Watching OKC is a little depressing...

[jhay610]

Could be worse -- you could be a Seattle Supersonics fan.

[Wretch]

It hasn't been that rare that the best player on a conference finalist or finalist team has not been drafted by that team.

NOTE: I am including draft day trades as drafting that player so that Dirk counts as being a draft centerpiece for Dallas even though he was technically drafted by Milwaukee, etc.

1998 - 2010

2010 - Finals - Boston Celtics - Kevin Garnett Trade

WCF - Phoenix Suns - Steve Nash FA

2008 - Champs - Boston Celtics - Kevin Garnett Trade

ECF - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups/Rasheed Wallace/Richard Hamilton/Ben Wallace Trade & FA

2007 - ECF - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups/Rasheed Wallace/Richard Hamilton/Ben Wallace Trade & FA

2006 - ECF - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups/Rasheed Wallace/Richard Hamilton/Ben Wallace Trade & FA

WCF - Phoenix Suns - Steve Nash FA

2005 - Finals - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups/Rasheed Wallace/Richard Hamilton/Ben Wallace Trade & FA

WCF - Phoenix Suns - Steve Nash FA

2004 - Champs - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups/Rasheed Wallace/Richard Hamilton/Ben Wallace Trade & FA

Finals - LA Lakers - Shaquille O'Neal FA

ECF - Indiana Pacers - Jermaine O'Neal Trade

2003 - Finals - New Jersey Nets - Jason Kidd Trade

ECF - Detroit Pistons - Chauncey Billups FA

2002 - Champs - LA Lakers - Shaquille O'Neal FA

Finals - New Jersey Nets - Jason Kidd Trade

WCF - Sacramento Kings - Chris Webber Trade

2001 - Champs - LA Lakers - Shaquille O'Neal FA

ECF - Milwaukee Bucks - Ray Allen Trade

2000 - Champs - LA Lakers - Shaquille O'Neal FA

ECF - New York Knicks - Houston/Sprewell/Camby Trade/FA

WCF - Portland Trailblazers - Rasheed Wallace Trade

1999 - Finals - New York Knicks - Camby/Sprewell Trade/FA

WCF - Portland Trailblazers - Rasheed Wallace Trade

1998 - WCF - LA Lakers - Shaquille O'Neal FA

25 out of 52 teams = 48% for that period of time

The Lakers are as much Kobe's team as they are Shaq's team. You can't have one without the other. Same with the Celtics. They are not the same team without KG, just as they are not the same team without Pierce (and it is his team). Glenn Robinson was the 1st overall pick for the Bucks and just as vital to that offense as Ray Allen. None of those teams are the same without a key player (arguably THE key player in LA, BOS, or MIL) that they drafted and who was absolutely central to their run. I didn't ask how many teams completely built their WCF/ECF team though the draft. I asked how many made it without drafting their centerpiece. Moreover, the point that I'm making is that we do not have that player - we haven't drafted him, traded for him, or signed him as a FA.

Let me say this for the record and for the zillionth time. You don't build a team completely through the draft. I may have faith in it and talk about it, but it's just the beginning. Just as few teams make it without drafting their star, I'm sure the opposite is true for completely homegrown teams.

Now...you're also taking into account teams that have made multiple appearances - but it's still only one team. It's not a bunch of teams using that pattern. It is very few - and honestly, it's mostly the '03 Pistons. As well, and more to my point, many of these trades involved high profile draft picks from each team (not say, ZaZa for Dalembert by comparison). And if we're talking about FA signings, Shaq to LA would be about the same as Dwight Howard to us. Nobody is signing here without the talent to draw them. There's really no case for us to build a team without a drafted centerpiece. But hey...I'm up for doing this for another 40 years should we continue doing the same thing every year.

[capstone21]

True, he was a no-brainer, but CP/D-Will were for us, too, as far as I'm concerned (que dead horse). Just saying, that's how quickly a franchise can become elite when opportunities align AND the right decisions are made.

Yes...dead horse and if you look back at that time...people were really interested in us getting Marvin and were excited about his draft. It was not a nobrainer. Don't get me wrong...i really wanted one of those guys but the past is the past

[Diesel]

Go back and read all the posts in here from the past 8 years or so. People JUST. DON'T. GET IT.

We shouldn't have traded Gasol.

