NBA: What rebuilding teams can learn from the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers

What rebuilding teams can learn from the 2020 NBA Finals

The 2020 NBA season is now a thing of the past and the Los Angeles Lakers are the 2020 NBA Champions after beating the Miami Heat in six games.

While the result wasn’t very surprising, especially after the injuries Miami sustained in Game 1, the two contrasting styles of team building are very interesting and it’s an interesting thought exercise for the rest of the league, more importantly, the rebuilding franchises who are hoping to one day make it to the Finals.

In 2014, when LeBron James took his talents from South Beach to Cleveland, Miami were left with a roster built for a superstar and no superstar to fill the hole. Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade were both aging, and Bosh eventually retired early due to a rare health issue.

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For the purpose of building this NBA Finals team, I’ll focus on their decisions after Bosh’s retirement, a move which really threw a spanner in the works for Pat Riley who had offered the big man a hefty contract to be the face of the team after LeBron’s departure.

The Miami Heat’s build

The Heat missed the playoffs in the 2016-17 season, ending the year with an equal 41-41 record but they needed Brooklyn to beat Chicago on the last night of the season to sneak into the eighth seed.

Unfortunately, the 20-62 Nets rested Caris LeVert for the game and they eventually lost to the Jimmy Butler/Dwyane Wade Bulls (what a coincidence).

That offseason, they drafted Bam Adebayo out of Kentucky and signed a 26-year-old Kelly Olynyk among other things.

They made the playoffs the following season, finding value in a number of players like Josh Richardson (big fantasy basketball value), Dion Waiters, James Johnson, and Dwyane Wade even came back for a goodbye tour (still waiting on that movie to come out about him).

Unfortunately, all the goodwill from the season’s prior was wearing thin. “Heat Culture,” as it was dubbed, their ability to grab players off the scrapheap and either rehab their value or get something out of seemingly nothing, was running thin as players weren’t happy with Hassan Whiteside’s antics (and his on-court play), Goran Dragic was injured for most of the season and the happy-go-lucky team just wasn’t the same.

In a late-season move, the team promoted a little-known shotting guard from their G League program called Duncan Robinson. He appeared in 15 games, hit 29 percent of his 3’s, and was nothing special.

Then, we get to the most recent season: Whiteside is moved to Portland who needed a stop-gap fill in for their injured center Jusef Nurkic, the deal was then re-worked to include a sign-and-trade for Jimmy Butler when free agency opened, they draft Tyler Herro and made another savvy G League signing with Kendrick Nunn.

While in the middle of the NBA Finals, there was a heap of great PR for the “Heat Culture” with ESPN’s Zach Lowe writing an article about Jimmy’s decision to join the Heat and their culture, saying he was never happy in any of his last three stops.

There was a lot of fawning, but it’s not baseless.

Obviously, they just made it to the NBA Finals, playing better than their overall talent level and beating one of the biggest title favourites in Milwaukee.

We all know what happened during the regular season, however; the two undrafted players in Nunn and Robinson played great, Nunn getting Rookie of the Year buzz, Derrick Jones Jr, another guy off the scrapheap was an exciting athletic bench piece that might be getting a cheeky big contract this offseason, Jimmy was Jimmy and they made a mid-season trade to get role players in Jae Crowder and Andre Igoudala.

The only two players that they signed as big-money free agents to build this team was Jimmy and Olynyk, the latter hardly jumps off the page.

The Los Angeles Lakers build

On that note, how did the Lakers build their title contender?

After Kobe Bryant retired, the Lakers had stealthily tanked their way into a few high draft selections with Julius Randle, D’Angelo Russell and eventually Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball as well as great picks later in the drafts like Kyle Kuzma (27th), Larry Nance (27th), Ivica Zubac (32nd) and Mortiz Wagner (25th) among others.

Credit to Lakers director of scouting Jesse Buss who has been in the role since the 2013-14 season.

So before we even get to the on-court product, the Lakers drafted well enough to get value out of their picks, just like Miami there was very little wasted value. No, none of those guys are world-beaters, but they didn’t waste away a pick.

It’s hard to say whether they would’ve won a title if it wasn’t for LeBron though.

He joined the team two seasons ago because it was LA, where he lives and for the off-court opportunities LA presents. At the time, the 76ers had serious momentum to sign him, meeting with him in free agency and the Cavs were looking for ways to upgrade the roster for The King. Some might have argued that the 76ers young core is more enticing than LA’s at the time.

From there, the Anthony Davis trade happened, the Lakers empty their war chest of assets in the form of young players and future draft picks and pair LeBron with AD. Does AD still request a trade from the Pelicans if he knows LA isn’t sitting there with a viable offer? We’ll never know.

To fill out the roster around the two superstars, the Lakers have Kuzma, one of the lone draftees leftover after the Pelicans trade, Alex Caruso who was developed in the G-League, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope after signing a few years back, same with Rajon Rondo and then Danny Green jumped on as a free agent after Kawhi the possibility of signing Kawhi Leonard passed.

Dwight Howard, Jared Dudley and Avery Bradley all came on as ring-chasing veterans as well, some giving more on-court value than others.

In terms of teambuilding, the Lakers looked like they were on a slow rise until LeBron made his decision to wear the purple and gold. From there, AD becomes available and the Lakers have to be in win-now mode simply because LeBron can only keep playing at this level for so many more years.

The rest of the players who joined, joined because they wanted to be with LeBron.

Conversely, Miami developed most of their rotation pieces and yes, Dragic and Jimmy were acquired in a trade and free agency signing respectively, but they didn’t get the allure of playing next to LeBron.

Imagine if LeBron never came to LA and last offseason, Jimmy says that he wanted to join the Lakers instead. Would this Lakers team be just as good as Miami? This is assuming the AD trade never happens so they would have their full array of young draftees, Brandon Ingram leaps up to an all-star level like he did this season, with all the players, they’re much deeper.

But Dwight, Dudley and Bradley probably don’t join for the veteran’s minimum. By not doing the AD trade, they have future draft picks to make a move for an Andre Igoudala type. It’s interesting.

What can the rest of the league learn from the way these two built. What can rebuilding teams like a Charlotte, for example, gleam from these runs?

Firstly, Charlotte and several other teams don’t have the free agency allure that a LA, Miami and title contenders do, so it’s probably not a good blueprint to sign LeBron and let it all fix itself.

But one thing every contender, these two included and others, have done is maximize their value in the draft. The Lakers can’t make the AD trade if Ingram has no future upside. Miami probably can’t make the playoffs if Bam isn’t an All-Star-caliber player.

Miami adds to their draft value by somehow always finding undrafted players like the one’s we’ve just watched and through good scouting.

Even going back further – Golden State drafts Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, all becoming All-NBA-level players. Cleveland drafted Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson who played roles when LeBron went back to the Cavs.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any NBA champions in NBA history that didn’t either develop players out of the draft or get good through the value of the draft.

Heading into the 2020 NBA Draft, whether your team has a top-5 pick or somewhere in the 20’s, just know that this is it. It may be an awkward ceremony with freakishly tall athletes walking up onto a stage to collect a brightly coloured hat, but this is it. This is how NBA champions are made, through the draft.

No pressure or anything.