The NBA's Best Franchise Building Blocks at Every Position
Starting from scratch can be the scourge of an NBA team's existence.
Unless they have someone who makes starting over worth the wait and headaches it brings.
Rebuilding a team from the ground up takes a lot of things. Organizations must be patient, lay plans and be willing to spend some—or a lot of—money. Most importantly, they must also have someone worth building around.
It doesn't matter whether that someone comes via free agency, the draft or the building-block stork that is, to the best of our knowledge, not at all real. At least one player needs to start it all, providing requisite direction and hope for reset-button hitters.
To identify which ones best fit the bill, ask yourself this: If you had the opportunity to build your very own NBA team from scratch, who would be the first player you select?
Think carefully now. It's not as easy as it sounds, hence why we're here: to figure this out together.
A lot goes into choosing cornerstones. This isn't a comprehensive list of the best players in the league or at every position. Salaries don't even matter.
Age must be taken into account. So, too, must the ability to carry a team alone and attract free agents. It's all about the future.
Basically, you want to manipulate the initial question and ask yourself this: Which player at any given position would you want to headline a brand-new team for the next five-plus years?
Get it? Got it? Grasp it? Good, because y'all passed the point of no return roughly three rhetorical questions ago.
Point Guard: Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors
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Age: 26
Years Experience: 5
Point guard is a stacked position overrun with star-level talent. It's difficult to go wrong when rebuilding around any one of the league's brightest floor generals—you know, unless you pass on the opportunity to snag Stephen Curry.
Five years is all it took for Curry to help restore order to the Golden State Warriors' good name. All the while he's established himself as the best shooter in NBA history and, most noteworthy, the second-best point guard in the league. Yes, second. Not third or top five. Second.
At some point, the 29-year-old Chris Paul will have to pass the torch. When he does, Curry will be waiting with open arms that are also draped in fireproof gloves, since he's prone to catching fire and all.
Curry has never met a shot he doesn't like. More importantly, he's never encountered one he cannot effortlessly sink. His numbers on offense last season—24.0 points, 8.5 assists, 47.1 percent shooting—read like an ode to point-piling and -creating dominance. That he can shoot threes in volume (7.9 a night) without compromising his all-world efficiency (42.4 percent conversion rate) ranks high on the absurdly awesome scale.
And it's this offensive range that should ensure Curry remains effective for years to come. He's not overly reliant on explosiveness or legs in general to create space. He doesn't need space. A flick of the wrist is all it takes.
Ray Allen, who was more dependent on athleticism once upon a time, has drained—and might continue draining—threes deep into his NBA tenure. Curry shouldn't be any different. Signs don't point to him slowing down in the next five years at any rate.
Building around Curry, his silky-smooth shooting stroke, understated court vision and now non-paper ankles represents a commitment to winning.
Runner-Up: Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City Thunder
Shooting Guard: Bradley Beal, Washington Wizards
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Age: 21
Years Experience: 2
Sorry, James Harden. Defense matters.
Bradley Beal should have sold you on his legitimacy during the NBA playoffs. It was there that he made the leap and never looked back.
"Despite his inexperience, Beal acted like a player completely comfortable with the playoff stage," Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes wrote. "It's hard to know where that confidence came from, but based on his own explanation, it seems like Beal is just one of those rare talents for whom pressure equals opportunity."
There was something almost Kobe Bryant-esque about how cool Beal was under pressure. Speaking of which...Beal joined Bryant and Derrick Rose as the only players under 21 to ever average at least 19 points, five rebounds and four assists through five or more playoff games. Each of those guys has a league MVP to his name. One of them (Bryant) has five championships under his belt.
When on, Beal is so much more than a scorer. He can function as a point man if needed and is one of the better rebounding guards when he's cognizant of battling for position.
His defensive potential also exceeds that of almost everyone at his position. He can guard point men and small forwards in addition to shooting guards, he suffocates defenders when on-ball and he polices passing lanes with clairvoyant intuition.
Really, this is an easy choice. Shooting guard has experienced a generous uptick in talent after riding the backs of Bryant and Dwyane Wade for so many years, but it still lacks championship-caliber, team-headlining ceilings. Beal offers one of the few exceptions.