We shouldn't have traded our lottery pick for Lorenzen Wright.

We shouldn't have tried to "Win without losing"

We should have tanked in 2004.

We should have picked a PG in 2005.

We should not have promised Shellhead in 2006.

We shouldn't have given Phoenix TWO first rounders for Joe.

We should have hired Doc Rivers when he was overachieving in Orlando - and we probably should hire Adelman RIGHT FN NOW - but the Lakers will do that.

OK.. Here's where I want to work...

1. I was happy with the Gasol trade. Gasol was the big unknown and Babcock had leaked that he would have gone with Battier all the way anyway. I think Shareef was a good pick up at the time. I hate we didn't have him and Deke at the same time.

2. Agreed.

3. You mean tanking? I was antitank but I believe tanking would have worked better even though I believe that the draft lottery is rigged.

4. PG... Yes. Hell yes.

5. The Shellhead promise was set when we signed Joe Johnson. I can't be convinced of anything differently. You don't renig on Arm Tellum.

6. 5 allstar game later, I disagree. Sarver is on record as saying that they would not have traded with us otherwise. So has The GM... When the GM went to Toronto, he revealed that we could not have gotten Joe without the picks. Joe was coming off a year where he shot 43% from 3 pt... and was the 3rd option in that high powered offense. We were giving up Boris Freakin Diaw Rugged Defender.

7. Maybe. Our owners are cheap when it comes to coaches.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Diesel

[Swatguy]

Hawks may need to consider biting the bullet and "resting" JJ for the season.

:biggrin:

[Cwell]

Durant is basically Ray Allen at 6'11 which is inhuman to be honest. Oden is extremely rare when he came out. 7'1, 275, great athlete, very high BBIQ, an impact player defensively and an good post player. He had all defensive potential and 24-10 potential. He could have been the best player in the NBA TODAY easily! His impact would be better than Dwight since he had a better feel for the game on offense and defensively was near as good. There is NO one I would have drafted over Oden in the 2000's. Lebron, Dwight, Griffin, etc. Oden was just too impactful to pass on regardless of the injuries. Now he's a shadow of the past but as a prospect, he was truly special.

dude I watched Oden at Ohio State, and he looked like no such player. He looked like a solid above average 7 footer, that played good defense and rebounded. he was not baby jesus, like u making him out to be lol

[Wretch]

OK.. Here's where I want to work...

1. I was happy with the Gasol trade. Gasol was the big unknown and Babcock had leaked that he would have gone with Battier all the way anyway. I think Shareef was a good pick up at the time. I hate we didn't have him and Deke at the same time.

2. Agreed.

3. You mean tanking? I was antitank but I believe tanking would have worked better even though I believe that the draft lottery is rigged.

4. PG... Yes. Hell yes.

5. The Shellhead promise was set when we signed Joe Johnson. I can't be convinced of anything differently. You don't renig on Arm Tellum.

6. 5 allstar game later, I disagree. Sarver is on record as saying that they would not have traded with us otherwise. So has The GM... When the GM went to Toronto, he revealed that we could not have gotten Joe without the picks. Joe was coming off a year where he shot 43% from 3 pt... and was the 3rd option in that high powered offense. We were giving up Boris Freakin Diaw Rugged Defender.

7. Maybe. Our owners are cheap when it comes to coaches.

I had mixed feelings about the Gasol trade. I was bummed that we finally got a high draft pick and decided to trade it away. I wanted to take our chances, but I wasn't completely disappointed because we got a homegrown talent in Reef. As soon as Gasol started putting up numbers though, I got bummed again.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have gotten Joe. I just believe we could have signed him outright (just as I think we didn't get enough return for Reef/Ratliff) or given them a smaller package; and I don't care what Rob said. Unless we start doing some revisionist history here, Joe was not proven. Phoenix was not going to pay the money to keep him. Contrarily, is has been proven that BK is was an idiot and he gave up way too much for JJ at the time. I don't think he played any kind of hardball...and truth be told, had we not signed Joe and just drafted correctly (brace yourself) we might not have even needed him.

Who knows what kind of position we'd be in a few years later with guys like Howard, CP3, Roy, etc. potentially on this team. I'd add Deng to the Howard draft because Phoenix pretty much gave that pick away and we had assets.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Wretch

[AHF]

The Lakers are as much Kobe's team as they are Shaq's team. You can't have one without the other.

