Nearly the entire history of the NBA suggests that a team wishing to win the title must have one of the 10 or 15 best players alive — and preferably one of the half-dozen best. There have been exceptions, including the famous 2004 Pistons. But they are rare.
The most common means of obtaining said franchise player is via the draft when he is first eligible to enter the NBA. You can certainly land those guys after the top few picks; the Mavs did so with Dirk Nowitzki (no. 9), the Celtics with Paul Pierce (no. 10), the Lakers with Kobe Bryant (no. 13, in a draft-day trade Kobe’s team strong-armed in concert with Jerry West), and now the Pacers with Paul George (no. 10). And the Rockets have recently reminded us that shrewd cap management and a pile of gain-an-inch trades can provide the flexibility required to either sign a star-level free agent or trade for one seeking a new environment. That’s how the Celtics got Kevin Garnett, and Boston (along with Phoenix and a handful of other teams) may be in the early stages of a similar process now.
But the best odds of snagging such a player lay in being very bad, getting some lottery luck, and drafting in one of the first two or three slots. That path is NOT a fail-safe, of course. The Bobcats tanked the 2011-12 lockout season and ended up with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist instead of Anthony Davis. The Bucks, Raptors, and Blazers won the lotteries in years when most of the league found itself infatuated with big-man prospects who turned out to be the wrong choices at the very top.
via The NBA’s Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel – The Triangle Blog – Grantland.
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