Some modern NBA discourse seems to have forgotten the fact that a team can be smart even if it isn’t contending or tanking.
Two NBA teams, the San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers, recently acquired/re-signed All-Star caliber players. The Spurs got DeMar DeRozan as part of the return for having to trade Kawhi Leonard, and the Cavs re-signed Kevin Love.
Many responses to either or both of those moves was that the teams in question were basically dumb for making them. After all, neither DeRozan nor Love can be the best player on a title team, so what’s even the point of acquiring those guys if there’s no true superstar already in town?
This is a boring, harmful way of looking at things. Even though only one team is going to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of any given NBA season, that doesn’t mean the other 29 are going to look back and see a failed campaign. There are successes to be had besides the very biggest one.
The 2017-18 Indiana Pacers are a great example of this. Most people (this author excluded) figured Indiana would miss the playoffs last year. After all Victor Oladipo was no superstar in Oklahoma City, and he was the best player on the team.
From a cold, calculating perspective, all the Pacers did was finish 5th in the East and get bounced in the first round. That sounds pretty meh. In reality, though, Indiana proved their culture of playing tough, gritty basketball was a good one and that the Paul George trade netted them a player they can build around for years.
The Pacers damn near knocked Cleveland out of the postseason in the first round, an indignity that hasn’t befallen LeBron James in just about a decade. That’s a hell of a year for Indiana.
We’ve already established that every team can’t win a title. They can’t all tank, either. If 15 teams all think their best way forward is losing the most games they can, most NBA games become unwatchable and, even worse, it doesn’t work for the majority of them.
Great prospects don’t just magically get assigned to bad teams. The only motivation for being bad is a better draft spot. More bad teams mean each bad team is not guaranteed a good pick, meaning some of them could be stuck in a tank for a long, long time. It’s not reasonable to expect half of the league to view bottoming out as their best bet, especially if they all do it at once.
That leaves a middle ground between the worst of the worst and the best of the best. That spot is currently viewed with disdain, as a spot where idiotic teams get stuck. Sometimes there might be some truth to that, but a lot of teams would kill to lock down a sixth seed and get five to six playoff games.
That ending to a season shouldn’t automatically be viewed as a failure. There’s merit in bringing a team to the postseason, even beyond the financial implications. A franchise, especially one in a small market, is not stupid for trying to keep themselves above water. The Spurs and Cavs locked down very good players, and they’ll be more competitive because of it. That shouldn’t be a bad thing.
#Content you can’t miss
KD is not nice; Logan Mullen recaps KD torching CJ McCollum on his own damn podcast
You win some, you lose some; Gerald Bourguet looks at the biggest winners and losers of free agency
The NBA is also not nice; Paolo Uggetti looks at how even very good players can get played in the NBA
VC to the ATL; Jeremy Lambert looks at Vince Carter’s decision to sign with the Hawks
Draft science; Jeff Borzello looks at how reclassification can get prospects to the NBA faster