And this is reflected in the way teams do business, too. Boom-bust. You should either be contending or tanking. Nothing in between. Who wants to have a decent team and watch a great player lead them to 47 wins and a rare second round appearance? Nope, suffer through endless rotation of lottery picks instead, hoping one of them will turn out to be amazing. Then hope he can convince a couple of his friends to force their way to your team. That leads to such wonderful logic as trading a 28-year old Jimmy Butler for a bunch of kids, hoping that one of the might be as good as a 28-year old Jimmy Butler you had to begin with. A boat's a boat, but a mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat!
But just look at the treasure trove they got. A Kris with a "K." That's a win already. You can't be a top player in this league without a unique name nowadays. Draymond, LeBron, Klay with a "K", Stephen mispronounced. They also got a two-time dunk champion! They give rangs for that, right? And of course, the biggest talent to come out of Finland since Hanno Mottola!!! Just think of the possibilities. One of them could be a top-15 player in the league down the road. Can you imagine? Getting a top-15 player for Jimmy Butler? What a steal that would be.
That's what we get out of this millennial league. 3 teams that have the majority of best players among them. 3 teams that are obviously tanking, but it's okay if you describe it as a "process." And another 24 teams trying to be one of these 6. When Favors signed that deal, one thing I thought of was that he has played exactly 500 games for the Jazz. That's gotta be second to Dirk among active players as far as consecutive games played with one team. I know that's not true, but isn't it sad? It used to be the norm. Playing 9-10 seasons for a team where you made it big, and then maybe leaving after that for a new challenge. Now, you play a couple of contracts and you need a new challenge like you've won everything and done everything and now you need to start from the bottom up to provide some kind of a thrill. Constant movement of players, willing or not, in order to facilitate that chase for rangs. And you know what hasn't changed since the pre-internet days? There's still only one team winning the rangs in June. Until they change that too, of course. For all the efforts, it's still going to be 29 teams not winning. So why not put a decent product on the floor, entertain the fans, and have fun? Why is having 45 or 50 wins so bad now?
