Losing the pick is a good thing it needs to go.
I can't see where losing an asset is ever a good thing. You can say that now, but what if, a couple of years from now, the player we might have drafted ends up being the next Klay Thompson. Yeah, it's a little bit of a crap shoot, but financially, its a small gamble compared to freeagency. To say lose it this year instead of next year, doesn't make sense to me. Worry about next year, well, next year! Right now, for most fans, it's about hope for the future. To not make the playoffs, and lose the pick, would leave me, and I suspect many fans with an empty feeling, especially if we go and spend 11 or 12 mil on Rondo, and then have little or no money to sign anyone else of significance. You can always acquire future draft picks through trades.
The idea that you can't build through the draft is ridiculous. 95% of all the players playing in the NBA were drafted by someone. Curry, Thompson, Barnes, Green and Ezeli were all drafted by the Warriors. When last I looked, they aren't too shabby. I agree that you have to know what your doing, but at the same time, I don't think it's rocket science. As much as we've been critical of McLemore, and rightly so, he hasn't cost the franchise very much financially. Although he may represent a failed experiment to some extent, for the most part our only loss is time spent. For example, one could argue that McLemore has been as good a player, and maybe even a better player overall this year than Belinelli. But Belinelli is going to cost us in one year, what Ben makes in two years financially.
Sadly, the two of them together are costing us around 9 mil this year, and I can't say that it's money well spent. In today's NBA world, 9 mil isn't a lot of money, but it's 9 mil that could have been spent on someone else. Of course draft picks have more relevance when you play them more than 6 minutes a night.