Combining these two into one response. In relation to the first one, I have an eternal frustration with our direction since 2017 in regards to draft picks. Also it's a need for recognition of how we ended up in the position we're in and acknowledging what we thought would happen when we made initial decisions vs. how it played out and how we think about it now. I know that's a bit of a run-on sentence that's pretty vague but I'll try to clarify. The first part is a dead horse I've beat for some time, that in 2017 we desperately wanted to hold our pick because we just landed Donovan with a pick and we believed we had a shot at Doncic. The reality was that it was time for our mindset to pivot from collecting assets to building a contender. Our hopes of Doncic became Grayson Allen. We continued to hold on to our picks and DL "keeping the powder dry" thought he could just run it back. Back when Hayward left, we then started looking toward future free agents and our cap space timing and we'd talk about maybe we could land Klay or Kawhi the year they would be free agents (which is obviously laughable in hindsight). So now we know that Donovan is going to be a really good player and we continue to "keep the powder dry" until we reach a dead end (a cap space dead end with guys whose extensions will kick in) and we end up exchanging that for Conley. The Conley dead was fine, which isn't my point, but when people talked about keeping the powder dry (picks and cap space), they would have never imagined it was for Conley. We eventually got to that point as we accepted the reality (frog in slowly boiling water) but our continual justification for the "powder" being dry was for someone we believed to be a much bigger name than Conley.
So fast forward to when we blow up the team and everyone is excited for what's believed to be a treasure trove of assets. The great thing about assets is that they could be anything, like a asking a kindergarten class what they want to be when they grow up, because they have their whole future ahead of them and can shoot for the sky. We have thoughts of trading for the next disgruntled super star, or that we would be in the discussion for a Luka or a Giannis. A good encapsulation of that feeling is Ryan mentioning the KD deal and saying, effectively, "oh yeah, well we can do that deal 2 or 3 times." So as time has moved on more, we've pivoted from the idea of trading for a super star as I believe most people are recognizing that won't happen. So we then pivot to the idea of having to draft one. In conjunction with this, many are realizing that, from this vantage point, there's a pretty good likelihood that none of these picks we got end up being top 10 picks (and to speak about enthusiasm for top ten picks, look at the enthusiasm we have this your or about last year's #9 pick). I understand your position about not being able to control the fate of the other picks and thus we need to control what we can, make a sacrifice for the next two years, and try to secure, as much as possible, picks in the next two drafts that yield us the best chances at drafting guys who will be difference makers. What I would caution against is the tendency for this to appear like a desert mirage. Fast forward two years and (in this hypothetical) we haven't really done much structure building for the team, we see that we don't have enough fitting pieces to start to make a push, and perhaps we're underwhelmed by our draft results up until that point, and in a way that would be consistent with a sunk-cost fallacy, we decide that we've already put enough into tanking that we may as well get more bang for our buck and continue tanking just a little bit longer because ______ [there will be logical reasons and arguments that arise to favor this].
My biggest thing is that we're going to reach a point where we will have to move forward. Where we differ is that you're approaching this from the angle of having the really good players in place first and then the secondary players later, but I believe the order of these will have to be reversed (not exclusively so but from a probability standpoint). I believe we'll have to move forward with talent and keep churning from there. It's not because I'm impatient in watching losing. I had plenty of enthusiasm and investment in the team when we were looking at the "core 4" and had a terrible coach (in addition to every single era we've thrown out since Stockton and Malone left). At least there was some semblance of knowing what we're trying to do, even if we didn't do it well. I can deal with losing. So the idea of grabbing a BI or whatever (not specifically him, but he's a good representative stand-in), for me, isn't about the idea that it's better to start being a fringe playoff team, it's that we need to actually build a team. DA had actually built a team before Tatum and Brown, even if none of those other guys are there now. Eventually we're going to have to make a move for a player with flaws, and I'm not talking about the John Collins type. We need actual talent on the team, and that will come with cost (and opportunity cost) but there's also an opportunity cost with staying in neutral. It reminds me of the partial lump-sum or full amount in installments with the lottery, and feeling like if we're patient then we can get the whole amount, when in reality the lump-sum gives us the opportunity to make more even if it's less up front. I'm ready to take the lump-sum.
[the above is a random assortment of thoughts I've put together piecemeal over the course of the day. It's not nearly as organized as I would like so I'm sure there are a lot of things in here I didn't flesh out very well... I'm not involved in whatever back and forth is going on currently...]
