Shoot the J

On the surface, the four remaining teams in the NBA playoffs offer up two distinct styles of building a title contender.

For Detroit and San Antonio, the two perennial contenders, winning and spending wisely have gone hand in hand. While other teams lavish second-tier stars like Rashard Lewis (Orlando) and Peja Stojakovic (New Orleans) with the biggest dollar amount allowed, Detroit and San Antonio are relative Scrooges, hesitant to offer the richest deals to all but their best players and totally unafraid to let good players walk if it puts them in a financial bind.

Detroit, for example, let Ben Wallace go to Chicago because he sought the big money. Though he was once thought to be the heart and soul of the Pistons, general manager Joe Dumars wisely saw him for what he really was – a limited, aging defensive player whose best days were behind him.

The Pistons barely missed a beat, with Antonio McDyess seamlessly filling his starting spot. McDyess is also a classic Dumars signing: a former No. 2 overall pick that other people thought was damaged goods. Similarly, the Pistons unearthed Chauncey Billups years ago – also a top-three pick – for a medium-sized contract when most teams viewed him as a tweener – not quite a point guard, not quite a shooting guard.

Dumars has made mistakes as a GM, particularly in the draft, where he has squandered top picks on players like Mateen Cleaves, Rodney White and Dark Milicic. But his genius is that he knows when he's made a mistake and is quick to move on, and in each case he got something of quality in return. He traded Cleaves for Jon Barry, a player who added to the team's early bench, and a first-round pick he'd use to select Carlos Delfino. He dealt White to Denver for a draft pick, and then later packaged that draft pick with other players and picks to land Rasheed Wallace. And he sent his biggest failure, Darko, to Orlando and got a pick he used to select this year's rookie surprise, Rodney Stuckey.

When he makes a mistake, it never haunts him.

Spurs smart with contracts

San Antonio's braintrust has had better luck drafting players, but the Spurs are so hesitant to spend willy-nilly they are just as likely to trade their pick or find a player playing overseas: in either case, they are investing in the future while paying no money down. Drafting players from overseas before other teams caught on also helped San Antonio nab gems like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.

But the other secret to San Antonio's success is that years ago, they got lucky and won the right to draft Tim Duncan, the defining big-man of his generation. And because Duncan's presence virtually guarantees the team a playoff berth, other veteran players – like Michael Finley, Robert Horry, Fabricio Oberto and Kurt Thomas - have been quick to join the Spurs for less money.

But like the Pistons, the Spurs never hold onto a bad contract for long, always giving them the flexibility to sign another player who can help them win. The Spurs dealt Malik Rose and two draft picks to New York for Nazr Mohammed, a free agent the following year, just to get out from the contract they – in a rare moment of sentimentality – had given Rose. (They similarly shipped Rasho Nesterovic to Toronto for players with cheaper, expiring deals.) And when Mohammed was a free agent and wanted more money, they let him walk to all of places Detroit. Dumars, a year later, realizing his folly, sent Mohammed to Charlotte for – you guessed it – two players who's contracts expired.

Celtics, Lakers stockpile talent

For Boston and Los Angeles, the path to contending status has taken a slightly different route. Boston and L.A. were terrible and mediocre respectively last year, but two huge trades changed all that.

For Boston, the deal with Minnesota that landed Kevin Garnett turned a young and undisciplined group of players into an intense, dedicated contender. For L.A., a huge mid-season swap with Memphis for centre Pau Gasol helped cushion the loss to injury of starting centre Andrew Bynum and made them a favourite to win the title.

Oddly, those two deals wouldn't have been possible had the two teams not spent so foolishly before. NBA rules essentially say that if your payroll is over the salary cap (and most payrolls are) and you want to acquire a player or group of players, you must send players in return that make roughly the same annual salary. Teams like the Pistons and Spurs use this rule to dump players with many years left on their deals for players in the last year of the deal, but what Boston and LA did was the opposite.

Boston sent the very large contracts of Theo Ratliff and Wall Szczerbiak to get Garnett and Ray Allen, while LA sent the equally overpaid Kwame Brown to Memphis for Gasol.

Both teams had players with such large contracts to give because, unlike Detroit and San Antonio, Boston and L.A. have never shied away from spending money. Celtics GM Danny Ainge threw money away for 12th man Brian Scalabrine, while Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak spent huge dollars on L.A.'s underperforming starter, Vladimir Radmanovic.

But what Boston and L.A. have done is hoard talent. Both organizations have had an eye for talent in the draft. Boston collected young players in the draft and shipped many to Minnesota to land Garnett, while keeping Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins. LA's roster includes recent draft picks Bynum, Sasha Vujacic, Jordan Farmar and Ronny Turiaf, all players who have exceeded expectations.

Hoarding talent also means holding onto your best players, and both Boston and L.A. have resisted dealing their stars of the day – Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant – despite tremendous pressure to do so. They have been rewarded for their patience, while teams like Minnesota and Memphis gave up their stars and still ended up losers in the lottery, missing out on Tuesday on a chance to draft one of the consensus top two-picks.

These are two different paths to contending. Keep your options open and maybe enjoy a long run of success. Or never turn down a chance to get better and hope it all comes together one year.

It will be interesting to see which path a team like the Toronto Raptors choose this summer. And, for the next couple of weeks, it will be equally interesting to see which method prevails in the end.

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