Winning back-to-back is really hard, and I just don’t think they have it in them yet. This year I’m backing the all time player over the all time team.

In any case, I don’t think that makes those guys bad picks…alas, some guys develop quickly, some don’t.

Most glaring instance, though, has to be taking Kolek over Collier. That gulf in athleticism is wide.

You figure they took Kolek because he was a more “win now” kind of player, a 23 year old who, if he stuck, would be able to contribute soon. Collier, 20 years old and raw, was probably 2-3 years away best case.

Of course, as it turns out, Kolek probably can’t really play in the NBA at all, while Collier still has lottery-scratch-off material that hasn’t been scratched yet. One guy is still a prospect and one guy isn’t.

The Jazz were dreadful so they were able to give Collier lots of developmental minutes, which of course should help his career. If we had drafted Collier, he never would have played. Not last year, not this year, not next year. For the same reasons, I don’t expect Pacome Dadiet to ever play a meaningful minute here. We’re all in on win-now mode and aren’t devoting any resources to developing raw young kids. He’s not gonna hang around the back end of the roster and then develop into a useful piece at like age 23 or whatever three years from now. He’ll be long gone by then. That is just not our steez.

OKC didn’t strike me as a team that’s going to repeat.

We all know that OKC was gifted this championship, like the 2019 Raptors before them. But they DID push a healthy Pacers team to a game 7 which means they are an amazing basketball team in their own right and a repeat should be considered the default setting until Tyrese wrestles his starting job back from Benny.