I'd say no unless they get something really good. Ultimately they've got middling players who are going to end up being expensive. A fairly good draft pick is an opportunity to get a cheaper player who can do the same thing.

A middling player, by definition, is a guy that's probably not really worth what he gets when he signs a second contract in the NBA. Rookie contracts undervalue players, follow on contracts overvalue them. That's the trick to the salary cap. If you re-sign your own guys, you end up with a capped out middling team.

Obviously, if you're going to be successful, you can't let everyone go when they're off their rookie deal. But you have to be judicious in who you're going to give follow on contracts to. Or any FA contracts for that matter. The "going rate" is simply a lot higher for those guys and teams can't afford to make mistakes.

Bringing it back to "stockpiling", I think that means a team needs to be judicious. It can't be piling guys up, it needs to be thinking ahead. When a team sees it's got a middling player who's going to be expensive (more expensive than he's likely worth), it should try to move him while it can. Nocioni would be the example of this situation. If a team is interested in overpaying for them, get a protected pick from them, if that's all you can get, and move on. You've already got a less expensive guy flowing into your system, Thabo, to replace him.

That's what you want to do with middling guys... keep the flow moving and keep your supporting cast inexpensive.

We need to hang onto this pick because time is already running out on Thabo he's more than middling. He'll be an RFA in two summers, and if we play our cards right we'll have cap room then. Unless he's really worth it, we'd be much better of with a guy like Douglas-Roberts or Budinger for less than $2M than we would with Thabo for two or three times that.

Or alternatively, we might be better with Thabo at $6M and a rookie contract at $2M than with Tyrus, Deng or Gordon at $8M or $9M.

Any way you cut it, having young and cheap middling players on rookie deals seems the only alternative to managing the cap and keeping your supporting players cheap.

Also, it probably goes without saying, but I'm not saying that's the only thing a team needs to do. Ultimately it just has to be right in evaluating talent. Simply not paying $15M/yr contracts to old, fading stars goes a long way. But still, the draft seems like a good deal. It's really the only way NBA teams get a shot at cheap talent.