When the Cleveland Cavaliers traded three future draft picks for Luol Deng, they went all-in on this season. The logic of a win-now move is mortgaging part of your future in order to maximize present gain -- for example, grabbing the final piece of a championship team. Cleveland has made four Top-4 draft picks in the last three years, yet they still have a 11-23 record and a -5.8 point differential. The Cavs are striving towards a first-round sweep.

The logic of the move is entirely backwards. Cleveland seems to think making the playoffs proves they are a legitimate NBA franchise. The reality is you can miss the playoffs and be a legit franchise and you can make the playoffs and not be one. What is far more important is building an organization that values the right things, maintains a long-term perspective and doesn’t get too caught up in the public relations game.

Not many teams get the chance to make two No. 1 and two No. 4 picks in three years. The Sacramento Kings have been on-and-off tanking for most of the past decade and they haven’t picked higher than No. 5 once. In a situation like that, when you have the pick of the litter of the best young basketball players in the world, a front office that knows what it’s doing can construct a title-contender. This is known as the “OKC model.”

The problem with the model isn’t that it rewards losing or encourages tanking. The problem is that a lot of NBA franchises don’t know how to evaluate young talent in the first place. Getting first choice from a pool of players doesn’t do much good if you don’t know what you should be looking for. If Sam Presti were making the picks instead of Chris Grant, the Cavs would already be a contender. It’s not that he’s a genius. His model just makes more sense.

When you look at the players Cleveland has drafted, there doesn’t seem to be an underlying logic to the way Grant is building the team. You have an extremely skilled but relatively unathletic 6’3 PG, a jack-of-all trades master of none 6’4 combo guard, a traditional 6’9 PF with two-way ability and a 6’8 small-ball PF who needs defensive protection. All four should have long NBA careers, but Grant appears to be throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.

The “Core Four” of Kyrie, Waiters, Thompson and Bennett is the exact wrong way you want to build a team through the draft. You have to select players whose games accentuate each other’s skills, instead of replicating them. Both Kyrie and Waiters like to hold the ball and neither is an elite athlete; Irving should be sharing a backcourt with a 6’6 slasher like Terrence Ross. Thompson and Bennett both need to play with a center, not each other.

With so many mismatched parts, the Cavs have just not been a cohesive team this season. When you play Irving and Waiters together, you are going to have weak perimeter D and not a lot of ball movement. Instead of making each other better, they are making each other worse. Cleveland still doesn’t have a center of the future, which is insane. Draft Jonas Valanciunas, Andre Drummond, Nerlens Noel or Alex Len and there would be more room for optimism.

As is, the addition of Deng gives the Cavs an unwieldy collection of parts. On one hand, six first-round picks - the Core Four plus Tyler Zeller and Sergey Karasev -- still trying to figure out their way in the league. On the other, a bunch of veteran players in their late 20’s -- guys like Deng, Anderson Varejao and Jarrett Jack -- who are ready to win now. It’s basically two different teams being awkwardly fused together and there is no guarantee that it works.

Given the dearth of good teams in the East, the Cavs have a decent shot of making the playoffs, if everyone stays healthy. Deng, at 28 and at the peak of his career, is obviously a huge upgrade at SF from Earl Clark, who is yet more proof that 3/4 combo forwards should be played as small-ball 4’s. Along with Anderson Varejao, Deng gives Cleveland two savvy frontcourt players who can make plays, move the ball and be cogs in a good offense.

However, there are still foundational problems with the way the roster is constructed. There isn’t much defensive talent -- none of their big men block shots and they have a lot of undersized, offensive-minded lead guards. Their wing players all have defensive ability, but that’s not enough if you don’t have the right big men behind them. Make Thompson and Varejao try to defend the Pacers or the Heat frontline and it will be a slaughter.

For Cleveland to have any chance of a competitive first-round series, they have to get all the way to No. 6, where they would likely face the Toronto Raptors at No. 3. People still don’t believe in the Raptors, but they are 10-4 since dealing Rudy Gay, with wins over the Thunder and the Pacers. Even though Masai Ujiri has not shown much indication that he really wants to win this season, the overall talent on his roster is making the decision for him.

When you break down the match-ups, things look bleak for Cleveland. At this stage in his career, Irving would not be able to dominate a defender like Kyle Lowry, while the 27-year-old Lowry would eat up his poor individual defense. Ross is too big and too fast for Waiters, much less Matthew Dellavedova. Deng might have an edge on the younger DeRozan, but Amir Johnson and Valanciunas are bigger, faster and just as skilled as the Cavs big men.

The Raptors may not have a “franchise player” like Irving, but they have a young core that fits well together and will grow into an elite team over the next few years. Jonas is 21, Ross is 22, DeRozan is 24 and Johnson is 26. They don’t have much chance of beating Indiana or Miami in a seven-game series next May, but they will learn valuable lessons about team defense and half-court execution. They remind me a lot of the Pacers in 2010 and 2011.

The Cavs, in contrast, will be just another poorly run Eastern team with a mix of young and middle-age players going nowhere. By the time their Top-4 picks are in their mid 20’s and ready to contend, Deng, Varejao and Jack will be on their way out of the league. When a win now mantra interferes with your long-term goals, something has gone wrong. Grant needs to add defense to his young core, not push them into the playoffs before they are ready.

All he is doing is setting up the fanbase for disappointment, as people inevitably turn on young stars when they can’t win in the playoffs. However, if Cleveland doesn’t win a lot of playoff games in the next five years, it shouldn’t say much about Irving. Losing LeBron James has taught the Cavs nothing. If you don’t run your franchise the right way, all the picks in the world won’t matter. That’s something everyone eyeing the 2014 draft should remember.