There was certainly a lot of activity going on at the trade deadline on Thursday. And even after we heard over and over from “sources” in the organization that the Suns were not at all active in any trade discussions, we find out that the Suns were actually quite active. They traded PG Goran Dragic and a lottery-protected first round pick to Houston for guard Aaron Brooks.
First off, I like Brooks, and I thought that Dragic was the Suns’ best trade chip. Now, do I think this was a good deal? No, definitely not. If you are going to trade your best trade chip, then you need to get back either A) a future building block, or B) a quality contributor, plus another asset or two, or in other words a you, underdeveloped player with potential or draft picks. In this case, the Rockets did just that; they traded one of their many assets, a quality player, for a future building block in their eyes (or another tradable asset) and a first round pick. This is why Houston is always a dangerous team. General Manager Darryl Morey is very adept at acquiring coveted assets. You may ask: why is this such a good strategy, if Houston has just been a middling playoff team at best for the last decade? Good question, let me explain.
The NBA is all about star players. Teams only win championships with great, star players (Lakers, Spurs, Celtics Bulls…and in contention the Suns Mavs, Heat…all in the past 15 years). I know you will say something about Detroit, but that’s another issue regarding influence of media and the referees.
No why is trading for a slew of promising role players such a great strategy? Because star players don’t come around every day. I am always perplexed when fans want to “blow up” their team and “rebuild.” That is the most asinine idea I have ever heard! Yet, teams do it every year. People in Phoenix want to trade away arguably the best player in the history of the franchise at a time when he has never been statistically better!! WHY!?! For a chance to be a bottom-feeding, lottery team for a decade?! What team has successfully done this? Lakers? No. Celtics? No. Heat? No. What teams have tried this “rebuilding” strategy? Not a single championship team in the past 20 years rose the greatness after blowing up an existing good team.
Rockets – The Rockets already had Ralph Sampson when they drafted Hakeem Olajuwon and stuck with him for ten years before they won a championship.
Bulls – I am actually too young to remember what Chicago was doing before MJ got there. As far as I am concerned, basketball didn’t exist in The Windy City before Jordan got there…just kidding Jerry Sloan.
Spurs – The Spurs did the same thing with David Robinson and now with Tim Duncan. They stayed with their star players for more than a decade and in this case, lucked into a star player when Robinson missed a season due to injury. All of their other championship pieces came through smart decision making.
Lakers – The Lakers received Shaq all but gift-wrapped and still had The Diesel when Kobe Bryant came around. Now, in Kobe’s second championship run, he is still a Laker. They didn’t ship him off for young talent and draft picks. That would have been utterly foolish.
Now let’s look at the other side of things.
Cavaliers – They were irrelevant and/or bad from 1993-2003, until they tanked just hard enough to draft LeBron James. Did you read that right? They were bad for an entire decade!
Bulls – The Bulls were absolutely awful ever since Michael Jordan retired. They had a copious amount of top five draft picks and are just barely turning into a contending team again. And this is only after winning the lottery, literally, and drafting Derrick Rose.
Sacramento – The Kings have had success more recently. After losing to the Lakers in the 2002 playoffs, the Kings eventually “blew up” their team which landed them a franchise-worst 14 wins last season with no end in sight.
Just look at all of the other teams who had brief periods of success that were eventually ended when the men upstairs tried to rebuild: New Jersey (Kidd, Jefferson, Carter); Philadelphia (Iverson); Toronto (Vince Carter); Minnesota (Garnet). This doesn’t even include the teams who seem to be perpetually “blowing up” their roster: LA Clippers and Golden State Warriors.
This is why guys like Darryl Morey, Sam Presti (Thunder) and Kevin Pritchard/Rich Cho (Trail Blazers) know what they are doing. Since transcendent talent doesn’t come around to every team all the time, you need to be stocked with talent that can be A) tradable assets and B) quality role players so that when this talent falls into your lap (i.e. KG, LeBron, Durant, Nash) you already have the pieces in place to take your team to the next level.
Some people will argue that the owners are being selfish if they don’t “blow up” the team, because they want to sneak into the playoffs as the eighth seed and keep people coming back in the seats even if they aren’t going to contend for a championship. Well then that’s great! Wow, what a novel idea. If people are going to the games, then they want to see that team! They don’t want to see a team win 15-20 games a year. Therefore, they don’t show up to those games. See, NOT “blowing up” your team even makes financial sense. My only hope is that someday, some impressionable GM will stumble across this blog, read this post and decide to keep his superstar. This is my hope…unless that GM happens to run the Los Angeles Lakers.
No comments:
Post a Comment