You could have replaced an early career Kobe with Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, or a number of other 2's and still won championships with those Lakers teams because those teams revolved around Shaq's dominance. Of course, Kobe was important. It is asinine to pretend that anyone can do it on their own - but it is equally crazy to think that Kobe was the centerpiece of those teams when Shaq was the league's best player and Finals MVP.

In fact, there is a perfect example of that - Shaq on the downside of his dominance left the Lakers and teamed up with a young Wade and immediately won another championship. Shaq likewise carried the Magic to the finals before that. He was the lynchpin of those championship teams. (Wade went back to non-contender status once Shaq was done).

Same with the Celtics. They are not the same team without KG, just as they are not the same team without Pierce (and it is his team).

Glenn Robinson was the 1st overall pick for the Bucks and just as vital to that offense as Ray Allen.

None of those teams are the same without a key player (arguably THE key player in LA, BOS, or MIL) that they drafted and who was absolutely central to their run

Garnett was the league MVP and transformed the team's defensive identity. If your point is that a team must have important homegrown talent to be a success then every team other than the Pistons will support that.

Not even close with the Big Dog - look at the numbers. Robinson was a chucker. Allen was highly efficient. Two Allens improves that team. Two Robinsons puts them in the lottery - as we saw in Atlanta.

Those homegrown talents were not the centerpieces - they were critical pieces. Kobe the key player? He was in lottery-ville once Shaq left while Shaq took 3 teams to the NBA finals. Shaq was the best player in the league during that run and the centerpiece. Robinson was the 2nd or 3rd best player (3rd in my mind) on the Bucks - definitely not the best.

I didn't ask how many teams completely built their WCF/ECF team though the draft. I asked how many made it without drafting their centerpiece.

Exactly. NONE OF THOSE TEAMS DRAFTED THEIR BEST PLAYER.

Moreover, the point that I'm making is that we do not have that player - we haven't drafted him, traded for him, or signed him as a FA.

Agreed. The Hawks' best player in not championship caliber.

Let me say this for the record and for the zillionth time. You don't build a team completely through the draft. I may have faith in it and talk about it, but it's just the beginning. Just as few teams make it without drafting their star, I'm sure the opposite is true for completely homegrown teams.

Plenty have got there without drafting their best player, their centerpiece. That was my point.

Now...you're also taking into account teams that have made multiple appearances - but it's still only one team. It's not a bunch of teams using that pattern.

The same thing goes for the teams that did home-grow their best player. The Spurs winning multiple championships with Duncan were just as much one team. That is common to both championship level teams that grow their home talent as those that acquire their best player by trade or FA so it does not misrepresent things. In the NBA championship level teams generally makes multiple runs - that is common across homegrown and non-homegrown centerpieces.

As well, and more to my point, many of these trades involved high profile draft picks from each team (not say, ZaZa for Dalembert by comparison).

Not sure what the point of that comment is. The only assets teams have to trade are draft picks and current players. Of course, trade assets will involve picks or players better than Zaza.

And if we're talking about FA signings, Shaq to LA would be about the same as Dwight Howard to us. Nobody is signing here without the talent to draw them.

Right. If we signed Dwight while giving up only a solid contributor like Vlade, it would likewise transform this team. If you trade Josh Smith and Kirk Hinrich for a lottery pick and the cap space to sign Dwight Howard ala the Lakers, we would be in a dramatically different situation than we are today.

There's really no case for us to build a team without a drafted centerpiece.

You just did.

Shaq

The Pistons

Ray Allen

Rasheed Wallace

Steve Nash

1983 Champion Sixers led by MVP Moses Malone

1980 Champion Lakers led by MVP Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

1978 Champion Bullets led by Elvin Hayes

etc.

You are WAY overstating your case here and damaging your credibility by doing so.

You would be much better off making the case that most centerpieces were drafted by their own team, especially with elite big men:

Shaq

Moses

Kareem

etc.

There are plenty of examples where a team's best player wasn't homegrown and that team reached the Conference Finals or beyond. You should acknowledge that and make your point from there.

[Wretch]

Those homegrown talents were not the centerpieces - they were critical pieces.

