Eh, did they? I mean, it was the same team built from the draft (Curry, Green, Klay) that should have been two-time defending world champs. They added a free agent to go from near-certainty to certainty.

Honestly, yeah it’s possible - I’m not going to say it’s not just to try to win an argument. But my best bet is that out of high school he goes to the Knicks or Lakers.

Tell me the last time a team other than the Lakers or Boston or Miami won a title with free agents (or players they did not draft) playing a significant role? Has a flyover team ever done it? I guess maybe that one Detroit team, a big outlier in many ways.

Cleveland the first time around was because of the draft, and the second time would never happen if not for the first. Not as clean as San Antonio, that’s for sure.

Were you going to say that, but then you read the comments, saw nothing of the sort, and so decided the comment you were going to make was just a straw man, so you phrased it as something you were going to say?

No, the players union would never go for this. The players only get X% of revenue towards salary. The current players don’t want to let the owners give a larger share of that to new players.

I think San Antonio, Cleveland and OKC are the counterpoint. All built championship or near-championship teams through the lottery that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

I think that fans would mostly fall into either siding with the established players, who they have grown to like, or they wouldn’t give a shit, because they know the players don’t give a shit about them. Why should Joe Stockbroker care how NBA money is split up? It’s not like the NCAA where you can at least make a…

In theory, sure, the owners shouldn’t care how the players’ piece is split. But they have much more harmony by letting the older, more established players take a bigger slice at the expense of younger players.

I’d add making the 7th and 8th seed lottery eligible. And you don’t have to make it all the same odds, just make it a more gentle slope, so maybe the worst team in the lottery has about 2x the chance as the best team.

Not sure why the owners or players union would agree to this.