OPENING TIP
And then there was one. The champagne and the tears of the fans at TD Garden have dried, and another NBA champion has been crowned. Congratulations to the Golden State Warriors.
Normally, we might pause here to make a quick jibe about how surprising it is that that the team with the largest payroll in the league came out on top, but not this year. We are too grateful to the Dubs for saving us from a full summer of Bill Simmons and the Boston faithful celebrating a title. And the Warriors are a deserving champion, with a transcendent star and a thoughtfully constructed roster around him. You know, like the Lakers, except the exact opposite.
Yes, the Warriors have a huge tax bill this year, but we tend to associate that with teams that splurge on free agents, and Golden State is anything but. The Dubs more than any team in recent memory built through the draft. Of the guys in the Warriors finals rotation, only Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton II weren’t drafted by the team (and the team snatched Payton out of the G League after he applied for a Video Coordinator role for the team and snagged the 15th roster spot).
Likewise, the Celtics core was also homegrown, with Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum, Marcus Smart, Rob Williams, and Grant Williams all drafted by the team in recent years.
At STL, we spend more time thinking about roster construction than certain NBA front offices, and we can see the headlines now: the Title is in (insert team here)’s reach! A few good drafts and they will be balling with the Celtics and Warriors. If your team isn’t there, it’s a failure of talent evaluation before anything else.
And look, the rewards of drafting well don’t need much elucidation. If you take Johnny Flynn one pick before Steph, or Bernard James instead of Draymond, you will end up wishing that had not happened. Likewise, if you trade out of the first pick to take Jason Tatum two picks later, and the first pick suddenly develops a once in a lifetime hitch in his shot that makes Charles Barkley’s golf swing look like a nice fluid motion, you will feel smart.
But focusing on how homegrown each team is misses two critical points. First, each team didn’t simply use their own picks. They leveraged their assets to stockpile multiple picks and opportunities to improve. Drafting well isn’t easy, and it isn’t enough if you don’t give yourself plenty of opportunities to get impact players.
The Celtics haven’t hit every pitch in the draft, but they gave themselves a lot of swings. Both the Brown and Tatum picks were acquired from the Nets in the Garnett and Pierce trade. And Boston never stopped hunting for picks. In the past three years, they have made seven first round selections.
Likewise for the Warriors: when KD left, he didn’t just walk. The Warriors convinced KD to help on his way out, enabling the team to execute a double sign and trade netting them D’Angelo Russell. Russell never made a ton of sense next to Curry and Klay, but he enabled them to maintain an additional salary slot, and when they flipped him for Wiggins and a pick, it looked a lot smarter. Had KD simply signed with the Nets as a free agent, the Warriors wouldn’t have been able to trade for Wiggins without including Draymond Green, Curry or Thompson.
Point two. Despite the “homegrown” nature of each team, recent drafts have been less kind. The NBA Twitterati were all abuzz about Grant Williams and Jordan Poole this postseason, but neither did much in the Finals; neither was on the floor in crunch time of Game 6.
And that’s just guys who got some press. We referenced Boston’s seven first round picks, and they are not exactly murderer’s row. The best two among them are Desmond Bane and Matisse Thybulle… two players who were sent elsewhere on draft night. Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard are nice, but had a hard time staying on the floor in the Finals.
So, is Joe Lacob right, and the Warriors are light years ahead of everyone else trying to build a team?
Yeah, nah.
The Celtics at least have the excuse of drafting later in the first round. The Warriors, on the other hand, have been picking at the top the last two years, and while Jonathan Kuminga’s athleticism is eye-opening, the Warriors last three lottery picks COMBINED to average 2.1 minutes per game in the finals.
And we should not forget, these Finals were pretty evenly matched. There are many worlds in which Jason Tatum doesn’t go missing and Boston’s collection of talent wins out. If we look to the future, we’d much rather have Boston’s group going forward. The Celtics have a very young core, almost all of whom are signed long term. The Warriors, by contrast, have some work to do over the summer. Klay is extension eligible. So is Draymond. So is Andrew Wiggins. So is Jordan Poole. Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II are free agents. That’s EVERYONE except Steph and the kids.
We should celebrate the Warriors. They were an incredibly entertaining team and a deserving champion. But we encourage skepticism when you start reading about how a certain team’s strategy is the way to build, unless that ‘strategy’ includes drafting a Top 10 all time talent and going from there. We’ve all had the experience of getting advice from someone about their success, and realizing that they are essentially advising you to get lucky in the same way that they did. It’s called Mythologizing, and when the mythology of the 2022 Finals is written, take it with a grain of salt.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Outrageous trolling.
BETTER KNOW AN EXTREMELY RICH PERSON: VIVEK RANADIVE
Today it is once again time for STL's much lauded series profiling “the biggest competitive advantage in sports:” owners. With the Finals over, the league has turned their eyes to the real highlight of the NBA season: the Draft.
There seems to be a consensus building that the top three picks this year will be Chet Holmgren, Paolo Banchero, and Jabari Smith in some order. As such, the talking heads you will hear as the draft approaches will assure you that "the Draft begins at 4". And who holds the 4th pick this year? The Sacramento Kings, and their mercurial owner, Vivek Ranadive.
Ranadive, unlike our previous subject Josh Harris, is not shy about giving the odd quote to the media. He has some thoughts. He has written three books and describes himself thusly on LinkedIn:
"Vivek Ranadivé is the Chairman, CEO, and Governor of the Sacramento Kings, an entrepreneur, technology visionary, New York Times best-selling author and philanthropist recognized for his innovative thinking."
