I think, if you can do it without sacrificing the chance at a homerun top 5 pick (ie brooklyn, the LA/Sac pick, etc) you have to try to build a winning team.
Several reasons:
- Sports should be fun, and going deep in the playoffs is entertaining.
- Player development is unpredictable: what if Tatum or Brown make a leap? Both were top-3 picks, not unheard of; if they do, we would be a very very very good team.
- Sports are unpredictable: We got to the ECF last year and should be better this year. Could legitimately make the finals; what if GS goes cold or someone from Durant/Curry/Green gets injured? Sometimes just being repeatedly in the mix but never cashing in the chips is how to win a title or two; see the Patriots and Spurs.
- Players are unpredictable; if you are a perpetual chronically rebuilding team, no star is going to want to go to you; but what if Davis tells NO he's leaving in a year next year, they have 1/2 a season to trade him? He's way more likely to go to an ECF team that can put him with a real roster AND can offer some very good picks.
Oh, I agree more or less with most of your points, except, this team isn't winning against the Warriors. Sports can be unpredictable, but that's basically hoping for a miracle.
I think this team would lose a series against the Warriors 0-4, even if Durant was out. Is Gordon Hayward our best player? Do you think he's better than Klay Thompson, GSW's third best player? Because I don't...
In fact, thinking back of the last series against the Cavs, I have a hard time seeing us win a series against them, either, although I reckon it's not impossible.
I am a little confused about this whole thread and the direction it is going. The team that was held up as an example of a "treadmill team" is most frequently the Atlanta Hawks. They won 38-45 games every year for about a decade and always drafted in the 12-22 range so they never got young enough players to get better. Their teams with Joe Johnson and Josh Smith were pretty predictable and didn't have much variance or anything.
So fans want their teams to not become treadmill teams hope that their team does a rebuild right? You have you really bottom out and get top 3 picks for 2-3 years right? I mean the 76ers were held up as the craziest tank ever and picked number 3 number 3, number 1 and number 3 over that period (prior to their trade). The Celtics got the third pick last year, the first pick this year and presumably a top 6 pick next year (with a good chance of another lottery pick mixed in). That is about as high as you could hope to get while tanking hard (as seen with the 76ers). We basically had a farm team tanking for us. Somehow people are upset with this? I just don't get that. We are getting the best of both worlds here. We have also signed one of the top 3 free agents from the free agent market 2 summers in a row and have owners that are going to be going into the luxury tax.... Like what is there to be upset about?
No, a treadmill team is one that maxes out without a realistic chance of winning the whole thing.
I think people are making the mistake of assuming that the sheer sum of talent on this team somehow makes up for the top-end talent on other teams. I don't think that's how it works.
This team consists basically of two different groups: the vets, and the young guys. Seperately, neither group projects to be able to compete for a championship against their direct competition on their respective timetable.
The vets match up poorly against other vets on teams like the Warriors or the Cavs, while the young guys are clearly inferior to some of the young talent on rebuilding teams. Of course, there's still a chance we could draft a real game changer next year, but for a team that has been "rebuilding" for 5 years at that point, and considering the assets we had at our disposal, the fact we have to rely on that is already a declaration of bankruptcy by the management.
And I didn't even talk about the natural dynamics that will kick in over the next few years, because since we're clearly in "win now" mode after signing Horford and Hayward, obviously we will be looking to make even more win now moves in the future, from resigning IT to a big contract (and maybe even Horford, to a lesser degree) to signing ring-chasing veterans, all of which makes perfect sense in a vacuum, but, depending on how much faith you have in our vets, will ultimately just drag out the current version of this team and discourage us from making the moves necessary to build a true contender.
All of this makes me believe that it will take a very long time before we can celebrate #18. I am afraid that ten years from now, this "rebuild" will be one of the big cautionary tales NBA fans tell each other, where no matter how many assets you have, you still might not win it all.
In my opinion, this off-season was pennywise, but pound-foolish, or if you prefer a different metaphor, we were marveling at the trees and didn't see the forrest.
But maybe that's just me. Maybe hoping for a championship is arrogant and expecting too much. Maybe we should all be happy to just be there.
Topic: Done: Hayward Announces He's Joining Celtics (Read 13904 times)