NEW YORK — You can’t draft a Big Three, and Miami’s was beaten in the NBA finals by a Dallas team built almost entirely through trades and free agency.

So although next week’s NBA draft isn’t considered particularly strong, perhaps that shouldn’t concern league executives, at least not the ones in charge of assembling the league’s elite teams. While kids are fine on teams trying to get better, they rarely have a place on the ones angling to be the best.

The Mavericks were loaded with players in their 30s who went through the draft back in the 1990s. The Lakers and Celtics won their recent titles in part by getting rid of young guys to make way for more accomplished ones.

But assets are needed to acquire those types of players, which is why someone selected next week could someday be used to land a Pau Gasol or Tyson Chandler, a final piece to a championship puzzle.

ESPN.com draft analyst Chad Ford says the draft is the easiest and cheapest way for the bottom teams to find much-needed talent, but it can only take them so far.

“As they move from a lottery team into an eighth seed or a seven seed, you’ll still see a lot of those young players still playing a role on that team,” he said Thursday during a conference call. “But as they move toward a championship team, you do need veterans, but a lot of times those draft picks and those young players can be the chips that allow you to get the sort of elite NBA veterans that you need to win titles.

“You don’t see a lot of NBA rookies or guys in their second or third year winning NBA championships or leading their teams to NBA championships, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not a very important part of that process.”

Fit tightly between a fantastic finals and a looming lockout, this year’s draft is flying low on the NBA radar. It was weakened in part by the labor uncertainty that likely played a role in persuading expected high lottery picks such as Jared Sullinger of Ohio State and Harrison Barnes of North Carolina to stay in school.

There’s some good point guards, including expected No. 1 pick Kyrie Irving of Duke, national champion Kemba Walker of Connecticut, and Kentucky’s Brandon Knight.

There are plenty of Europeans, though likely no Dirk Nowitzkis, so it’s tempting to downplay the draft, especially since it had so little impact on the teams that just played for the championship.

The Mavericks played nobody in the finals they drafted with their own pick — unless you count Jason Kidd, who was selected in 1994 and went on to two other stops before coming back to Dallas in a trade. The Heat went the free agency route to put LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh together, even trading recent No. 2 overall pick Michael Beasley to Minnesota to free up salary cap space.

Now the Timberwolves have the second pick and are in the position of trying to decide if they want to keep going younger, or consider dealing it for an experienced player who can come in and lead their young core.