7 Reasons Rebuilding an NBA Team Through Free Agency Is a Bad Blueprint

Now that the Miami Heat have won an NBA title, the basketball world will rush to imitate the Heat and how they built their team to duplicate their results. Let’s be clear though. This is not the way to build a title. Because the Miami Heat made it work, don’t make the mistake of thinking anyone else can.

The Heat were able accomplish what they did because of a number of reasons that are hard to duplicate, if not impossible. Without those factors, virtually gutting your team and starting from scratch is not a way to win a title.

Granted, not every team is going to be the Oklahoma City Thunder either and just hit on every draft pick and build a team almost exclusively through the draft. Even if you do that, it’s wrought with its own set of flaws.

However, building a team almost exclusively through free agency is not a good plan either, and here are seven reasons why. 

Age

One of the big reasons that it’s tough to build a team through free agency is the age of players. Any player who is a franchise player is going to be in at least their eighth season when you acquire them via free agency.

Let’s set aside this myth that Kevin Durant did something that LeBron James didn’t do when he re-signed with Oklahoma City. He was re-signing in his second contract, while James was on his third. There’s “un” unique difference between the two. Not “an” unique difference, but “un” unique difference.

As in, one is a restricted free agent and the other is an unrestricted free agent. Here is a complete list of franchise players that went elsewhere as restricted free agents since teams were allowed to match any competing offers.

Pause.

Well now that’s done. Restricted free agent superstars don’t leave and they won’t leave until they’re unrestricted. Period.

Depending on their age in their rookie years, they’d mostly be around 27 when they hit their new digs. Now, granted, they might not be that “old,” but that’s a lot of miles not their new teams.

When you look at the major stars who have moved, and a few second tier stars, there’s a tendency for the players to see their games slip. Carmelo Anthony saw his PER slip to its lowest point since 2006. Amar'e Stoudemire’s has fallen nearly five points.

Deron Williams has seen his fall nearly three. Carlos Boozer’s has dropped two points. Granted, as a metric PER has its flaws, but when you’re comparing a player to himself, it’s moot. It’s sufficient to show improvement or declination.

The bottom line is that somewhere in that time frame between years eight and 10 is when decline starts to settle in. When you build a team through free agency, you’re building in a very small window.

Even with the Heat, Dwyane Wade is showing signs of decline. They are an exception though in the sense that LeBron James is exceptional. One of the more underrated aspects of his game is his durability. He’s played more than 1,000 more minutes than any player in the league since coming in.

The Heat made it work because they got LeBron James. There are are not many LeBron Jameses running around. 

Money

Another reason the whole “building through free agency” is tough to make work is money. When the Heat's Big Three came together, Dywane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James all agreed to take less money than they could have gotten elsewhere to come together.

While some have tried to dismiss this as being meaningless because they are playing in a tax free state, it doesn’t change the impact of that on the salary cap.

(It also doesn't change the fact that other teams in income tax free states, the former Supersonics, Mavericks, Spurs, Rockets, Magic or Grizzlies, never had the whole “income tax free” thing work to help them sign free agents. For that matter, neither did Miami until the Big Three.)

By agreeing to take less money to play together, the trio left the Heat some money to operate with. That’s another reason it was able to work where it wouldn’t with a lot of teams.

Let’s put this in perspective. The Knicks' less talented Big Three of Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler made $2.2 million more than the Heat’s Big Three.

In order to win in this league, you need some high value contracts. The best source for those is the draft. Players like Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Kevin Love and Blake Griffin offer superstar talent but are still on their rookie contracts.

The Heat were able to get high value contracts because their players were willing to take less money. That’s rare, and not the type of thing you can count on if you’re building a team.

Exceptions

The next big issue is that when you build a team through free agency, you have to get yourself well below the salary cap. This is obvious because you can’t sign players without cap space.

When you get yourself below the cap you are spending less money on salaries than other teams. That means you are limited in what you can do in your first year together with your free-agent team. You can only have the half-mid-level exception if you enter the offseason below the cap.

That means you are going to be fielding a team that is making a lot less money in the first year, and that first year is an important year because it’s about a quarter of the window you have with your free-agent team.

Depth

The next issue, which is precipitated on the limitations inherent in players not taking less money to play and not having any exceptions to use, is that beyond the superstars, teams have virtually no depth at all.

