Ok, so with the Chris Paul trade talks out there, and the known possibility that he might walk after this year should we get him, it got me thinking about rebuilding. I’m assuming the 2 first round picks we’d trade would both be from the 2012 draft (our pick + Clippers) or lottery protected if after that. So we suck for a few years and have to rebuild through the draft. But since we suck so badly, we have a good chance of some top picks.
So the worst case is Chris Paul leaves, we trade (or cut) Pierce so he’s not stuck rebuilding, and Garnett and Ray move on leaving us with nothing.
Now the best case following that is we get some lottery luck from ’13-’15, and there’s some great guys available in the draft.
Let’s plan on a 3 year rebuilding plan. Looking back at the last 10 years, it looks like these 2 teams had the best 3 consecutive years in the lottery (assuming no traded picks):
Clippers in ’09, ‘10, and ’11 had picks 1, 8, and 1.
Blazers in ’05, ’06, and ’07 had picks 3, 4, and 1.
So go back to any 3 consecutive drafts over the last 10 (or so) years, and use either set of those 3 picks (1, 8, 1 or 3, 4, 1) and you can draft whoever is available. Who do you take? What could a team that drafted perfectly look like? (And then let’s hope for something like this should the C’s have to rebuild).