The gold standard of how to build a team in the modern NBA is seen as the Philadelphia 76ers. Tanking works, after all, if you can get Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons to center your roster around for years into the future. The Golden State Warriors built through the draft before acquiring Kevin Durant as a free agent a year ago, and the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted LeBron James(the first time around), Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson and Andrew Wiggins who they moved to get Kevin Love to build their championship roster.
If this is simply ‘how you do it’, then the questions we frequently see about Masai Ujiri’s plan to build a contender being unclear make sense. Despite the team winning a lot of games in recent seasons while having good young players, they haven’t found a superstar to build around, they don’t have a Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis as a centerpiece. If you can’t get to great without going through bad at some point along the way, the Raptors remaining ‘good’ won’t cut it, it’ll win them games in the regular season and get to the playoffs, but never truly put them in contention for a ring. At least, that’s how the narrative goes.
To be fair, I bought into that narrative until this year. Talked about how a mini-rebuild, centered around turning the offense over to the young guys and finding out how good they could be prior to them coming off their rookie contracts would be interesting and fun, even if not necessarily a good team, and how even being fun and bad would have benefits down the road. If it turned out that one of the Raptors own young guys had unexpected superstar potential, the payoff would be in finding that and being able to build around that player for the next version of the great Raptors team. If, on the other hand, it turned out that the team was just bad, even though the young players had all shown they can be useful players at the NBA level, it would yield a high lottery pick with the potential to find the team’s superstar. If anyone could be trusted to manage a full rebuild, why not Masai Ujiri, who had shown brilliance with late first round picks, and never had the chance to draft in the high lottery.
What if, however, there is another path to pursue?
Certainly not a common one, if it does exist. The Houston Rockets this year might be that other blueprint. The franchise hasn’t had a season under the .500 mark since 2005-06, when they drafted Rudy Gay with the 8th overall pick after going 34-48, and prior to that it had been 2001-02 when they’d had a season where they lost more than they won, the year when they took Yao Ming with the first overall pick. Only twice since the turn of the millenium have the Rockets had a futile season, and yet, despite several times missing the playoffs in a brutal Western Conference, and only three times making it out of the first round of the playoffs over that stretch.
They’ve built around Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, before Yao was forced into retirement and McGrady’s health issues took away the player he’d been, before being built around James Harden and most recently Chris Paul as his backcourt partner. But along the way, the Rockets drafted well, even deep into the first round and early second round finding value with frequency while managing their cap space and free agent acquisitions wisely, biding their time and stockpiling assets for when a star would unexpectedly find himself on the market.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s how Masai Ujiri has handled the last few years for the Raptors. While the team has established themselves as a regular at the top of the Eastern Conference, Masai has kept the cupboard stocked. While Bismack Biyombo was priced out of the team’s range in free agency and Patrick Patterson and PJ Tucker have left for greener pastures, Masai has kept there always being a next guy up to fill those roles. When you always have that kind of depth, no one except your stars is irreplaceable, and that means you’re always ready to pursue a major trade target should one show up.
There’s no guarantee that this path works out either. Maybe a bigger star for the Raptors never becomes available, maybe there ends up being another team with a better stockpile of assets to pursue that guy in a trade. It’s also possible that time itself proves the adversary, as by the time that opportunity rears it’s head Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan simply aren’t the same players and can’t be partnered with the new acquisition to build a contender around, and the rebuild is forced anyways.
The truth is though, that there’s no guarantees the other way, either. You can regularly draft in the lottery and never get that high value asset, not become the Philadelphia 76ers. A rebuild could land you the roster of the Orlando Magic or Sacramento Kings instead, a team that seems a rudderless ship still trying to find their path to success.
If being good can be it’s own reward, then Masai Ujiri has shown himself a master of this. In OG Anunoby, Jakob Poeltl, Pascal Siakam, Delon Wright and Norman Powell he’s found players frequently in the draft, regardless of position, that can be used either as members of the team’s rotation for years to come or packaged to grab that star that we don’t see becoming available to bring the Raptors to the next level. In the meantime, fans of the team also get to cheer for a winner. If there’s no guarantees no matter what you do, it stands to reason the best plan might be to enjoy a winning team and trust in Masai Ujiri, who really hasn’t given us a reason not to. That’s my plan, at least.
