wargames wrote:Rebuild is when a team gets rid of vet players and goes young in hopes of building a new, better team 3-5 seasons in the future
Actually, its an interesting question mostly because of the degree of ignorance so many Knicks fans are subjected to. The answer wargames gives is kind of a generic meme about what it is.
First, rebuild is one word used for the process of transformation of the team from one thing to another. The key here is that the process only co-incidentally means that more wins and fewer losses is the result. Other processes are reload, competitive (fiscally responsible), entertaining (perpetual transformation and very profitable, see: Sterling's Clippers), and so on.
The first thing that is important is to have a postmortem of what the last process or two did right and did wrong.
A close second is an honest inventory of assets and what those assets have the potential of accomplishing.
To put this into the context of the Knicks, the Layden years dug a fiscal hole AND constrained the options for getting out of that hole. The process which didn't differ from Layden through Walsh, was to attempt to reload by mortgaging the future and taking high risk solutions.
The team Phil inherited was built almost exclusively around Anthony. The postmortem of the Walsh years had to look that way to Dolan, Phil, and the rest of the organization. So when it came time to decide on resigning Melo or be left with no Melo AND a team customized *to* Melo, Phil chose a hybrid approach that leaned toward another [Melo] reload but moved toward a high profile system of playing the game.
The last postmortem looked back at the Melo years and observed that reloading yet again to Melo was a fool's errand. Even eliminating the system wasn't going to result in a sustainable, reproducible model Knicks team (say like the Spurs, GSW, et al). You would basically create a Melo-playoff-cameo, one-and-done roster assuming even that team got that far.
So let's do a postmortem inventory of assets.
Instead of looking at Melo like a future consideration - he becomes either a tradable asset or a complementary and disposable player going forward.
The rest of the team? Similar calibration - all have some value and whoever is not cashed in remains a reasonable fit in a rebuild.
Why rebuild instead of reload [again]? First because its now clear that there's nothing to reload around. Melo is not the answer. Two, there's a young core of talent AND FINALLY an opportunity to richly mine the draft with multiple picks over time.
But Phil has qualified the idea of a rebuild. What is sounds more like in a competitive rebuild. In other words, expect young but mature talent coming in to reduce that 3-5 year NBA break-in period.