Every season there seem to be calls for middling teams to blow up their roster. Basically, to trade away any good players for assets such as future draft picks or unproven young players. NBA fans and many executives around the league believe that mediocrity is the worst thing and to an extent they are correct. Losing in the NBA gets you the highest draft picks which in turn gives you the highest chance of getting a star player but things aren’t that simple.

Nabbing a star player in the NBA doesn’t automatically lead to a championship. Teams need to still build the right team around that star and that is really one of the most difficult parts in team building. Things have to fall just right to get that championship ring. Mediocrity is a thing teams try to avoid in the NBA but only one team can win it all at the end. The NBA is entertaining because we have so many competitive teams. A league consisting of just winners and losers wouldn’t be fun to watch. Not every team can be the Golden State Warriors and not every team can be the Philadelphia 76ers. What fans miss when they call for a team to blow it up is that there are multiple ways to win a championship. You want to know how many no. 1 overall picks have actually won a championship in the last 20 years? Four and two of them were on the same team (Lebron James and Kyrie Irving) and one of them was a roleplayer by the time he won (Andrew Bogut). Yes, obtaining the no. 1 overall pick gets you a superstar but there are no guarantees in the NBA.

Championships teams are usually bought, not built. Teams with a star usually find ways to attract other stars to build a powerhouse team. In the last 20 years it has been the team with multiple stars winning with a couple exceptions (2004 Detroit Pistons and 2011 Dallas Mavericks). Teams can try and draft multiple stars by bottoming out multiple years but that hasn’t shown to work either. The Philadelphia 76ers tried this strategy to an extreme by ripping apart the entire team and sending out fringe NBA players but in four years they have only won the no. 1 overall pick once just this summer. Is Ben Simmons good enough to lead them to the promise land? Probably not.

The team with the worst record in the NBA still only has a 25% chance of obtaining the top pick. A team can stay at the bottom for multiple years without ever receiving the top pick. Ask the Charlotte Hornets or Charlotte Bobcats as they were known back then. They were terrible for multiple years and never drafted an all star with all those top 10 picks. The players they drafted Kemba Walker (no. 9), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (no. 2), Cody Zeller (no. 4), Noah Vonleh (no. 9), and Frank Kaminsky (no. 9) haven’t led to wins for the team. Charlotte’s only two recent successful seasons were due to free agent signings (Al Jefferson) and trades (Nicolas Batum). The only recent team who has had great success through the draft has been the Oklahoma City Thunder but they’re an exception rather than the norm. Sam Presti has one of the best draft records in the entire league and he has always made the right drafts to keep his team young and competitive. Even the disastrous James Harden trade netted them a top 10 center in Steven Adams.

Teams who have blown up their teams have historically had a hard time getting back into contention. After the Orlando Magic traded away Dwight Howard and ripped apart the rest of the team for young assets they have struggled to regain relevancy. They haven’t made an appearance in the playoffs since the 2012 playoffs. They don’t seem primed for a playoff run in the next couple of years either despite team changes. There’s many factors in getting the right talent. Sometimes it’s just a bad fit. Sometimes it’s not a deep draft when the team wins a top three pick (see 2013 draft when Orlando drafted Victor Oladipo). Cleveland drafted Kyrie Irving and still couldn’t reach the playoffs in the weak Eastern Conference till Lebron James returned and they traded for Kevin Love. The draft is an easy way out for incompetent front offices who can’t draft and sign the right players for their teams. New Orleans won the no. 1 overall pick the year after trading away Chris Paul in 2012 and they have only made one appearance in the playoffs since. The league tried to rebalance the lottery odds for the draft to keep teams for tanking on purpose but teams voted against it. The problem is that small markets still struggle attracting big time free agents. Things have gotten better in the last few years thanks to the wide reach of the internet taking away the big draw of big markets. The route to more competition is limiting the growth of NBA super teams.

