People hate rebuilding. It's a slow and boring, painful and frustrating experience.
There are a few ways to do it. Many Celtics fans are disgusted at the thought of tanking for a top 5 pick next year or the shot at a franchise level player, thinking the better option is to add some free agents to our core and work around Rondo.
It's an honourable thought, an idealistic idea that we could re tool on the fly and become a contender relatively quickly. Unfortunately history and evidence don't agree with this option at all.
If you disagree, i want you to brainstorm.
First tell me which current players or free agents could we get to join Rondo that would make us a legitimate contender with teams like Chicago and Miami and OKC around for the next 5 seasons?
Ok so you've got a list. Lets put that list of players out there on the floor against the last 25 years of NBA championship teams. Then lets compare that list with Rondo, to the Celtics roster from 2008 to 2013. Are those players with Rondo a match for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen when they joined our then sole star player Paul Pierce? Who would you compare to KG in the current market of free agents? Anyone? Is Howard as good as KG was in 2008? It's arguable. Can we get Howard? Not likely. After him, is there anyone on Ray or KGs level? No. Not even close.
Now think back to that squad of Pierce, KG and Ray and ask how many championships we won.
Yes they were towards the end of their 'primes' but they were still in their primes and we only managed one championship. KGs injury is a major factor but the fact is we have one banner for that amazing squad.
That's how hard it is to win a championship in the NBA. So how do you win a championship in the modern NBA. Other than teaming together and conspiring in secret like the Miami Heat to form a super trio....
You need to draft a superstar yourself and surround him with the right players. By this I mean you need at least one other all star player and usually two depending on the supporting casts skill set.
The last 10 Years of NBA finalists feature teams with at least one home grown superstar and at least 3 all stars in most cases. In fact only the Mavs had a lone 'superstar' without any all star help in Dirk. The pistons had 4 all stars and are the other exception without a superstar they themselves drafted in the lottery. That's basically
The Spurs
Lakers
Celtics
Mavs
Cavs
Magic
OKC
In fact only 6 teams in the last 14 years have gotten rings.
Take that back to the last 20 years and its 8 teams
Now look back at the past 50 NBA champions, even to the beginning of the NBA.
Are there even 4 or 5 teams that don't have a superstar they drafted via tanking?
Red Auerbach was great at ripping off other teams, but he also had vision and genius to a certain extent. he drafted KC Jones, he drafted tommy heinsohn. he made a draft day heist trade to get bill russell but GM's for the most part don't get hosed like that nowadays. We drafted Bird. In fact the period that we stunk so badly through can arguably be narrowed down to our 1986 2nd overall pick Len Bias passing away before he even played a game, followed by our late blooming superstar draftee Reggie Lewis passing away.
Go back and look at 20 years of NBA championship winners and even finalists from
Tim Duncan 1
Kobe Bryant 13(from Europe, if he'd played in college he'd arguably go top 5)
Dwayne Wade 4
Paul pierce 10
Dirk Nowitzki 9 (similarly to Kobe )
Hakeem 1
Allen Iverson 1
Shaq 1
Durant 1
Barkley 5
Magic Johnson 1
Michael Jordan 1
Lebron James 1
Dwight Howard 1
Kareem 1(with bucks)
Similarly you could look at NBA league MVPs and see a direct correlation.
People just don't understand or choose to ignore the blatant, obvious and painfully truthful fact that lottery picks win championships.
To get these players and number one picks, throughout recent NBA history (at least the past 25 years) teams have landed these picks the majority of the time by being very bad for a period or getting very lucky/swindling another team.
Even we were amazingly lucky to get Pierce at 10 or Mavs getting Dirk at 9 in the same draft.
Now lets look at our current situation. No superstars. We have finished a 5 year run that came via tanking and getting the 5th pick. There is one free agent in Dwight Howard that is of a franchise level. There are no others considered franchise level free agents.
All the franchise players are with other franchise players and dominating the league just as the Heat dominated us.
Andrew Wiggins is the number one prospect in what is considered to be one of the best drafts in NBA history. This is not an exaggeration or oversell. The talent, athleticism, size and skill of this years draft is mind boggling.
History GLARINGLY shows that Wiggins has a greatly higher than expected chance of winning a title through him rather than a re tooling around great but not franchise level guys.
Don't look at it as tanking,, look at it as the only possible way to acquire a talent good enough to take us to the most important goal of all....banner 18.
Topic: Lets look at history and drafting in the lottery related to NBA championships. (Read 7145 times)