Kawhi, Durant, LMA... Best trio of all time? You've got the best two way player, the most efficient offensive player (most of the time), and the best post up player in the NBA. Would be insanely beautiful basketball.
Don't listen to DD & his hot takes. He's the Colin Cowherd/Skip Bayless of the BBS. Hopefully, as with those 2 gentlemen, another board poaches him with a nice offer.
Will believe it when I see it, as far as Durant being the first guy in his prime to take a significant discount.
The Spartan culture was respected and admired by all of ancient Greece......yet no one chose to emulate that culture. KD respecting that an over the hill player making a ton of money was willing to dump that contract to get on a better team doesn't mean that he'd be willing to take less money while still in his prime with his choice of teams.
Christ. Let's not start the coronation so early. Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and (Dennis Rodman or Horace Grant). Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and Tom Heinsohn, ya know, won several rings in a row.
The LeBron James trio really wasn't that great. Not sure why that's included... They were never in sync as much as say... Allen, KG, Pierce were. It was more the LeBron show that carried them. Plus their window was only three years and they werent exactly breaking records. If you include that trio, you have a very low standard of GOAT trios.
They were together for 4 years. 4 finals appearances. 2 rings. 27 game win streak. What do you consider a high standard, if that is low to you? No wonder people are never satisfied with the Rockets. It is crazy, an outlier opinion, to think that this potential Spurs big 3 would instantly be better than the Heat, and even more so to say that the Celtics big 3 was better. They only won it all once, and went to the finals another time. A goat trio? Now that outlier would be so large it would be eliminated from the data set.
In the completely weak East. Like I said, if you watched them play, they weren't playing at a collaborative all-star level. It was more LeBron doing what LeBron does. Guess what, he took his Cavs team by himself before he even joined the Heat. The trio's accomplishments aren't that impressive, all things considering. It could have been LeBron and two other all-stars. Wade and Bosh were replaceable parts. They didn't elevate themselves to anything special other than two washed up all stars who took a back seat to LeBron.
The Boston trio was definitely better than the Heat trio. Take that championship team vs the Heat championship and they win every time. The Heat only beat them because they were old. If the Boston trio were together before their peak, they would win multiple championships. Is this a "what have you done for me lately" thing that is with you? Watch the games.
Oh, I didn't know winning rings only happened in the East? The Spurs and the Thunder play in the East? This is a results driven league: Heat: 4 finals. 2 rings. Had one of the most dominating stretches in basketball history with a 27 game win streak. Who cares if they weren't 100% in sync, which is a completely subjective analysis? They won, and then they won more. Celtics: 2 finals. 1 ring. Not as much winning in a much longer time frame. And they also had Rondo, whom developed over the course of the Big 3 era. Many dubbed it as the Big 4 soon afterwards. Like I said, not even close. There is literally not any argument on the contrary.
If rings is all we're looking at and not rational analysis of teams, players, then I don't want to hear anything about Hakeem being better than Duncan.
I am on Outlier's side here. The Heat lost to the Mavericks in the Finals. That Mavs team does not rank that high in terms of talent for NBA Champions. In the final year of the Big Three Heat, I heard the media ask if any contender had ever depended on one player more than that Heat team depended on Lebron (which was a joke). They wouldn't be asking that if Bosh and Wade were playing at HOF levels. And the fact they played in the East was a big deal. It made their Finals appearances not nearly as impressive.
And the Lakers lost to the young Rockets in the Conference Finals, "shocking" the world. Trios lose; it happens. Yet they still made the finals over the Celtics, beating them 4-1. How can you not use the same argument against Boston? So the weakness of the conference is only held against one team but not the other? The power imbalance has been there for ages. At least the Heat were able to make the finals consistently. If you are making the argument that it was actually "Lebron and everybody else", then ok, but that's an argument for if it qualifies as a big three or not. That still does not address the fact that the Lebron's Heat were much more successful than the Celtics big 3 in the same era, and one of the most successful trios in nba history. Correlation is not causation. These guys played in the same era. Big three is, for the most part, comparing teams against each other, NOT individual players. Comparison failure. