Ok so lets see some facts that we know, please correct me if I'm wrong:
Being a team owner is an investment, it's about making money. Making money from an NBA team is not about winning. If it was about winning then by definition nobody would want to invest in half the teams in the NBA. That would be bad business. Bad teams must also make money to be an attractive investment.
NBA teams are private corporations that do not disclose their profits. There are some Forbes articles and the likes based on their calculations, but these are articles, there are no published financial statements to cross check, no details. And the NBA has often responded that they are BS. Therefore we don't know which teams are profitable and how much, and exactly what it is that drives their profits. Surely wins would help some, ticket sales would go up etc, but when the Hornets for example
leaked some actual audited financial statements it showed that 60% of their revenue was not even direct team profit like tickets & advertising, it was shared NBA revenue, share in TV rights and shared revenue with the arena businesses.
- Therefore it is probably more important for an owner that the NBA as a whole goes well, not necessarily that his own team goes well. it's important that the NBA gets popular in places like China, attracts more international players to get people in other countries more interested, gets bigger TV and other deals.
- it's important to have an arena with many shops where people can spend money. The newer and bigger the arena the more shops it has, and more shops means people spend more. The Seattle Supersonics arena was a great building for actual basketball and a strong home court, but they made such a big fuss to tear it down because it didnt have enough room for shops. When you go to the new Bucks arena next year check how much money you actually spend compared to the BC.
- NBA has many ways to sell a team to the consumers apart from wins. You have a **** team with a couple of rookies? You make your marketing all about the "Youth movement", You "Own the future", you "Believe", you are "All in it together". You have one good player? You make it all about him, the clash with the visiting team's best player etc. Never ever make it about winning, that's bad business. The NBA is designed to be a merry go round, eventually everybody will take their turn at winning. So don't make it about that because even if you win now you will regret it in 2 years. Even when the Warriors were kicking everyone's butt the slogan was not about winning, it was "Strength in numbers". Smart people.
TL/DR: you can very well be a super successful owner without winning. You have to pretend you're trying of course, but you don't actually have to try. Don't confuse an owner's goals with the actual wins of his team, the NBA has designed these two things to be only very loosely related. The quality of the team is basically our problem, not the owner's.