Great read.
Not mentioned in this column, and I discussed it with Brent Barry and Sean Deveney back on my show a few weeks ago - this was a strategy employed by Jerry Krause in the late 90s, early 2000s. In fact, Krause wanted to rip apart the Bulls as soon as the summer of '97 to deliberately take them into the lottery year-after-year hoping he could rebuild another championship nucleus through a slew of lottery picks.
He got his slew of lotto picks, but so many of them never worked out largely because they were playing for a team that didn't implement any accountability upon their players. The one pick that did work out for them (Brand) was traded because they felt he was going to put them in the "dreaded NBA middle" - thus costing the Bulls a chance at drafting the next superstar.
The Celtics are doing this the right way. I'll be writing a column on this shortly on CLNS Radio. They've created so many options for themselves, where - if they win the lottery, great. But if they lose it, it's no big deal because they've just created endless possibilities.
The future is very, very bright ...