- The Warriors are back after a 2-year period of rebuilding their supporting cast.
NBA teams have weighed short-term "resets" by stripping their team quickly and starting anew.
Two injuries and a free agency departure forced the
Klay Thompson went down with a torn ACL in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals. Two weeks later, Kevin Durant signed with the Brooklyn Nets in free agency. Then, just four games into the 2019-20 season, Stephen Curry broke his left hand, ensuring the Warriors a new experience under head coach Steve Kerr: being bad.
Over the following two seasons, the Warriors played zero playoff games but managed to reshape their roster. They acquired three lottery picks, traded for Andrew Wiggins, and developed key role players, like Jordan Poole and Juan Toscano-Anderson.
Now, with their Big Three — Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green — healthy again, the Warriors are reloaded, sitting in third place in the Western Conference with a legitimate shot at a fourth NBA championship in eight years.
The Warriors' quick return to title contention has suddenly popularized the idea of a "reset" season. In January, Bleacher Report's Jake Fischer noted that the "Warriors model" was gaining traction around NBA front offices.
Fischer wrote:
"The so-called 'Warriors model,' has noticeably entered the lexicon of team executives this season, describing a championship contender's one-year tanking effort to then leap-frog back into the title conversation."
It's a situation that is not dissimilar to what the
As a result, San Antonio landed the No. 1 pick in tht summer's draft and selected Tim Duncan. What followed: 22 straight playoff appearances and five championships, smoothly transitioning from the Robinson era to the Duncan dynasty.
The long-term problems with short-term tanking
Fischer's piece, published weeks before the trade deadline, wondered if the LA Clippers might pursue the "Warriors model" in light of injuries to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Fischer reported that team owner Steve Ballmer had approved a "gap year" philosophy.
But while the Clippers didn't ultimately go this route at the deadline, the
The Blazers can essentially strip their roster bare this off-season, using cap space, draft picks, or perhaps trading those assets to build a contender around Lillard. They'll have to move quickly, as many in the NBA world believe Lillard won't wait long for a rebuild to happen before asking for a trade.
One NBA executive who spoke to Insider, however, is skeptical that Portland could actually pull off this plan. He posed a hypothetical: If two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo got injured, the Milwaukee Bucks could perhaps pull off a one-year tank, then launch back into title contention.
"They'd still have Giannis coming back," the executive said. "He's one of the three best players in the world. That's a big deal."
While Lillard is a six-time All-Star and was recently named to the NBA 75 team, he is not on Antetokounmpo's level. The Blazers have not won a playoff series in three years and were below .500 at the time Lillard underwent surgery.
In other words: One year might not be enough time to launch the Blazers into championship contention.
TNT analyst and former head coach Stan Van Gundy also expressed skepticism over the idea of "reset" years gaining traction.
"I don't know if it's a viable path," Van Gundy told Insider. "I think what happens at times is it's almost the only path sort of left to you." He noted that in the Warriors' case, injuries to their top players left them with almost no choice but to be bad.
Van Gundy also believes that pivoting mid-season to a tanking strategy isn't even a sure thing since other teams have already gotten a jump on it, and thus, will be in better draft position. But even then, the NBA's reformed lottery odds can also dissuade a team from angling for the bottom: The team with fifth-worst record, for instance, could only end up with the 9th overall pick, hardly a spot to land a surefire, franchise-changing star.
The same executive told Insider that the new play-in tournament has also changed the calculus.
"In a league that now has a play-in tournament, it's changed the whole nature of this discourse," he said. "There was a time when it was just a foregone conclusion that you would tank, because we're not going to be able to win in the playoffs."
He added: "It's no longer black-and-white — you're in it to win it or you should suck. Because you can be sort of lukewarm-good and still have something to play for."
One general manager argued to Insider that if a team expected to be contenders entering the season, then they likely have a good enough roster to stay competitive, even if a star goes down.
There are other factors to consider beyond tanking, the same GM noted. While a star player is out, the team might want to evaluate the head coach's ability to win games. They might want to win games and show their injured superstar that the teammates around him are good enough.
That extra workload for other players is crucial, too, the GM said.
"These guys get a tremendous opportunity to perform a lot of minutes," he said. "They get to learn from mistakes. They get to push their own limits. They get to over-dribble, they get to under-dribble. They get to take bad shots. They get to watch a ton of film of their own bad shots."
This GM added: "You can't teach experience. Experience is experience for a reason."
Tanking, selling off veterans, and trying to construct a whole new roster, then, might not be the best plan in the long run.
The making of a trend?
The Blazers off-season may reveal whether the "reset" could be a new way for teams to operate, or if it's simply too "circumstantial," as the executive put it.
Portland will likely have a Top 10 draft pick in the 2022 Draft and could create as much as $60 million in cap space, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski — significant assets to construct a new roster.
However, Portland has not historically been a free-agent destination. And draft picks are no sure thing, as Van Gundy noted about the Spurs' drafting Duncan in 1997.
"They needed a lot of luck to get the No. 1 pick in a year where the No. 1 pick was Tim Duncan, who not only was an unbelievable player, but was exactly the type of person anybody would want to lead your organization for years and years," he said.
While the Warriors were able to rebuild their supporting cast around their Big Three — and now have young players to potentially dangle in a trade — having Curry, Thompson, and Green in place is the most important thing.
"Who knows whether or not they really truly did a one-year reset or not," the executive said, with a laugh. "You know, they're basically still driven by the same three dudes."