sycasey said:Those guys are good, but I wouldn't call any of them "transformational."dimitrig said:sycasey said:No doubt, it's hard to find the best prospects, and when it comes to Wiseman: obviously he didn't work out, but I don't know that you can point to anyone lower than him in the draft and say that guy would have been transformational for the Warriors. Are there better guys? Yes, but none are superstars. That was not a very good draft pool.Big C said:sycasey said:Well, I guess one could disagree about what a metaphorical term like "light years ahead" really means. I'm not sure if Lacob was actively thinking about the distant Steph-less future when he said that.concordtom said:sycasey said:I mean, this is just how the NBA works. You get a big star and a good core and have a championship window. Eventually the star leaves and you have to build one again. Some franchises can do it more quickly than others, but they all have to do it.concordtom said:sycasey said:bearister said:Big C said:
Witnessing the end of a semi-dynasty? Even if they somehow get past the Kings, I'm not sure how long the Warriors can keep this up. And with this aging core, maybe time to start fresh.
"We've crushed them on the basketball court, and we're going to for years because of the way we've built this team," he said. But what really set the franchise apart, he said, was the way it operated as a business. "We're light-years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we're going to go about things," he said. "We're going to be a handful for the rest of the N.B.A. to deal with for a long time."
-What Happened When Venture Capitalists Took Over the Golden State Warriors By Bruce Schoenfeld, NY Times, March 30, 2016
People keep throwing this around as an example of unearned hubris, but . . . the franchise has won three titles (more than anyone else) since the interview was given. Was he wrong?
Well, they blew the wiseman pick BIG TIME, and as their stars age out, what do they have going next?
Correct.
So there's nothing "light years ahead" about it.
But anyway, he did deliver three more titles after that (plus two more Finals appearances) so maybe he was at least correct about the near term when he said it.
The thing with Lacob and his "light years"... you know the story about the guy that was born on 3rd base and thought he'd hit a triple? Well, Lacob did hit a triple (maybe even a grand slam, but I don't want to mix the metaphor). However, he probably now thinks that triples are pretty easy for him to hit and, if you know baseball, they're not, for anybody.
The Warriors got lucky drafting Curry and Draymond and even a little bit with Klay, but there's a random chance component to NBA drafting (see Wiseman, James). The next triple might not be so easy to hit.
It was a bad draft class, but there are definitely some guys that would have been a big help.
Desmond Bane, for example.
Not to mention Halliburton, Maxey, Vassell, of course Ball.
Lots of teams whiffed because the draft was not a good one, but any of those guys would have been transformational for the Warriors.
They would have made the team a lot better. Maybe the difference between winning this series and losing it.