Lebron James wasn't drafted by the Heat, Chauncey Billups (that all time legendary franchise player) wasn't drafted by the Pistons, Kevin Garnett wasn't drafted by the Celtics, Shaquille O'Neal wasn't drafted by the Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal wasn't drafted by the Heat, Pau Gasol wasn't drafted by the Lakers, Dirk Nowitzki was drafted 9th by Dallas, Kobe Bryant was drafted 13th by the Lakers, Tony Parker was drafted 128th by the Spurs.
Your hard and fast rule about a team needing to tank and draft a transcendent player to ever have a shot at an NBA title seems to have more aberrations than it has championship teams that fit your rule.
I guess you can alway fall back on Tim Duncan as the player that fits your absolute rule of how champions are built. Or, you can rely on your vast mountains of evidence from back in the olden days. Or, you can try to turn LaMarcus Aldridge, John Wall, and Al Horford into players that are destined to be all time greats based solely on their respective draft positions.
Or, you can admit that your theory is highly flawed and outdated.
Tanking is not the way to rebuild this team into a contender. Somewhere in the back of your mind you probably know this, though.
You bring up good points.
So lets cross our fingers Kevin Durant, Andrew wiggins, LeBron James, Dwight Howard or Chris Paul or some other franchise player ends up in Boston through some miracle that doesn't involve the draft. Fair enough.
Day 1 of the Kevin Durant watch is on. Here's hoping we get him before he's 32 years old.
Start danging Rondo as trade bait... we're desperately need a franchise player if we're ever going to contend.
As you point out, "franchise players" are indeed very rare. Off your above list, I would say that only Lebron James and probably Kevin Durant definitively fit that category. Andre Wiggins sure seems to have a lot of potential, but it can't be said with any level of certainty of a kid who's still eighteen years old and in High School that he's sure to be an all-time NBA great.
Rondo isn't in the category of Lebron James, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, or Michael Jordan. Chances are that he'll never reach that rarefied air, but he's the closest thing we've got, and he's a very good player. There's disagreement on this, but I would say that he's a top 15 to 20 player in the league today.
Getting rid of a player of his talent to try to luck into the type of player that comes around maybe two or three times a decade through a lottery system is an absurdly bad plan. It's not even really a plan at all. Considering the rarity of these franchise type players, you'd have to admit that the chances of tanking for one and actually getting one are much lower than the chances of tanking for one and never finding that guy.
If Danny were to follow your tanking plan, we won't end up in the perpetual mediocrity that so many seem to think is the worst place to be in basketball like, say, the Hawks, the Nuggets or the Bulls. There's a much better chance of ending up in perpetual terribleness like the Bobcats or the Wizards or the Kings.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I have the exact blueprint for how to get back to contender status as quickly as possible (I doubt even Danny Ainge has that blueprint),
What I do suggest, though, is keeping our best assets, of which Rajon Rondo is obviously the best, trying to add assets to that group, trying to mold them into a team that is competitive, and then, when the opportunity arises to jump on an opportunity to make the team even better through trades or free agency, to do so.
There are no guarantees that you'll be a contender in this league. That's for sure, but I don't want to see the General Manager of the team that I love decide that because there are no guarantees of titles that racing to the bottom of the league as fast as possible is the best direction to go for the future of the franchise.
That would represent the absolutely height of folly and mismanagement. Luckily, I doubt that Ainge's idea of how to try to get back in contention bears any resemblance to the one that you have laid out.
Topic: Loaded 2014 Draft = Blow It Up (Read 17202 times)