Even when teams don’t have star players this shouldn’t stop them from competing. Strange things have happened in the NBA. You never know when a stronger team may experience a severe injury or when the right match-ups may fall your way. Afterall, the NBA is still a game of match-ups. Teams like the Atlanta Hawks, Toronto Raptors, and Los Angeles Clippers shouldn’t blow up the teams they spent years building just because they have fallen short multiple years. These teams are only one injury or one player away from becoming contenders so why blow it up when the odds of building a championship team through the draft isn’t that great either? The 2009 Orlando Magic weren’t the favorites to end up in the NBA Finals but they had key players step up in the playoffs and they got past Lebron’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Everyone had 2011’s Miami Heat pegged as the Finals favorites but strong performances from Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, JJ Barea helped Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks win their first championship. The Orlando Magic were the favorites to win the east in 2010 but the old and experienced Boston Celtics took advantage of their faults and inexperience. The 2014 Champion San Antonio Spurs almost didn’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks because it was a poor match-up. Things can fall your way in the postseason.

Is it likely that they will find the player who will take them over the top in the late first round of the draft? No, but building a team from scratch takes years and they could end up falling short even with the newly built team. The Minnesota Timberwolves went through three regimes and three blow ups till they finally got a core group now that looks like they will be able to compete with the great teams. Lets not forget they only drafted one of their top two players while leveraged Kevin Love’s expiring contract to obtain Andrew Wiggins.

Back in the summer of 2011, the Dallas Mavericks decided to blow up their championship team to chase after stars for future championship runs. Of course this strategy backfired big time. They didn’t end up signing a single star player and let their players walk away to sign with other teams. On the one hand their championship team was unlikely to even get to the Finals again but on the other Tyson Chandler was a big reason they won that championship and resigning him for a 11-12 million a year contract across three years like New York did would not have been a bad decision. Chandler played great basketball for two out of those three seasons still. The Mavericks haven’t been able to get past the first round of the playoffs ever since. Rather than developing young players and sign long term contracts the Mavericks went through years of short contracts and rebuilding their team every single offseason. Star free agents don’t want to enter unstable environments. Years of success attract good players. Good culture attracts good players. Blowing it up and trying to stick star players together doesn’t even amount to success every time. Remember the disaster of the Dwight Howard Lakers? Or the pricey Brooklyn Nets?

There are multiple ways to get to the top of the NBA. Having a top three player is the easiest but those players are so rare and sometimes come around twice in an entire decade. Waiting out super teams is not a viable solution. Teams have their own goals. They need to keep the fans engaged and interested in their product to keep the money flooding in. Teams also have impatient owners who don’t want to go through years of losing. Some teams have a harder time attracting free agents due to their location (Milwaukee), due to the city itself (Detroit), bad ownership (Phoenix), fan disinterest (Atlanta). Every team has to find their own way. True super teams have consistently won in the last 20 years but they way those were assembled and the outliers have found a variety of ways.

Even with current teams there’s a lot of variety. Atlanta relies on its ability to develop young unproven players, good coaching, and a fluid offense with a lot of ball sharing. Detroit has made smart trades for cheap contracts due to struggling to attract free agents. Boston uses their fantastic coach to outplay their talent level. Toronto keeps adding young talent to an established core and fringe star players. Dallas uses their aging star to stretch the floor and their brilliant coach to change their play style every season to fit the personnel. There’s plenty of ways to win in the NBA. Teams tend to follow patterns to success and other teams come in and expose that by then going the opposite direction. Teams use large lineups to beat up small ball teams now. The only consistent formula in the NBA has been to use a top talent to win a championship but staying the course to even win one championship is worth it. Ask Dirk Nowitzki.

Next time you’re calling for a team blow up remember how many of the current top 25 players were drafted outside of the top ten: Jimmy Butler (no. 30), Kawhi Leonard (15), Kyle Lowry (24), Paul Millsap (47), DeAndre Jordan (35). Getting a top 10 pick is a big key in turning around a franchise’s luck but blowing it up isn’t an easy or short path the majority of the time. Everyone would have a Lebron James if it was. In the meantime teams will find unique ways for success. Philadelphia’s bold plan to tear it all down hasn’t proven anything yet. You still have to put together a team and develop the players after obtaining all the picks.