Oklahoma City’s Developmental Approach to Rebuilding: Can It Work? (Part 1)

For most NBA fans, it’s no secret that the Oklahoma City franchise will likely be forced to endure another losing season and trip to the lottery after the 2008-09 season.

Perhaps less widely acknowledged is that it will probably be their fourth consecutive losing season, and their sixth losing season in the last seven.

In other words, this franchise’s struggles pre-date Clay Bennett, the somewhat unexpected departures of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis last summer, and ex-coach Bob Hill’s stagnant offensive sets. This team has been struggling for a while, and they can’t be expected to recapture the magic of the 90s, when they were a playoff team for eight consecutive seasons.

So this situation inherited by Oklahoma City raises a question of interest to many teams stuck in mediocrity around the league—what is the most effective way to rebuild a franchise? And barring any further major offseason transactions, how do we evaluate Oklahoma City’s front office entering the second year of Sam Presti’s tenure?

Given that they’ve been particularly difficult to watch over the last three seasons, some people might be a little bewildered by their recent approach of purging productive veterans from the roster and accumulating future draft picks.

Since most reasonable people evaluate the success of a professional sports team based on the number of wins they accumulate, this franchise might appear to be profoundly confused. In fact, with such dramatic changes, it sometimes appears that they are trying not to win.

Thus far, what we can say for sure is that OKC’s approach is to accumulate young talent to build around while clearing out as many veteran contracts as possible.

What we can infer is that they not only have faith in rebuilding through the draft, but they also have faith in their ability to clear out enough cap room by 2010 to sign a significant free agent.

What is the value of salary cap room?

Looking at their current contracts -- including the future first-round draft choices they currently hold -- OKC only has around $25 million in salary committed to the 2010-11 season right now.

So if they were only to sign short-term contracts between now and 2010—and that seems to be the way they’re going—they would obviously have enough to sign more than one impact free agent, and keep Kevin Durant and Jeff Green around, if they so please.

Of course, cap room is only a means, although some fans seem to considerate an end. In his recent evaluation of the three-way trade between OKC, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, economist Dave Berri wrote the following about their cap-clearing strategy:

"Oklahoma City does get cap relief from this move.  Cap relief, though, by itself, doesn’t win games.   Games are won because you acquire productive players.  You can do this via draft choices and/or free agency.  But just having the opportunity to select players—as we see if we review past draft choices and free agent selections that failed—is not good enough."

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