I'm not going to dance in circles. If you take those players away from those teams, Kobe, Dog, Wade, Pierce, etc., you don't have the same team. You don't. Those players are drafted, there is no question as to the statistical or historical value to their franchise, and no amount of picking apart what I say is going to change that. It also won't change the fact that we haven't drafted an impact player like that.

Moreover, the talent is fished out of the top of the draft. Nearly ALL of it. If you want to win, you've got to get a player out of there - most teams draft him (even Ray Allen who was essentially a swap of lottery picks). Most teams draft a centerpiece and build around it. Call it what you want. We'll be doing this until we get that piece. This team does not have that core player that can take us to the next level.

Even if I give you 48% of these teams, which is mostly weightless technicalities like Ray Allen and Mike Bibby, it still doesn't change the truth of the dejected nature of the the original post or what I said...

NOBODY is going to give us that player and even with all the capspace in the world we are not going to sign him as a free agent. Which is why most teams DRAFT that centerpiece and BUILD AROUND IT. We need a homerun trade, a miracle, or we need to START. OVER.

Pick it apart all you want. We're not building the Pistons and it will be a long time before someone else does. We're not going to pull a LA or NY by signing someone the caliber of Shaq. As is, and trying to "win without losing" - we're going to scrap for a 4th or 5th place team, make the playoffs and struggle to advance, draft late while the bottom feeders are picking up prime real estate, and repeat what we did in the 90's...only to get us right back to where we were in 03. ...all the while, they'll be chanting MVP on our home court and selling jerseys in our home stadium for the player that you believe we can acquire without the aid of the draft in any way.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Wretch

[Wretch]

...by the way, if anyone hopes we're going to build a Piston-esque team, then you better hope for a Rasheed Wallace to fall out off the sky for one of our late 1sts. Ironic that it was this team that gave the Pistons their Championship...

[Endy9]

The thing I look at is how easily it could have gone Durant 1st and Oden 2nd in that draft. Then who is talking about OKC now? And yet they would not have done a worse job at talent evaluation. Takes lots of luck/breaks in the NBA to win a championship.

[Wretch]

The thing I look at is how easily it could have gone Durant 1st and Oden 2nd in that draft. Then who is talking about OKC now? And yet they would not have done a worse job at talent evaluation. Takes lots of luck/breaks in the NBA to win a championship.

You're correct. They wouldn't be talking about OKC...no. They'd be talking about Aldridge, Roy, and Durant. The title of this thread would be "Watching Portland is a little depressing." We can call it luck or fate, but the truth is we haven't sniffed the conference finals in 40 years. Why? We can look at luck, statistics, probabilities...everything that you can throw at it. The bottom line is that there is something wrong with the way we have built our teams. Otherwise, we'd be advancing.

In reality it starts in the draft - and it is no coincidence that we screwed up ours so horribly over a 3 year span that we are in this position now. Teams start building through the draft and then add pieces around it. Not the other way around. Sometimes teams get lucky or they get the right trade or FA that propels them to another level, but it all starts with the pool of talent at the top of the draft.

The sooner middling teams like ours realize that and take it seriously, the better off they are. I am in no way saying that the ONLY way for us to advance is to start over, dump everyone for picks, tank and try to get the 1st pick in the draft. I'm saying that dynamic changes need to happen with this team. We need a blockbuster trade, we need to tap into the value of this core, and not be afraid to deal ANY player on the team. If these moves put us out of the playoffs - so be it. We will be better off in the long run if we're smart.

[Admin]

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[Trueblood]

If you think it's sad now, imagine if the Chandler trade had gone through and then have them get lucky and get the #1 pick instead of #3 in the draft. That was the year that OKC bred Blake Griffin was available.

For those who don't remember, the Thunder were way below the cap in their first year in OKC. The Hornets were pushing the lux tax and needed to shed salary in exchange for expiring deals. Thus, they dealt Chandler to the Thunder for Joe Smith and Chris Wilcox. Unfortunately, the OKC doctor made a big deal out of the potential for a turf toe injury getting worse and they called off the deal.

Let's say that doesn't happen. If they keep TC, he probably wouldn't have made that big a difference on the team at the time since they were young and rebuilding and his presence was more for what he could do in the future when the team developed. If they get a lucky bounce of lotto balls, you have a front line of TC, Blake and KD to go with your backcourt. I'll take that any day of the week over Perkins and Ibaka. Now that would really be depressing for the rest of the league.