The Heat has circumvented this by two things. First, they do have their own drafted player, Mario Chalmers, as their fourth best player, who sporadically has brilliant games sandwiched between strings of disappearing acts. As much as his teammates yell at him, they love him. He’s actually not horrible as a fourth best player.

The Heat are a thin team though—make no mistake about it. Again they’re the unreproducable exception here because LeBron James is not only the best player on the team, he’s probably the best or second best player on the team at every single position.

James is a player that can literally be asked to fulfill virtually any role and do it well. Need someone to defend the post? Bring in James. Need someone to defend the perimeter? Bring in James. Need someone to post up? Bring in James. Need someone to drive to the rim? Bring in James.

Whether you’re talking about offense or defense, James can handle and/or play any position on the court. James isn’t just their best starter, he’s their bench. In the last two seasons James has paid the price for that too, playing more minutes than any player in the league.

You can’t reproduce this because there is no other LeBron James.

On the other hand, you have the Knicks, whose third highest paid player is J.R. Smith who probably won’t be there next year. They got lucky in finding Jeremy Lin, a diamond in the rough, but whether he pans out long-term is still to be determined. After that they have what’s left on the scrap heap after the Heat has picked over it.

Energy

The next issue you run into is that when you start running into depth issues, you start having issues with players who can bring in energy.

Once again the Heat have been able to circumvent this issue because of the exceptions, rather than the rules. First, they do have an “energy” player in Udonis Haslem, but just as with the Big Three, he accepted less money than he could have received elsewhere.

It simply cannot be reinforced enough that the reason the Heat worked is selflessness. I point this out because a lot of people describe them as the opposite.

The other reason it works is that the Heat have two players who can run a team in Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. Because of that, they can rest one and have the other run the team similar to what the Bulls of the '90s did with Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan.

Chemistry

A big risk when you sign free agents is chemistry. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were close friends, and even they had chemistry issues for the first season, and even some of the second. Eventually they worked them out, but that’s two of the most talented and versatile players in the history of the league working things out.

That took willingness and work. As much as people denigrate James for not having a work ethic, he did work on his post-game this summer and that is a large part of the reason they are the reigning NBA champions.

When you’re dealing with less talented and/or versatile players, it’s not so easy. For example in Amar’e Stoudmeire and Carmelo Anthony you have players who do what they do exceptionally well, but there are also a lot of things they don’t do that well, and that leaves holes in their games.

For example, you might have a very nice $10,000 Italian tailor-made suit and you might have the nicest set of bowling shoes money can buy, but you wouldn’t want to put the two together. It’s nothing to do with the quality of the two players games; it’s that their styles just don’t mesh.

When you’re shopping for free agents you don’t always have the players you want. Just ask the Chicago Bulls who have been looking for a shooting guard for two years now. You can get the best players available, but there’s no guarantee they’re going to work together.

The Heat are the exception in that they were ready, willing and able to adapt their games to fit one another.

Coachability

Finally, the problem with building a team through free agency is that the longer a player has been in the league, the harder he becomes to coach.

Look at Carmelo Anthony and Mike D’Antoni.

Once again the Heat are the exception to the rule here, but not because Eric Spoelstra is all that and a bag of candy when it comes to coaching. They are the exception because they are willing to humble themselves and work Spoelstra’s system.

Perhaps one of the most overblown stories is the Big Three’s disrespect for Spoelstra. An incidental shoulder bump and an isolated argument hardly warrant a mutiny.

On the other side of this coin though is how some are arguing that somehow Spoelstra is proving himself in the finals. There’s not a lot of coaching on in the finals. Both coaches are just staying out of the way of their superstars, which is probably what they should do.

However, playing LeBron James 48 minutes and making the “bold” decision to start Chris Bosh hardly warrant the “genius” tag.

Honestly, 95 percent of coaching takes place outside the games. There’s something to be said about managing rotations and drawing up plays in critical moments, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Coaching is much more about what happens in practice, in the film room, in developing players, in preparing for opponents and so on. Whether Spoelstra is a good coach, a bad coach, an average coach or just a lucky coach is moot here.

For all the talk about James’ monstrous ego, he has always done what his coaches have asked him to do. The reality is the Heat play the system they are asked to play, and that’s led by the Big Three. You don’t always get that with veteran players who aren’t in wholesale agreement with what their coach is asking.

To play winning basketball you need to have everyone on the same page, and the coach has to determine what that page.