I get the feeling of frustration and anger, but what exactly was the FO and coaching staff supposed to do? Play the vets more, or ask the kids to deliberately play bad?
The only thing I can fault them for is not playing Bruno more. I feel that given our requirement at 3, and our obvious interest in him, we should have played him more. Perhaps the coaching staff saw enough during practice, and he has fallen off our plans completely (signing Nigel would also suggest that), but in any case, playing him more would have let us see what we have, and could have contributed to some losses (given the number of close games we won, it could have been significant).
Other than that, what exactly could we have done? Unlike some other teams, that have few stars, and then role players surrounding them, we have several high picks in our team, some of whom we hope to develop into stars. Sure, I would also love to get a star in the draft, but tanking is relatively easier for such teams. If the stars are out with a real (or exaggerated) injury, they can afford to play a G-league team, and stink up their record.
We kind of did that last year, where we traded our best player to retain our pick, and added another, to go from 0 picks to 2 first rounders (which we then parlayed into 3). We can argue about the trade, its timing, the value we received, and again, not following through by trading some more vets to completely stink our way to a top 3 pick. Again, we can argue about signing vets in the first place this year, not using our cap space as rental to pick more assets and so on. I can agree on many of those things. However as for picking up these late season wins, the coaching staff and the players were doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Play hard and make an effort to win each game. Unlike Sixers during the "process", we expect many of the kids currently on the roster to be here for some time (or be attractive enough for trades). Maintaining the integrity of the game is vital to this process, I feel.
As some other people have pointed out, we have not only drafted poorly, we have also failed to develop any of our kids. Good organizations are able to turn late picks into useful players/stars. There was a time when we did that too, constantly finding late round gems like Peja, Hedo, Gerald Wallace, Kevin Martin, etc. Was it a function only of scouting, or a combination of scouting, and strong organization that helps players succeed? I think it was the latter. In fact, during the Adelman era, virtually all our late round picks turned out to be stars or at least useful contributors. Since then, even our high first rounders have often failed to live to potential. The only success we had in developing a late draft pick is IT, who too had his best seasons away from us (excluding Whiteside, since when we cut him, we had no idea of the player he will develop into). This is the first year in a long time, where several players have shown promise. Long way to go, but most of the kids have shown that they belong in the league. We need to develop that. I feel that will be more important to the future of the franchise, than picking two spots higher (as much as I would have loved that).
That said, I hope the BB gods smile on us on lottery day.