What is Currently the Most Valuable Asset in All of American Sports?
In other words, if you were starting an American sports franchise and could pick one asset from anything to start with, what would the most optimal pick be? When thinking about this very interesting question, there are few potential candidates we can rule out off the bat. While NHL superstars like Connor McDavid of the Oilers can be incredibly talented and valuable to a team, the fact is that hockey is too unpredictable and inconsistent for any of their top assets to be seriously considered for this.
While soccer as a whole has top-tier talent, at this moment all of the most valuable players are overseas and most American soccer players are either aging or simply not nearly talented enough to be considered. Smaller sports may have some elite players, but I’m not aware of all of them and so therefore will only be considering assets from baseball, basketball and football from now on.
In baseball, a few ideas come to mind, but many have flaws. Shohei Ohtani is, at his peak, a top-3 batter and pitcher in MLB at the same time, but his flaws are that not only is he aging at 30 years old, but he also is on a contract averaging 70 million dollars per year for a decade, most of which will be paid out when he isn’t even on the roster anymore. Similarly, Aaron Judge is another game-changing baseball player, but he has struggled come playoff time and is also fighting father time at more than 32 years of age. Top baseball players also can tend to be inconsistent on a year-to-year basis (especially pitchers), making players like Paul Skenes and Luis Gil not as valuable as some other assets.
Moving on to football, some familiar names come to mind like quarterback Patrick Mahomes II, though there are other assets who would be invaluable to a new franchise. While Mahomes has been consistently great on a good value contract and is still not even 30 years old, he had a down year and people question whether he can return to form in the future, especially without as incredible of a supporting cast as he’s had for the better part of a decade. New Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson is also intriguing, as an extremely young coach at only 38 years old with the play designing and calling talent that would be invaluable to a franchise. However, he lacks Head Coach experience at this moment and time will tell whether he can live up to his potential or not. Due to his lack of experience, I’m going to have to move on from him and football as a whole.
As for basketball, pieces like the 1st overall pick to draft generational prospect Cooper Flagg out of Duke seem nice, but the NBA draft lottery complicates this move as the current draft order for this upcoming year is unknown at this moment. Additionally, players like rising superstar Victor Wembanyama would be great to build around, but his recent injuries and other young stars’ inconsistent performances and/or off the court issues make this option less attractive.
While it may be surprising to some, my pick for the most valuable asset to a team in all of [American] sports at this moment is Oklahoma City Thunder General Manager Sam Presti. While his lack of championship success is a negative, Presti has done an incredible job building at building incredibly talented team year in and year out for the last nearly 2 decades, seeing multiple deep postseason runs, drafting 3 MVP’s and traded for another player who’s projected to win MVP this upcoming season, and has fielded amazing rosters while also building for the future at the same time, as the Thunder are currently a Top-5 team in the NBA with an incredibly young roster while also having 16 1st Round Picks over the next 5 years alone, averaging out to more than 3 1st Round Picks per season. His incredible job at drafting superstars, making great value trades and signing good contracts make him an invaluable piece to the Thunder, and my pick for the most valuable asset in all of sports at this moment in time.
