An Attempt to Clarify the Argument

The people on the patience side believe the Wolves need an impact player and depth. The issue as they see it is that in the NBA, a team that plateaus as a .500 team will be stuck at that level. How many NBA teams over the last couple decades have won 40-45 games for four straight seasons, then emerged as a title contender? Usually doesn’t work that way, usually a steady progression via young player development and drafting the right guy (often but not always a top 5 pick). Would the Bulls have won six titles if they were drafting too low to be in position to get Pippen??
It’s also a game structure issue. A primary reason teams in baseball or football become more or less competitive in a short period of time is that they are more team oriented games, due to the number of players on the field at any given time, any one capable of winning or losing a game by a great play or mistake. The NBA is much closer to an individual sport (like golf, tennis, or bowling) because they only have 5 players on the court at a time, and the two or three best tend to dominate their team, especially on offense (the Lions spent a decade trying to run isolation plays with Barry Sanders, but this is rare in the NFL). Because of this, when a basketball team is great, it tends to be due to a few players, and the teams stay that way a while (similar to golf, tennis, or bowling), assuming the players stay together and healthy.

Changing the CBA and enhancing revenue sharing will help, but ultimately if a team can draft LeBron James (or Melo or Duncan or Wade…etc) and keep him for fifteen years they will be competitive for that long, while the team that had the 7th pick in that draft may be left behind.

I lost interest right after “by Eric in Madison.”

You’re probably right, but some of your arguments about the way things are in the NBA point to the philosophy of Gradual Improvement.

 I know some people who know some people, and some people they know work at relatively high levels of sports management and marketing. You know what those people say that they “sell”?

Hope. Hope that the rookies will get better, that the injured guy will come back full strength, that the veterans will make up for lost agility with their acquired knowledge, that the hated rivals will finally get sick of their prima donna quarterback and inspire him to come to our team and perfrom magnificently go through a rebuilding process.

In most sports, each season offers a relatively reasonable justification for renewed hope. In the NFL the wild card team sometimes makes it to the Super Bowl, in MLB a good rotation can give you an unwarranted edge in a short series, and in the NHL a hot goalie can take a sub-.500 team to the Stanley Cup finals.

But like you said, it’s not like that in the NBA. So rather than bemoan the way we wish things were, accept the way that they are, and understand that for better or worse, usually the best team wins. And the only way to vastly improve this wretched squad is through a lonnnng painful development process. Enjoy the ride, and celebrate it if/when it finally happens because it will be that much better.

Immediately after the Cassell/Sprewell years, they Wolves mortgaged what little future they had to try to win while KG was still here.
I think the rebuilding started when they traded KG. Also, I wouldn’t call this another rebuild, more of a change in direction/leadership. They have basically been rebuilding around Jefferson since they traded KG. It seems like forever, but I think AL has only been here three years now.

Also, the Thunder got more than a “little lucky”. Go back and look at that draft again. If the Wolves had gotten the Seattle luck in that draft (they had the same record), people would be praising McHale for building a team around KG and Durant, while OKC would be an after thought.

We are due for lotto luck. John Wall or Turner combined with what we got and what we could feasibly add via trade or FA signing makes us a major threat in the NBA for years to come. If we don’t get lucky, then you go to plan B and trade for Iggy and/or Kevin Martin. Not that complicated.

but as someone who follows professional sport in a number of codes and has seen a team dear to me build from nothing to a title through drafting, I cannot begin to emphasise how important a winning culture is.

It begets everything. Confidence, corporate support, positive media, the ability to lure free agents is all prefaced upon demonstrating you have a pulse.

When comparing to the Thunder, they have been very patient and unwilling to spend cap space on quick fixes. They have used their cap space to make smart additions when the price was low (Thabo, Krstic, Maynor).

However, their #1 attribute (IMO) has been good drafting. They clearly got lucky in getting the #2 pick and having future HOFer fall to #2 (thx Portland). However they also turned an aging Ray Allen into Green, drafted Westbrook early than expected, and found a solid SG in Harden.

The reason the Wolves are on their 2nd or 3rd rebuild is (IMO) horrible drafting. The team had no #1 pick whatsoever in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004. In 2005 they get pass on Granger and others for McCants. Out of the league. In 2006 they trade Roy for Foye. Foye was (until the Arenas suspension) a bench guy on a horrible team. In 2007 they drafted Brewer who until recently looked like he would not reach a second NBA contract. In 2009 our #1 pick stayed in Spain (which was not horrible drafting but is a major talent drain at the moment).

Add to that all the sold/muffed 2nd round picks, and it is no shock whatsoever that the Wolves have been one of the least talented teams for years.

That is why I am fully in favor of Kahn’s general direction, which seems to be talent acquisition.

Re: the broader questions and comments about the NBA as a whole. Building a championship quality team seems like an almost impossible task. Here are several of the basic challenges:

• You need two or three of the top players in the league. These are normally available only through the draft. To draft them you need to be both terrible and lucky (lottery).
• Players have a relatively short window of championship level play. You need many of your players to have their window all at roughly the same time. You must constantly try to replace players leaving their window.
• You need a large group of good players but must fit them all within roughly the luxury tax line. Very tough to do unless some top players are still on rookie deals.
• You need a deep team to survive injury, but you must manage the resulting unhappiness due to lack of minutes/shots.

It seems to me that the Lakers haven’t succeeded because of the draft, but because they can attract free agents and players via trade. Some of that (location, mystique) can’t be changed, but implementing a hard cap would make it much more difficult for them.

I also think it’d be fun to have a 1-and-done in-season tournament. The EPL has all sorts of competitive balance issues, but more fans can stay interested because there are so many different things to play for (FA Cup, Carling Cup, Europa League qualifying, not being relegated). An in-season tournament is the only one of these that I see as being feasible for the NBA. A middle-of-the-pack team could potentially go on a roll and win it.

But overall, a handful of teams really have a chance to win the title in any given year, and not much is going to happen to change that. I just don’t see the league shortening playoff series to 5 (or 3) games, for example.

What’s most important is to 1) have a system, 2) consistently add the best possible 1-10 talent for that system, and 3) not overpay anyone, even if it means a momentary drop in talent. However, when a team is within sniffing distance (i.e., played in last year’s conference finals at the very least) of the title, then it’s time to make sure all of the important pieces are locked up long-term or can be moved for equal value if necessary.

The problems of the first-round-and-out Wolves were that they were hamstrung on #2 by KG’s salary (which can’t happen according to the current CBA rules, at least to that extent) and that the system was based on being unconventional enough to surprise teams during the regular season but conventional enough to stop in a playoff series. Bottom-line, though KG was a much more dominant defender than offensive player, they didn’t try to develop a dominant defensive team and fill it with really good defenders who could compensate for lack of execution with athleticism (like, say, drafting Bobby Jackson instead of Paul Grant or Shawn Marion instead of Wally).

What the hell does all of this mean? The main way that winning becomes a rut is if a team is too reliant on a flawed plan or if they botch #2 or #3. I have no problem with the Wolves winning games this season as long as they’re not benching Wayne Ellington for Sasha Pavlovic or going with strategies that work against what they ultimately want to become, which is apparently the 20-below version of the Showtime Lakers. But with that in mind, they have do better than they have with #2 (as evidenced by the fact that no one on this team drafted before ‘07 is still here) and can’t forget about #3. The best they can do is develop and execute a good plan; whether they win the title is partially determined by luck, but any team can be a consistent 50-win team if they have those 3 elements. Just ask the Jazz. This is why I enjoyed this season’s winning streak much more than January of last year; these wins seem like the result of at least #1 and #3 and the start of #2.