One way to look at how a GM might artfully address the problem of acquiring a Gold Medal Superstar or even a Silver Medal Superstar and building a championship team is to look at the two greatest GMs in NBA history: Red Auerbach and Jerry West. The teams they built account for 24 of the 50 NBA titles since 1956. Their genius was constantly thinking several years ahead to put the Celtics and the Lakers in position to get a Gold Medal Superstar or a Silver Medal Superstar. They were unwilling to tank, per se, and always wanted to field contenders, but they were willing to sacrifice in the near term, to assume great risks, to increase the chances of getting a superstar down the road. They were patient, willing to wait for the right moment to make a deal and then they pounced on it. They knew that they needed superstars to win titles and that drove everything they did as GM.
Red Auerbach lucked into Bob Cousy. But he traded away two all-stars for Bill Russell, because he alone saw that Russ would revolutionize the game. Then in 1962 he stole John Havlicek at the end of the first round because Hondo was planning to play pro football. Red rolled the dice that Hondo would not cut it in the NFL and he won. He got lucky that when the Cs dipped after Russell’s retirement, the NBA had a deep draft and he was able to get Dave Cowens fourth overall in 1970, behind Maravich, Lanier and Tomjanovich. Cowens was the best of the bunch. In 1978 Red drafted Bird sixth in the first round because he was willing to wait a year before Bird would enter the NBA. Imagine that! Five teams drafted players like Purvis Short and Rick Robey rather than wait one year on a talent like Bird. Incredible. Then in the mid-80s Red saw that the Bird era was nearing an end. He traded a starting point guard off his returning 1984 championship team – Gerald Henderson—to Seattle for a 1986 no. 1 pick. That took cajones. The pick turned into the no. 2 pick overall—Len Bias. Had Bias lived … those are the three most depressing words in the English language to Celtics fans.
Jerry West
Jerry West is every bit Red’s equal. He traded mediocre players like Don Ford (huhhh??) to impatient teams for distant future no. 1 picks that became the first picks overall in 1979 and 1982 – Magic and James Worthy. Then he systematically cleared cap space in the mid-90s because he knew Shaq would leave Orlando only for LA. And he traded a quality starting NBA center entering his prime, Vlade Divacs, for a high school guard taken in the mid-first round, Kobe Bryant. No one ever thought much of drafting guards out of high school… until Jerry West.
Then, when West moved to Memphis in 2003, he came within a whisker of getting the first pick overall in the draft – what would have been LeBron James. Had West gotten James, teamed him with Gasol, and had all the time he needed to find complementary pieces, we may well have seen a team that would win 5-8 titles by 2020, if not more. West would be bigger than Elvis in Memphis and unquestionably the dominant figure in the history of the league and the sport. But, alas, West lost in the lottery and the Memphis pick was conveyed to the Pistons, who picked Darko second overall ahead of Anthony, Bosh and Wade.
Now to some extent the Red-West approach is more difficult today because teams put lottery-protections on traded first rounders to prevent their losing a superstar. But three key rules have emerged: First: accumulate marketable assets so you can trade the surplus talent for future no. 1 picks. It means you had better draft well and be a good judge of talent. Eventually, if you are lucky you might get a chance to draft a potential superstar. This also keeps the payroll lower in the meantime.
Second, try to get underneath the cap so you can strike for a quality free agent; i.e. do not waste long-term MLE-or-higher contracts on mediocre veterans unless you already have your Gold Medal Superstar or Silver Medal Superstar and are a serious contender, and the costly veteran player can be the difference to get you a flag. Do not blow cap space unless you are a contender or unless you are using your capspace on a superstar or a potential superstar, like Steve Nash, Ben Wallace or Gilbert Arenas. This second commandment means that teams that have no hope to contend should not be clogging the payroll with $30 million five year MLE deals on journeymen veterans every year. If a team has significant capspace it has to be willing to keep it for a season or two and wait for the right deal to come along. Don’t be pressured into blowing it.
Third, be patient. Very patient. Impatience dooms any hope for success.
