Yes you need elite talent, but the vast majority of elite talent is actually acquired in the draft. After that trades have been the next most likely way to acquire talent (and most of those trades are made utilizing very high draft picks). In fact, until this year basically just Shaq and Lebron were the top level players going to a team that won a title via free agency (Durant obviously might join that list). Even if you expand those requirements to the final 4 teams every year (i.e. CF or Finals), you don't change any of those lists very much.
Indeed. TP.
Saying "you have a low chance to draft a HOF talent who leads you to a championship" is an empty statement without understanding the flip side, which is that signing a HOF free agent or trading for a HOF player who leads you to a ring is even rarer. In fact, as far as I can tell it's next to impossible, unless you are Miami or LA, which have obvious advantages that we don't. (Cleveland isn't an example of how to do it in free agency - it's not like anyone other than Cleveland posed real competition in signing Lebron, he is a home-grown talent as far as I'm concerned.)
By my reckoning, if you take the last 35-36 championships going back to the beginning of the modern (Bird/Magic) era , around 30 were won by teams with home-grown talent at the top of their rosters. There are some gray areas, so you could quibble that the number is 27 or 31, perhaps, but the overall result is there.
Not saying we shouldn't try to do it via trades or FA, but history certainly doesn't tell us that drafting is the wrong way to go. You can do it both ways.
And, lest we forget living as we do in the land of champions, both ways of doing it are incredibly hard. The total number of different teams collecting the last 36 championships is nine. For nearly every team, in nearly every year, contending for a championship is completely out of the question, despite all of their efforts in drafting, trading, and signing free agents.