Runner-Up: James Harden, Houston Rockets
Small Forward: LeBron James, Cleveland Cavaliers
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Age: 29
Years Experience: 11
Fighting a losing battle against male pattern baldness doesn't mean LeBron James is getting too old; it merely highlights the NBA's dearth of and need for wider headbands.
Revisit our fine-tuned question from before for just a moment: Which player at any given position would you want to headline a brand-new team for the next five-plus years?
Name any one player in the NBA. Go ahead. Is the next five years of any other player going to exceed that of James' production? There might be one. Might be.
James has done incredible, barrier-breaking, record-wrecking things over the last 11 years. He's already inserted himself into the greatest-of-all-time conversation and returns to the Cleveland Cavaliers at the height of his do-everything powers.
Any team looking to add talent through free agency—so, all of them—would be lucky to have James. He brought talent to the Miami Heat. He brought a top-10 superstar with him to Cleveland (Kevin Love). Rule out him getting Michael Jordan to unretire and join him on the Utah Jazz at your own risk.
Every year James does something new. Last year it was becoming the first player in NBA history to average at least 27 points, six rebounds and six assists while shooting better than 55 percent from the floor. What will next year hold? How about the one after that? And then the one after that? What will a 34-year-old James look like?
Truthfully, none us know. Not even James himself.
Not that it matters. He's bound to be someone spectacular enough to cart the championship hopes of an entire team.
Runner-Up: Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder
Power Forward: Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
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Age: 21
Years Experience: 2
Remember that special someone who just might have a better five-year trajectory than James? It's this guy.
Appreciating Anthony Davis is difficult because we don't fully understand who or what he is and what's to come. Never before has the NBA seen a player like him. Kevin Garnett comparisons were out in full force once he entered the league, then we watched him. Then we bore witness to his skill set.
Then we realized he was somehow Garnett, Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Kevin Love and an Optimus Prime-hauling Dinobot all rolled into one. Quite honestly, that might not even do justice to Davis' on-court abilities.
Just two years into his NBA career, he already has a case as the NBA's third-best player and absolute best building block. No one has ever tallied 2,200 points, 1,100 rebounds and 300 blocks for their career quicker than Davis. No one else in the NBA—except for James—has the chops to dominate every facet of the game from any spot on the floor.
What the New Orleans Pelicans basically employ is someone who could realistically lead the league in points, blocks, rebounds, steals and field-goal percentage one day. That type of optimism is not unwarranted when it comes to Davis. He's that unprecedentedly fantastic.
"We have a lot of great pieces here," Davis said of the Pelicans, per The Associated Press' Brett Markel (via KentuckySports.com). "We have a lot of guys who can score the ball, a lot of guys who can defend. I think we have a great team."
Of course Davis feels that way. You can have that much faith in your totally hypothetical NBA franchise too.
Great teams are only one Anthony Davis away.
Runner-Up: Kevin Love, Cleveland Cavaliers
Center: Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers
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Age: 20
Years Experience: 0
To be absolutely certain, you have not inadvertently scrolled over to NBA player Twitter power rankings.
Joel Embiid is a high-risk, high-reward pick here. He's also the right pick.
Modern-day NBA teams aren't built around centers. Pace of play has quickened, and emphasis has been placed on wily perimeter scorers and point forwards who can do it all. If you're going to build an entire team around a big man, that's a risk in and of itself. You might as well swing for the fences.
Likened to Olajuwon, Embiid is located somewhere beyond the fence, outside the parking lot, near the hot dog vendor down the street. He has the potential to be a two-way behemoth who blocks shots, grabs rebounds, posterizes intimidated bystanders, hits jumpers and thrives in transition. Oh, and he's (likely) been playing basketball for less time than you, despite already showing signs of stardom.
"As hard to predict as future basketball IQ is," HoopsHype's David Nurse explained, "Embiid's IQ is on a path of positive growth that brings his God-given intangibles to the forefront and sweeps his raw basketball flaws under the rug into that dangerous file labeled 'only played for three years.' "
There is plenty of danger in building around Embiid, especially if you—unlike the Philadelphia 76ers—don't appear to have a contingency plan. But potential excellence easily outweighs the crash-and-burn factor.
Five years from now, we should be referring to Embiid as the beast of a kid who helped redefine and revive a position that now lacks two-way importance. And with that being the reward, the real risk lies in not picking him at all.
Runner-Up: DeMarcus Cousins, Sacramento Kings
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference unless otherwise cited.