For a while it looked like Jerry West had lost 20 mph off his GM fastball when he lost out in the LeBron sweepstakes after moving to the hapless Grizzlies in 2002-03. Don’t get me wrong: he did a terrific job turning a terrible team into a playoff team in short order, but he had only one possible superstar, Pau Gasol, and no hope of ever contending in the rugged western conference. He wasted valuable capspace on mediocrities like Brian Cardinal. It seemed like West was content to win 45-50 games and make the play-offs. He no longer was playing for all the marbles.
But this summer it looks like West has rediscovered his championship mojo. Coming off a 49 win season he has basically blown the team up. He understands that Paul Gasol will not provide enough superstar firepower on his own to win a title, even if Gasol becomes an all-NBA performer, which he may. So West traded solid veteran Shane Battier for Rudy Gay, who, unlike Battier, has the potential to be a superstar. Gay probably won’t become one, but the possibility is there, as much as it was for any player in the 2006 draft. (This was a smart trade for Houston, too. They already have their superstar in Yao Ming and his sidekick in McGrady. What they need is to get them healthy and now they have a superb complementary team player entering his prime in Battier.)
West has also moved to create massive cap space next summer, which is directly out of his long-term playbook. It looks like West is even willing to dip into the 07 lottery if need be to come up with a much stronger core, and a potential superstar. The 07 draft looks to be one of the best in the past decade. The talent is so young it is not clear if we have another 1984 or 2003, but it is possible. West understands that Memphis’s marginal playoff team of the past few seasons will not cut the mustard, cannot hope to win a title, and it needed radical changes. Lots of GMs would not have the courage or foresight to do that. They would have settled for 50 wins and incremental improvement. Will it work? Who knows? The only thing certain is that the other option definitely would not have produced a flag. And a year from now Memphis team with Gasol, Gay, a high lotto pick in a deep draft and a big ticket free agent could be very interesting.
The Red-West approach still is the only program that makes any sense, short of lucking into a LeBron James. But it takes more skill than ever. And it takes a boatload of luck. Two teams that recently showed this artistry were Phoenix and Chicago. Not surprisingly, their GMs are among the most respected in the NBA. For starters, these are two teams that systematically created cap space while patiently building talented young teams. They were able to use the cap space to acquire Steve Nash and Ben Wallace. But that is just the beginning.
Coming off a 62-20 season in the summer of 2005, Phoenix already had Nash, Marion and Stoudemire. Rather than sign Joe Johnson to a huge deal and put the Suns in luxury tax land, the Suns traded him to the Hawks for Boris Diaw and the Hawks no. 1 in 2007 (top 3 protected) or 2008 (unprotected). This looked like a surprising willingness by a contender to field a weaker team in the near term – Diaw’s play last season came as a great surprise. But look where the Suns are: if the Hawks provide them with a high lotto pick in 07 or 08 it has a chance to become a very special player, even a superstar. The Suns look to be a 55 plus win team without that pick for years – with it they could become a champion, and a contender for a decade. Perhaps even a dynasty. Red tips his hat. Maybe this is why West decided to go back to the drawing board in Memphis.
Chicago faced a similar dilemma with Eddy Curry, a superb offensive center who is average otherwise. Rather than sign him to a huge cap-clogging deal that would have still left the Bulls short of a needed superstar, the Bulls traded him to the Knicks for a 2006 no. 1 and the right to swap no. 1 picks in 2007. This, in effect, meant that the Bulls were conceding that they would not improve much or at all in 2006 over 2005. That took guts because the Bulls went from 23 to 47 wins from 04 to 05 and were regarded as a team on the immediate rise. Impatient fans and pundits were chomping on the bit for immediate glory. But it was also a team that lacked a Gold Medal Superstar, or a viable candidate to become one. The 2006 pick became Tyrus Thomas, and the jury is out on him, but he possesses intriguing talent. The 2007 pick will likely be in the lottery, possibly the top half of the lottery. Moreover, the trade meant the Bulls stayed beneath the salary cap to be able to sign Ben Wallace, and the Bulls may possibly remain under the cap in the summer of 07. This trade could be the difference between the Bulls having a very nice young team with many very good players to becoming a team that can win titles.
