KL78192020 wrote:The entire core of the Raptors championship team was built from the lottery.
1. Traded the 12th pick in the lottery for Kyle Lowry.
2. Traded two 9th picks in Demar/Poetl for Kawhi.
3. Traded Jonas V. the 5th pick for Marc Gasol.
4. Traded Terrance Ross the 8th pick Ibaka.
They dont win the championship without all those assets from the draft lottery. It takes a combination of things for a team to succeed.
Lakers don’t get AD without two lottery picks in Ball/Ingram.
Lebron doesn’t go back to the Cavs if they didn’t have two lottery picks in Kyrie and Wiggens which was used to get Kevin Love.
The Raps were bad for only two years, in 2011 and 2012. For those picks, they got JV and Ross, who became Gasol and Ibaka. Nice complementary assets but the Big Three on the title team were Kawhi, Lowry, and Siakam, who came from other means (as did van Fleet). That seems to me a great stretch to call that a victory for tanking.
The Lakers ... eh. AD was in charge of that process, he wanted to play with LeBron, the Pelicans were dragged in that direction. If not Ball/Ingram, the Lakers might have had other assets to trade.
And I've covered the Cavs already, they could have acquired assets to trade in other ways besides tanking. The Nets or Indy or Utah, to cite three examples, have plenty of players to complement LeBron, without having been terrible to get them.
Teams that have stronger claims than those three teams to being where they are because of tanking -
Washington
Orlando
Philly
Phoenix
Chicago
Sacramento
Minnesota
Memphis
Knicks
Overall, I'm not impressed, although Philly obviously is a contender, Phoenix might be turning the corner, and Memphis could be tough in a year or two.