FanPost

Rebuilding an NBA Champion

The Philadelphia 76ers have stockpiled young talent through trades and the past two NBA drafts. That trend is expected to continue, especially considering their part in the rumored Kevin Love to Cleveland deal: sending Thaddeus Young, their leader in scoring and rebounds from last season, to Minnesota to receive Cleveland’s Anthony Bennett, who has been called a bust after just his rookie season.

This lose now, win later strategy that the Sixers are employing has been one of the most talked about tanking campaigns in recent NBA history. Additionally, it’s happening at a time when league commissioner Adam Silver is proposing changes to the Draft Lottery system in order to discourage teams from losing to increase their NBA Draft odds. The proposed changes would improve competition (or at least, competing to win) in a league that already struggles with competitive balance: the NBA has had just seven different champions since 1996, compared to twelve in the NFL, nine in the MLB, eleven in the NHL, and nine in the MLS. Improved balance would likely increase the league’s profitability. In order to determine the effectiveness of tanking and rebuilding in the NBA, I’ll use a retrospective analysis of draft history to show what the Sixers could look like down the road and compare this to how this year’s best NBA teams were built.

In a few years, Philadelphia’s roster is expected to include Anthony Bennett, Nerlens Noel, Michael Carter-Williams, Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, as well as future draft picks. For the sake of this article, let’s assume that the Sixers wind up with the fourth pick in 2015. That roster would then include 2013’s first, sixth, and eleventh picks, 2014’s third and twelfth picks, and 2015’s fourth, respectively. If we take that sequence of picks from drafts dating back to when the NBA changed it’s draft eligibility age to 19 as part of the 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement, we can see what the Sixers might look like when their current players are further into their careers.

We’ll start by pretending that the 2006 Draft (three years after Kevin Love’s teammate-to-be LeBron James was drafted out of high school) is when the Sixers started to build their roster, and continue building rosters with each draft until we’re back to the present. Here are the resulting rosters:

Draft Year

Pick Number

Player

2006

1

Andrea Bargnani

2006

6

Brandon Roy

2006

11

J.J. Redick

2007

3

Al Horford

2007

12

Thaddeus Young

2008

4

Russell Westbrook




2007

1

Greg Oden

2007

6

Yi Jianlian

2007

11

Acie Law

2008

3

O.J. Mayo

2008

12

Jason Thompson

2009

4

Tyreke Evans




2008

1

Derrick Rose

2008

6

Danilo Gallinari

2008

11

Jerryd Bayless

2009

3

James Harden

2009

12

Gerald Henderson

2010

4

Wesley Johnson




2009

1

Blake Griffin

2009

6

Jonny Flynn

2009

11

Terrence Williams

2010

3

Derrick Favors

2010

12

Xavier Henry

2011

4

Tristan Thompson




2010

1

John Wall

2010

6

Ekpe Udoh

2010

11

Cole Aldrich

2011

3

Enes Kanter

2011

12

Alec Burks

2012

4

Dion Waiters




2011

1

Kyrie Irving

2011

6

Jan Vesely

2011

11

Klay Thompson

2012

3

Bradley Beal

2012

12

Jeremy Lamb

2013

4

Cody Zeller




2012

1

Anthony Davis

2012

6

Damian Lillard

2012

11

Meyers Leonard

2013

3

Otto Porter

2013

12

Kelly Olynyk

2014

4

Aaron Gordon




2013

1

Anthony Bennett

2013

6

Nerlens Noel

2013

11

Michael Carter-Williams

2014

3

Joel Embiid

2014

12

Dario Saric

2015

4

?


Those lineups are less impressive than you may expect and shows how hard it is to assemble a great NBA lineup. It's very difficult to build a good team through the draft alone. If you took the best player in each individual draft position above you could probably create a dynasty with Blake Griffin, a healthy Brandon Roy, Michael Carter-Williams, James Harden, Thaddeus Young, and Russell Westbrook. However, you could also take the worst and end up with a roster that includes Greg Oden and a bunch of no-names. More importantly, none of the above roster arrangements look anything like a championship team, but they may boast enough talent to attract free agents and become one.

Let’s call the four teams that made it to the conference finals this year the championship-caliber that NBA team owners strive to achieve. The San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Indiana Pacers combined have accounted for twelve of the last sixteen total appearances made by teams in the NBA’s final four in the past four years. The core of each of these teams leveraged free agency and trades but have their roots in the draft. The Spurs’ big three includes top draft pick Tim Duncan, along with late picks Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. The 2014 Heat’s big three included draft pick Dwayne Wade, who re-signed as a free agent along with Chris Bosh and LeBron James. The Thunders’ roster once included draft picks Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, and James Harden. The 2014 Pacers’ roster included draft picks Paul George and Lance Stevenson along with free agent signing David West and trade-acquired Roy Hibbert. Of course, these teams all added other key pieces along the way, but it’s nice to see the the Heat are an outlier by building their team primarily through free agency.

Most often, championship teams are rooted in their draft picks and they find free agents along the way to ultimately reach a level of greatness. While the Sixers are amassing talent through draft picks, the question remains as to whether they will succeed in attracting the right free agents when the time is right. In the meantime, Sixers fans will watch another losing season while the Cavaliers try to prove that their second King James era, created by losing without Lebron, landing top draft picks, signing Lebron as a free agent, and trading some of their young talent for All-Star Kevin Love, can make them a championship team. We’ll have to wait at least a few years to see how it works out for the Sixers and how the NBA reacts with changes to the Draft Lottery system.

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