But anyway, that's not the point. We're not talking about real life. It's sports that are crushing our soul here, and we've got several factors working against mediocre NBA teams:
1. Aside from a handful of outrageous prospects who pop up every decade, most potential stars need great coaches to succeed.
2. Great coaches gravitate toward great players when they choose their next team. Stan Van Gundy is not signing on to coach the Sixers this summer.
3. Good management chooses the right players, but choosing the right players only gets you so far if you're dealing with the first two problems. (I.e., someone like Chris Singleton was a great pick at no. 18 in 2010, and he would probably help a good team, but on the Wizards the past two years, he's been more or less hopeless.)
4. Good management is rare on its own, and owners with bad players and bad coaching are generally reluctant to fire bad GMs and have to pay two contracts at once, because they're already spending plenty of money on a bad team.
It's something to keep in mind as you hear friends say "How was it EVEN POSSIBLE for Kawhi Leonard to fall to the Spurs?"
The NBA lottery is next week, and there's a reason we see the same teams there every year. The NBA has a reputation as a "players' league," while a sport like the NFL is supposedly dominated by management, but if you look at the most successful teams in the NBA, it's about more than just players. Look at the playoffs. For all the talk about major markets in the NBA, we're probably looking at a conference finals featuring teams from Indianapolis, San Antonio, and Memphis. The small markets can compete because even if they're not spending Knicks or Lakers or Nets money, the combination of good coaching and smart management gives them serious advantages over the rest of the league. (Also: The Spurs are pure fucking evil, which always helps.)
How does a terrible team get to that level? A lot of this is luck, which then leads to the rest of the organization getting better. Win the lottery and fall into the next superstar (Derrick Rose with Chicago, which ultimately helped the Bulls land grumpy genius Thibs), somehow stumble into a fantastic coach (Frank Vogel with Indiana, Gregg Popovich 17 years ago with San Antonio) who develops the rest of the roster, or get lucky taking a risk on borderline stars and project prospects (Z-Bo and Marc Gasol with Memphis). Otherwise? Teams like the Spurs and Pacers will keep turning potential stars into actual stars, while teams like the Wizards and Bobcats and Suns and Raptors remain stuck in lottery no-man's-land, hoping they strike gold somehow. In the meantime, fans of those terrible franchises have plenty of Kawhi Leonard highlights to drive us insane.
