I don't know about that. I think Klay and Draymond are a bit overrated in that if they had their own teams I don't think they would be better than say...Cousins. I think people forget how much having an MVP player affects how your team just works. If the Rockets got Millsap and Hayward those guys would look a ton better around Harden and with Capela getting better and better I bet people would suddenly be saying "Man, Rockets are just loaded." Think about what Love and Kyrie were doing on their own without Lebron for instance...yeah...I think the biggest thing is having an MVP caliber player that just makes the game easier for everyone.
Boston is the next likely super team. It has the franchise history and clout, plus a great pool of talent and draft picks to make it happen. Though, Celtics need to trust the process. They have young developing draft picks like Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, potentially the first overall pick in 2017, and 3 more first-round picks in 2018. The worst thing for them to do would be to cash in all their chips at once and go for a broken Blake Griffin or other 2nd tier talent this summer and trade a young talented player that later develops into their James Harden and comes back to haunt them.
Good post. I wouldn't call GS a super team prior to Durant's joining. They just had one superstar in Curry plus a bunch of very good role players who fit extremely well together. You can say that OKC had a homegrown super team before they got rid of Harden. But homegrown teams usually don't count because they are "built" rather than "bought" or "assembled." If the definition of a super team is "at least three franchise level players" then there have not been that many super teams in recent history. But if you lower that to "at least two" then there have been plenty.
Superteams are nothing new - it's just there's far more media today covering it. Back before free agency, the Celtics and Lakers had endless collections of hall of famers. In the 80's, you had the Showtime Lakers. The 90's didn't have too much success with it, but the Bulls were able to add a 3rd star to their team in Rodman. The Rockets tried the Olajuwon/Drexler/Barkley and Olajuwon/Barkley/Pippen combos. The Magic tried to form a superteam by gutting their payroll and then bringing together McGrady and Grant Hill to build around, while also trying to get Duncan. Lakers tried it with the Payton/Malone/Shaq/Kobe thing. Suns tried it with Nash/Stoudamire/Johnson. More recently, you have the Celtics, and then Heat, Cavs, and Warriors. All of these involved some combination of free agency and trade. This is the history of the league. It's no worse today than in previous eras.
This was basically what I can see the argument that the latest super teams starting with the Heat (Lebron/Wade/Bosh) were slightly more superstar heavy. Pretty close though.
Super team eras come and go. This GS/CAVS era is very similar to the 80s with LA/Boston which had both teams dominate that era. Of course you had the 76ers with Dr J, whom were like the Spurs today. Coming 3rd but don't have enough weapons to usually challenge the big 2. The 90s in my mind was the most fun in terms of having alot of teams being competitive. If we take away the obviously dominant Bulls, it still leaves alot of very capable teams. Just look at how much variety we had in terms of teams making the NBA Finals outside the Bulls. The end of era Magic Lakers Stockton/Malone Jazz Ewing Knicks The "what could have been" Orlando Magic Barkley Suns Drexler Trailblazers Kemp/Payton Sonics Beginning of Duncan Spurs Hakeem Rockets
There will be more superteams though not like GSW where there are two mvps and 4-5 all stars together. Three stars is a superteam. It's fun to predict where and with who they will be. I think Davis as soon as he can in a couple of years will bolt New Orleans and go join some other stars in a big market.
You have to believe a team like the Pistons is going to come out of no where and be a giant killer. But, that team would need luck in having a bunch of Billups, Rip, Sheed, Prince level players and then have another(ben) turn into an absolute monster game changer. Most likely is you see a combination of CP3, Paul Goerge, Butler, Hayward, Melo, Lowry, Millsap, Dwight, DRose teaming up and trying to form superteams with other players or themselves via big pay cuts. I could see Pat Riley going after CP3 and Melo + Dwade back all on cheap contracts. Boston going after Hayward or Butler. Clippers going after Paul George. Lowry/Drose and Millsap to the Spurs. Lowry/Drose to New Orleans. Dwight and Jrue to Dallas. Gallo and Ibaka to Rockets. Stuff like that. None of it will be good enough vs the Warriors or Cavs.
