The NBA is as competitive from top to bottom as ever in the league’s history.
Anti-NBAers don’t want to acknowledge it, but that doesn’t invalidate facts.
Just like most leagues, just because you put in anti-free market mechanisms via the Collective Bargaining Agreement doesn’t mean there won’t be bad teams.
It ensures that bad teams will want to be as bad as possible. The popular term is “tanking,” but that’s a catch-all that doesn’t accurately represent why a team is where they are.
Look at the terrible teams in the NBA. The teams that still don’t have double-digit wins.
Those teams would be the Portland Trail Blazers (7), Washington Wizards (5), San Antonio Spurs (4) and the Detroit Pistons (2).
San Antonio is the only one that has a legitimate franchise player (Victor Wembanyama).
Detroit and Portland hope they have young players who can lead a franchise, which is far from being a franchise player.
Cade Cunningham (Detroit) and Scoot Henderson (Portland) are far from being shoo-in top-five players.
Then there’s the Wizards. After years of mismanagement, Washington couldn’t properly cash in on its most valuable asset, Bradley Beal.
That puts the Wizards on a reverse dual path. Be very bad with tradeable assets (Kyle Kuzma, Tyus Jones, and Jordan Poole) with a development-type lottery pick in Bilal Coulibaly.
The problem with all four franchises is that the 2024 lottery doesn’t have valuable fruit on the tree.
Outside of the Spurs, the other three teams need a franchise player, and the upcoming draft doesn’t have one.
At best, there won’t be one until 2025 if Cooper Flagg is a one-and-done at Duke. The 2026 draft might have multiple franchise players in it, but we are a long way from being sure of that.
Washington has the most tradeable assets, but GMs around the league aren’t dumb. The teams who could end up in the lottery in 2025 and 2026 aren’t looking to move those picks or agree to pick swaps.
The best Washington can do is move Jones to a playoff contender before the trade deadline and wait on moving Kuzma and Poole next season.
The Pistons roster is an unbalanced mess in need of a veteran, so moving a mature voice like Bojan Bogdanovic or Joe Harris can only come if a team is willing to overpay. But how the NBA works, eventually, Detroit will need to move at least one of the young players for a veteran.
Detroit can only do it once they can make a significant jump to being a playoff team. That could take another two years.
Cunningham will be there, but I would be shocked if Jaden Ivey, Isaiah Stewart, Jalen Duren, and Ausar Thompson are all there when it comes time for Detroit to compete.
Portland has foundational players to build around as long as they stay healthy. Even if Henderson doesn’t become a superstar, the Trail Blazers roster includes Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe, and Deandre Ayton.
They also have tradeable pieces in Matisse Thybulle, Malcolm Brogdon, and Jerami Grant.
Portland also has a potential diamond in the rough with Toumani Camara.
San Antonio is in the best spot with Wembanyama and a competent front office.
The hurdle the Spurs have is how long it will take to get the necessary help and whether Greg Popovich will still be coaching.
San Antonio also needs to figure out if Jeremy Sochan can succeed in the role they want him to play, or sometime down the road, would the franchise be better off moving him sooner rather than later?
For the bottom-of-the-barrel teams, is winning the lottery this season indeed a win?
