I mean they drafted the 3 best players on their title winning team...
I was just being silly raaaandy. On a more serious note though none of those guys were too 3 or even too 5 picks right? So more a matter of insanely good drafting than top 3 picks panning out/hardcore tanking
Yep, that is what makes them different. The Cavs were pretty darn bad the 4 years James was in Miami. They used that time to rack up top 5 picks including 3 #1 picks. They kept Irving but then traded Wiggins and Bennett for Love, all while using those assets to lure James back to Cleveland.
Seattle/OKC went full on tank mode for 2.5 years and ended up with a number of top 5 picks and multiple other 1st round picks and put together a championship contender.
The Spurs tanked for Duncan and got 5 titles out of it. Now sure they had a 1 year tank, but it was still a blatant tank job.
The Philly approach is not a novel idea. Teams have been tanking since the beginning of time because basketball, like no other sport, is the one sport where 1 player can take you from bottom dweller to title contender almost overnight. And the best way to land that 1 player is a very high draft pick (not the only way, just the best way). There are plenty of draft picks that don't pan for whatever reason, but the more such picks you have the more likely you are to not mess at least one up.
Tell the whole story, Moranis. Tell us about the franchises that have had multiple top 5 picks and sucked for years and years. The number of teams that have done that is much, much higher than those that were bad for a year to a few years and then succeeded.
Also, I don't see OKC or Cleveland as tank jobs as much as they sucked for a few years while trying to win and just couldn't win. Cleveland for instance, got a #1 pick while being a 9th worse seed. That's not tanking, that's just being bad.
Seattle/OKC was absolutely a tank job. They traded away every useful veteran for draft picks and young players for basically a 2.5 year period. They took on players to gain draft picks.
Cleveland didn't tank in the same way as Philly or OKC, but Cleveland absolutely was atrocious after James left (obviously mostly because James left). The Cavs won 19, 21, and 24 games in the first three years, before "trying" to win more and winning 33 games (which is the year they had the 9th worst record and landed Wiggins). Those 64 wins in 3 seasons led to Thompson, Waiters, and Bennett, and they ended up with Irving from a "tanking" type trade with the Clippers to unload talent for worse players and worse contracts. They also had another 1st rounder in the Waiters and Bennett drafts. Cleveland is a great example of a franchise to show the difficulty with top 5 picks and why the more you have the better off you are. How much different would the Cavs look if they had drafted Valanciunas instead of Thompson. Lillard, Barnes, or Drummond instead of Waiters. Virtually anyone instead of Bennett. Top 5 picks are great, but you can't mess them up. The Cavs had 5 top 5 picks in a 4 year period and came away with Irving and Wiggins as possible stars, Thompson as at least not blowing the pick, and they clearly blew Waiters and Bennett.
I also think you'd be surprised how few teams end up with a large amount of top 5 picks in a 4 or 5 year period. The Clippers are obvious, but the Clippers problems were much larger than messing up draft picks. There aren't a whole lot of other franchises with a bunch of top 5 picks in a short amount of time that didn't utilize those picks to get pretty good (winning titles is tough so I'm not sure you can use that as a gauge). The Bulls post-Jordan were bad for awhile as well with a bunch of top 5 picks (though they rebooted after the first few failures and then got it right). I'd probably give you Minnesota as they were only halfway decent with Love, obviously it is too early on the current group. I'm not sure you can find another franchise that fits those criteria. I mean as bad as the Kings have been for a decade or so, they have very few top 5 picks during that time (Since Owens in 91 - just Evans, Cousins, and Robinson).
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