Way to skip over Harden and the Rockets. Harden could easily demand a trade to go home to the Lakers where Magic Johnson would be in love with having him run the point like he used to.
I think the Bucks have the potential to be the next Pistons like giant killers. They should let Monroe walk and go after guys like Lowry and Millsap and other near all star type of players and vets to fill out the bench.
It'sone thing when they join forces in their early 30s quite another when they do it entering their primes. As to the older teams from the 80s, they became super teams through the years together. For example the celtics drafted bird, traded for parish and drafted kevin mchale. That's how you do it. They didnt all meet together at a wedding or a sex party and say we should all be on the same team. Big difference. Warriors did it the right way. Let us not forget how in 2012 we were laughing at that chump garbage time player for the warriors that was all bent out of shape because we broke the record for most 3 pointers. That chump was draymond.
As long as the commissioner is Adam Silver that's all we'll see. At least David Stern cared about competition. All Silver cares about is selling to bandwagon fans.
And building up LeBron as his Jordan(he probably made a decision that Curry was already too old to build up as his MJ so he stuck with LeBron till a young stud comes into the league to be the next Kobe and so on). I have no doubt the Cavs will beat the Warriors in a referee lopsided match favoring the Cavs. They're going to get away with murder. LeBron's legacy and taking down the Warriors is the bigger money making story over the Warriors winning.
Uh, what? Super teams have existed in the NBA since Bill Russell. Just ask Wilt Chamberlain, Russell always said Chamberlain was the much better player but Russell had much better teammates. He won like 8 rings in a row, you don't do that unless your team is a super team. And the greatest rivalries in the NBA were always made up of superteams, blaming Lebron for starting it is just dumb what about KG Allen and Pierce with Rondo and Perkins? Or Kobe Gasol Bynum Odom and Artest? Hell even Shaq, Kobe, Malone and Payton were a super team, they were just dysfunctional. The only difference now is there is social media so it there is a lot more hype for every good player in the NBA. For example during Russell's time people really only knew Russell's team because they won all the rings and then Wilt Chamberlain cuz he was beating up everyone else, there were probably lots of other good players but nobody knew about them. Now, every NBA team uses social media to hype their own players to make it seem like they have a franchise star, so when that guy eventually leaves to join other teams it makes it seem like a super team. I mean take a look at Irving and Love, both of those guys have accomplished nothing by themselves, Love is perpetually injured and couldn't bring his team to a playoff and Irvin wouldn't even make the all star team in the West. But paired with Lebron suddenly Cavs are a super team. Hell even Dallas had a super team with Dirk, Nash and Finley and Spurs had a super team for years with TD, Ginobili and Parker. Super teams are nothing new in the NBA, and there will always be super teams because players want to win and GMs want to create teams who win. Same with GSW, while GSW is indeed a super team, its not like GSW is the greatest collection of talent the NBA has ever seen. Will GSW win in a 7 game series against prime Jordan Bulls? Or how about Kobe Gasol Lakers? Both of those have equal or superior talent to GSW team, just the fact that they have post game and post defense along with perimeter scoring makes those teams more complate than GSW.
Lebron doesn't need refs help to take down GSW. If the refs want Cavs to win how come they are screwing the rockets against Spurs? Cavs have a better record against Rox and their frontline would kill Capela/Anderson, but against Spurs they have a tougher time. Spurs also destroyed GSW by 30 pts, Rockets needed a double overtime game to win, so again if Silver's agenda is to let Lebron take down GSW why are they letting Spurs win when that team can beat both GSW and Cavs? These media conspiracies are just dumb you don't need external influencers, the NBA players hype up themselves. Silver didn't tell Lebron to go to Miami or come back to Cleveland. And he didn't tell KD to sign with GSW. If he didn't even orchestrate these moves how will he suddenly become the puppeteer behind the stage arranging who wins or loses wtf.
