NBA teams growing more and more comfortable with the treadmill of mediocrity as a path to contention

Teams no longer appear afraid of being stuck in mediocrity, and will even spend big to get -- or remain -- there

In 2011, current Indiana Pacers general manager Kevin Pritchard introduced the concept of the "mediocrity treadmill" to describe the purgatory of winning without contending. Acquiring and retaining good players costs money and assets that can no longer be funneled into the sort of high-upside superstar moves that tend to win championships. It traps your team in a cycle: too good to draft one of those superstars, not good enough to beat them, and too expensive to sign them. For all the effort teams on this treadmill expend, they ultimately get nowhere. A league populated with superteams and well-informed superfans has made their competitors far less tolerant of such inertia. Never has the difference between the haves and have nots been so apparent, and never has the pressure of jumping from one group to the other been greater. 

Small-market teams pivoted to ping pong balls for salvation, but their more glamorous counterparts could afford to hoard cap space and trust that superstars would take it, mediocrity be damned. The New York Knicks tried to recruit Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in an offseason after finishing with the worst record in the NBA. They punted multiple seasons just for the chance to woo LeBron James in 2010, as did the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls. Miami was rewarded for its efforts with two championships. There was a shamelessness to it that was almost admirable. The Heat didn't even pretend to care about the present if they could just hold onto a little bit more flexibility for the future. Why get on a treadmill when you can run toward something?

But take a look at the 2021 offseason. Only three teams spent more than $200 million on free agents: those same Knicks, Bulls and Heat. Yet none of the players they signed made the 2021 All-Star Game. Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan have in the past, but now in their mid-30s, are likely beyond that stage in their careers. These ambitious, big-market vultures aren't just hopping on this apparent treadmill, they're paying out the nose for the privilege. Vegas odds place the Knicks and Bulls squarely in the play-in round despite their lavish spending. Caesars Sportsbook pegs the Knicks at 41.5 wins, a ninth-place Eastern Conference finish, while the Bulls are only game higher at 42.5 projected wins. That ties them with the Indiana Pacers for seventh.