He also inspired a Malcolm Gladwell book (although sadly, these same principles did not translate into NBA success, not for lack of trying!)
WHO: Vivek Ranadive, owner and chairman of the Sacramento Kings. 64 years old.
ABSURDLY RICH, HILARIOUSLY RICH, OR OBSCENELY RICH? Absurdly. Ranadive's net worth is estimated at a number of different numbers, but $700 million is perhaps the most common. This puts him near the bottom of NBA owners, although it should be noted that he has been willing to spend. In the nine years that Ranadive has owned the team, the Kings have had between four and eight different general managers, depending on who you ask, and six coaches, so he has no issue paying for non-performing salary. The organization has also invested heavily in the area surrounding the Kings’ new arena.
HOW DID HE GET THAT WAY? Ranadive is a high IQ individual. Born to a well connected family in Mumbai, he was accepted to MIT when he was 16, and when it turned out that India did not allow releases of foreign currency for students to study abroad, he talked his way into the Indian Reserve Bank and convinced them to give him enough dollars to make the trip. He later got an MBA from Harvard.
Ranadive has earned the nickname "Mr. Real Time" after his software company TIBco (short for The Information Bus) rose to prominence delivering real time data aggregation to many large organizations, such as the NY Stock Exchange, FedEx, and United Airlines.
More recently, he spearheaded the creation of the combination work, email, and social media solution Tibbr.
In 2012, Ranadive launched, to much fanfare, the site TopCom, a social network usable by only the 200 "most important people in the world." Save The Lottery can't find any mention of it after 2012, and we assume that is because it was rapidly adopted and is now a great and closely held secret among the world’s elite.
IS HE LIQUID? Kind of. Little of Ranadive's wealth is tied up in the valuations of his companies (other than the Kings). There has been speculation about how willing Ranadive is to pay the luxury tax, but unfortunately we don't have a lot of evidence either way. On the one hand, STL suspects from various quotes that Ranadive's desire to end the longest streak without making the playoffs in NBA history is such that he would donate a kidney. On the other hand, his Kings once traded Nik Stauskas, Jason Thompson, Carl Landry, a first-round pick in 2018 and two pick swaps for INTERNATIONAL PROSPECTS TO BE NAMED LATER (hint: they were not named later). So.
WHEN DID HE MAKE THE LEAGUE? 2010, but! That was as minority owner of the Golden State Warriors. Ranadive had a lot of exciting ideas for revolutionizing that franchise, but was frustrated by the amount of influence he was able to exert. So when the Kings went up for sale in 2013, after the Maloof brothers attempts to move the team, he pounced on the opportunity, purchasing the Maloof's stake for $534 Million. Asked about his vision at the time, he said:
"We want to be like the Spurs, but exciting."
Entertainingly, a year later, when asked about the direction of the team, he said:
"It's kinda like we were in San Quentin, now we're in Motel 6. But I want to go to the Four Seasons."
HOW'S THE BASKETBALL GOING? Hoo, boy. Well, as noted, the Kings’ failure to make the playoffs this year brought the drought to 16 years, breaking a record previously held by the Buffalo Braves.
In researching this profile, STL relied on the following articles, among others:
'Basketball Hell': How Vivek Ranadive turned the Sacramento Kings into the NBA's biggest losers (2022), Kings' dysfunction hits tipping point (2015), and of course The Man Who Knows Everything (2013).
Typically, we like to end these profiles with a quote, but it might make sense to have it here:
"I have this idea that math now trumps science... The simplest example is the thermostat in your house. Like what we did for Reliance Communications. It's the same thing. You don't really have to know the why of something. Or the how. You just know if a and b happen, then c will happen."
We're going to engage in some cheap pop psychology here, but this quote is how the basketball is going. Ranadive has managed the Kings as he has everything else. Reacting in Real Time. Here is longest tenured King Harrison Barnes:
“Since I got to Sac, I think it’s just me and Fox. Those are the only two people in the entire organization who are still here, and this is my fourth season being here. Obviously, I can’t speak to the years before I got here, but since I’ve been here, it’s been a lot of ups and downs. It’s been a lot of tough times. It’s been a lot of changing parts — roster-wise, coaching-wise, front office-wise."
Then there is the story of the Kings attempt to trade for Jordan Clarkson. Management did not have approval to sign off on the deal without Vivek, and Vivek would not sign off until he had asked Sam Presti about it (who, we want to emphasize, is the GM of a different franchise). The deal fell apart.
It's been suggested that current President of Basketball operations Monte McNair is being given more authority, but that's not to say that our man Vivek is dealing himself out. For example, just a month ago STL noticed and enjoyed this headline:
Vivek Ranadive hires pop singer daughter to highly ranked role in Kings
That's right, it appears that Anjali Ranadive is the Assistant GM of the Kings' G league affiliate. There are some good jokes here, but instead, we're just going to leave you with this from the Assistant GM of the Kings' G league affiliate:
AT THE BUZZER
Who was the biggest winner last week? Klay or Fake Klay? (SF Gate)
With the NBA deal waiting in the wings, Apple pays $2.5 Billion for the MLS rights (Front Office Sports)
Fine Art and Basketballs (NY Times)
NBA Draft Rumors get a Bullshit Meter (Bleacher Report)
BDSM robot plays basketball (reddit)