Few teams think like this, as far as I can tell. Or at least few fans and fewer pundits. Consider the Boston Celtics, the team I follow. The fans there are desperate, as is star player Paul Pierce, to have a winner, to see basketball in May, not to mention June. Danny Ainge has done a nice job of assembling many talented young players, though it is unlikely there are any Gold Medal Superstars in the mix. By all rights the team needs at least two seasons before it can be a 50 win team, and even that would be soon in view of the team’s youth. Pundits and Boston sportswriters almost universally implore Danny Ainge to trade away talented young players and draft choices so the team can fill needs with reliable veterans and win more in the near term. (See, for example:
http://www.milforddailynews.com/sportsColumnists/view.bg?articleid=97348&format=text)
“You have to get good before you can get great, so the sooner you get good, the sooner you can get great,” the logic goes.
Danny’s dilemma is similar to that of many teams. He has drafted brilliantly and has a nice core, and if he trades one or two kids and no. 1 picks for vets and signs MLE free agents every year for 5 year $30 million deals, he can probably get a 50 win team. He’ll have the Boston sportswriters like Peter May hooting and hollering in excitement like a 12 year old boy watching his first porno film. But unless Al Jefferson or Gerald Green or Sebastian Telfair becomes a Gold Medal Superstar – highly unlikely, in my view – there is no chance of racking up a title in that approach.
Fortunately Danny has ignored them so far, because this approach would simply give short term improvement at the expense of stripping the team of valuable long-term assets and adding more salary to the payroll. This is what the pre-Ainge Celtics did when they traded, in effect, rookie Chauncey Billups, soon-to-be no. 1 pick Shawn Marion and rookie Joe Johnson in three idiotic trades for grizzled and mediocre veterans Kenny Anderson, Vitaly Potapenko and Rodney Rogers. The deals filled needs in the near term, made the team slightly better, and left the franchise a mess for years.
I believe Ainge actually gets it – he has accumulated draft choices, he has stockpiled talented young players with real market value for trades, and he looks to be clearing cap space for two of three years down the road if need be -- but he is under considerable pressure to produce right now. The truly gutsy thing for Ainge to do goes entirely against the grain of the conventional wisdom: it would be to trade away one or two of his more marketable young players, those he thinks have inflated value, for future no. 1 picks. The idea is not to tank, but to try to win with Pierce and the remaining kids and hope to use someone else’s lottery picks to locate a superstar. (As General Patton told the troops just before D-Day: You don’t become a hero by dying for your country. You become a hero by making the enemy die for his country.) And if it takes another year for the Celtics to escape the lottery, that is not the worst thing on earth if the young players are playing and developing. Especially in 2007.
To do this would take guts. It would require smart and brave owners. It would involve tremendous risk and possibly leave the team weaker in the near term and even in the long term. Peter May would go on a hunger strike until Ainge was fired. But is would also open the possibility for the Celtics to get the sort of player who can lead this team to the finals, and to victory. Unless Ainge is willing to take risks like these, I don’t see how the fine young team he is assembling plays basketball in June. Not with Mr. James and Mr. Wade and Mr. Howard and the Bulls holding forth in the eastern conference for the next decade.
Let’s face it, probably 26 or 27 NBA teams will not win titles in the next decade. The odds are terrible. Lots of these teams will be really talented and really good, and some will be outstanding, like the recent Sacramento Kings. If a team wants to exit those ranks and actually win a title, it needs to go against the conventional wisdom and take supreme risks, it has to do so artfully, and it needs a lot of luck. Fortunately for the brave GM, not many NBA GMs are taking that approach right now. Patience is a virtue they believe they cannot afford. The short term pressures make it rational to pursue a policy that strongly reduces the chance for the team to get a Gold Medal Superstar and to win an NBA title.
Is your team playing to win?