good at all.

And I don't get why Minny shouldn't get at least some credit for Wiggins, I'm sure Cleveland tried to play hardball on Wiggins but Saunders did a pretty good job of making it seem like there were better offers out there for Love (there really weren't, nobody was offering much because of his contract situation).

It's never going to make sense to disparage a team for only getting the 4th best player in the draft at the 9th spot because one of the 3 guys better was still on the board. Yes they could have done better still, but it's definitely a major net positive. To focus on the "not even better" is to hold the team in question to a standard that literally no franchise in the league reliably hits, and thus it's meaningless to do so.

Kanter useless? Kanter was useless only because the team acquired too guys that became even better. In no way, shape, or form should Gobert's insane success be used to bash the Jazz.

Re: If it wasn't for Gobert... Look, the Jazz cut bait with Deron at the right time, and they've been successful overall in their rebuilding efforts. We can quibble about precisely how impressed to be, but we should be impressed.

By contrast there's no reason at all to be impressed with acquiring Wiggins. Yes I'm sure Cleveland tried to play hardball, but there was no way for them to expect to win because Wiggins was just such obvious trade bait. Had Flip agreed to give up Love - a top 10 player in the league still at a young age - for anything other than one of the Cavs top 3 assets (LeBron, Kyrie, or Wiggins), he would deserve to be instantly fired.

Why? For one because you have to know who it is your talking too. The Cavs just got LeBron and are looking to win now, and if he likes Love, the team can't go back to him saying they were unwilling to trade a player who likely won't be helpful until LeBron is clearly past his peak in order to get Love. And if LeBron doesn't like Love, well then you don't contact the Wolves in the first place. It's just straight game theory there.

Additionally there's the matter than when you give up a superstar for the future, you need to acquire something truly exciting or else you might as well just let his contract expire. And quite literally with LeBron's arrival, they only have 3 assets that fit that bill. Future draft picks are instantly worthless. Anthony Bennett was seen as a joke. Tristan Thompson may end up having a fine career, but you don't start your rebuild by acquiring a guy who has never been anything close to an all-star and expects to have a big pay day coming very soon. The Cavs quite literally could not offer anything less to the Wolves and have it be better than "nothing".

As in, if that's the choice you keep Love and try to make it work, and if it doesn't you tank with a clean, cheap, slate.

[Doctor MJ]

No the trade came out of nowhere.

Exactly. It was a total shock. The Melo debacle had been in the headlines for basically forever at that point, and then boom, Deron gets traded to one of the teams hoping to get Melo. The Jazz basically used the context of the league to not simply sell high on Deron based on his peak, but based on when teams were already looking to make a deal for a new franchise player.

At the time, as I said, it wasn't a clear cut win in the eyes of most because there didn't seem to be any need to get rid of Deron. But in retrospect it looks quite sharp indeed.

oh, i thought it was the whole - sloan or me crap, and it all went downhill from there. i thought that sloan left on his own terms and the org felt a ways about deron and vice versa after that episode. i was wrong!

Yes and no. It can't be a coincidence it all happened at once, but the drama coming out of the Jazz was virtually negligible compared to the other teams in the league at the time. On a scale from "normal" to "Melo thinks he's important", this was essentially indecipherable from "normal".

[MemphisX]

Philadelphia

[HiRez]

Yeah, I don't know how people can give much credit to New Orleans for getting extremely lucky in a ping pong ball lottery (they only has a 13.7% chance of getting #1) and then selecting the most obvious pick in years. Duh. They haven't really done much of a "job of rebuilding" anything.

[MiltownHawkeye]

It's never going to make sense to disparage a team for only getting the 4th best player in the draft at the 9th spot because one of the 3 guys better was still on the board.

Wait, who?

[DarkAzcura]

1. New Orleans
2. Utah

That's it IMO. All be it Utah took a lot more skill where as New Orleans basically lucked into Davis.

NO has done a pretty terrible job balancing the roster around Davis. Not sure why they should be on the list over teams like the Bucks, Celtics, and even the Magic who have actually made some sense of their rebuilds in terms of balancing and managing their assets. That's the only way to truly evaluate rebuilding, imo. We've seen teams draft top talent for years and never do anything with it because of poor management. NO has shot themselves in the foot too many times after lucking out on Davis.

I'm not saying that NO deserves to be better but their luck counts to it. They're already a 40-45 win team in the West with Davis in his third year, one of the worst rosters 5-15 in the league, and no pick this year. Just imagine if they say trade Anderson for more depth and then let Evans walk.

We can sit here and say "hey, they lucked into Davis". Well, the point is that they have Davis.

Well that's the exact problem. You just explained why the rebuild has been very meh. The front office doesn't get credit for the obvious superstar pick making the team look respectable. They are the ones who brought Evans in. They are the ones who brought Holiday in by overpaying for him. Any of the other teams I mentioned would likely be a contender right now or easily on their way if they had drafted Davis because their front offices generally manage draft picks and cap space much better. That's truly how a rebuilding situation should be evaluated in my opinion. It's all about flexibility and keeping your team open for several options and paths.

NO could be pretty good next year, but it will be because AD is amazing and likely not because their front office did him any favors.