I understand the point you were making...and you're right, business is business. If I were in the Lakers FO, or any team's FO, and could have made the Gasol trade I would have done so in a heartbeat. You can't really fault them for that.
But the Spurs ability to do more with less over the years is a pretty remarkable achievement, I'd say much moreso than some of the wealthier teams' abilities to go out and stack the deck in their favor. I could argue that there have been a lot of teams that have gotten tons of top draft picks over the last 20-30 years who didn't converted that 'luck' into a championship...the Clippers, Hawks, Magic...etc.
Any team that wins a le gets some lucky breaks along the way, unless they are so clearly dominant that they just take what's theirs, and there hasn't been a team like that around in a long time.