You are over simplifying it, not sure if intentional or not.
My point is that purposefully sabotaging your team to purposefully be worse does not make a team better in the long run.
I am saying that the logic of trading Vuc because we had "topped out" is flawed logic. If we had reached the peak of what we could be with Vuc on the roster, then that is saying that youth cannot grow and develop. Our team was not built around Vuc, it is built on the 4 lottery caliber players we have on the roster all under the age of 23, all 4 of which were injured either A. for the entire season or B. for large chunks of the season. As constructed, the offense would not have run through Vucevic, because when the team was healthy, it wasn't. It was running through Markelle. Vuc was an all star caliber complimentary piece to Markelle and the youth.
The only reason this season was a loss was due to those injuries. Not for any weaknesses in our current roster makeup.
Next year, we will start the season healthy, with the exception that I don't believe Fultz or Isaac are projected to return at the start of the season, but will be back at some point within the season.
The roster with Vuc was already a playoff roster. Our youth core would continue to develop, and have an all-star alongside them. It's not about building around Vuc, it's about having talent around our youth.
We would have had a lottery pick regardless of trading Vuc or not. We still would have had the #5 pick this year. We would be missing out on pick #8, but have an all-star center.
Now, we still have those young players on our roster, but now there is no all-star to compliment them. Now we have dice rolls on a #8 pick, and whatever we use with the cap space freed up from Otto Porter's contract.
My argument is that it was needless. The team had already made the post-season for 2 consecutive years after the longest drought in franchise history, only missed this season due to injuries, and when we were healthy at the beginning of the season, we had the best record in the conference. So we shook things up needlessly just for the sake of shaking things up, and we went into intentional tank mode, with fans cheering on losses and boo'ing wins every step of the way. And for what? Because we had an injury plagued season during a year that saw the entire NBA hit with an increased level of injuries?
To me, that's not a reason to blow up the roster. The roster had not topped out at a #7 seed, and the roster had a lot in front of them. Now it's blown up and we have taken several steps backwards all in the name of shaking things up because the NBA had a lot of injuries this year.