VCoug wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

VCoug wrote:How come people here believe how you acquire players is more important than acquiring the right players? Would the Thunder not be in the Finals if they had signed Durant as a free agent and traded for Westbrook and Ibaka? The reason you see so many championship caliber teams that drafted their best player is because that's the waist way to get an elite player.

But the draft isn't some panacea. First off, you need to get a high pick in the right draft; picking first overall in the Kenyon Martin draft isn't going to help you much. But let's say you do get lucky in the right draft, unless you're picking first overall you're at the mercy of the teams picking ahead of you; would we be talking about OKC right now if Portland had picked Durant like they should have?

The only way you'll pull off a trade for Durant is if you give up your other assets (perhaps the picks that you would have used to get Ibaka and Harden).

Actually, I said they signed Durant in free agency and traded for Westbrook and Ibaka.

You actually don't need a high pick (and in fact not all the players in your own OKC example were high picks!). Most GMs are still fooled by high volume, flashy, inefficient scorers. There are always gems that go well beyond the top five. Most basketball GMs' understanding of the game is where baseball GMs were in their sport in the 1980s.

You nearly always need a high pick to secure one of these guys; franchise talents very rarely fall far. http://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/mvp.html That's a list of every NBA MVP in league history. In the last 30 years 13 MVP's have been won by a 1st overall pick; 5 by a 3rd overall pick; 2 by a 5th overall pick; 3 by a 6th overall pick; 1 by a 9th overall; 2 by 13th overall; and 2 by 15th overall.

And that goes back to my main point, people think the only way to build a team is through the draft because, historically, players you can build a team around are rarely available outside of the draft. But, that's not true anymore. In the last couple of years Lebron, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Melo, and Deron Williams have all changed teams or are going to.

My bad on misreading your comment about KD. However, you're probably not gonna sign a player like him in free agency anyway. At best, you'll do a sign and trade like the Heat did for Bosh and Lebron. And, the Heat ended up giving up six draft picks in those sign and trades