NBA Draft 2012: An Idiot's Guide to Saving a Franchise from Despair
Winding up a lottery team isn't exactly a badge of honor. It's almost always a sign that serious work needs to be done, lest that lottery selection becomes a yearly tradition of the worst kind–OK, family reunions might still have them beat.
Every bad team has its reasons.
Solving a team's problems begins with a diagnostic of what's gone wrong. Is it a systemic glitch in the club's personnel or game plan, or is it a one-off disaster attributable to injury or a star's departure?
Let's take the Cleveland Cavaliers as an example.
The Cavaliers have now spent just two seasons without would-be franchise savior LeBron James. Accordingly, the club's 21-45 record this season should be taken into context. Cleveland doesn't need an overhaul, at least not yet.
It just needs to continue adding young pieces, like 2012 Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving.
Cleveland had imported expensive veterans like Antawn Jamison in a win-now push designed to hold James' short attention span. Jamison's contract is only now expiring, so the Cavs' youth movement can continue in earnest. Expect forward Tristan Thompson to play a more significant role in his second season, and he won't be the only youngster.
The Cavaliers own the fourth overall pick for the June 28 draft, an opportunity that can best be used on a guy who can play shooting guard and/or small forward. That makes elite prospects like Bradley Beal, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Harrison Barnes perfect fits.
The New Orleans Hornets similarly suffered from an especially trying sequence of events that included Chris Paul's offseason departure and the subsequent result that held the newly acquired Eric Gordon to just nine games this season.
General manager Dell Demps has played his cards beautifully.
He improbably landed the first overall pick in the draft—a lock to be used on Kentucky big man Anthony Davis—and also owns the 10th overall pick in the draft thanks to the inclusion of the Minnesota Timberwolves' first-rounder in the trade that sent Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Demps also traded two veterans (Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza) to the Washington Wizards in order to clear some cap space and improve the franchise's flexibility to surround its young core with the right kind of pieces.
The Hornets understand that it's time to start over, and they're doing a fine job of using the draft and free-agent market alike to do just that.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are organizations like the Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons and Toronto Raptors that have endured varying levels of awfulness for some time now.
For these kinds of clubs, the draft is more of an all-or-nothing gamble. They have no shortage of young and veteran players already on the roster. The problem is that none of them have much star potential.
Whereas teams already well into their rebuilding process can use picks to address remaining areas of need, the perpetually struggling variety of lottery teams instead must hope they strike it rich with the best talent left on the draft board.
It will take some time before we know how effective those endeavors were. We might just see those teams in a few more lotteries before all is said and done.
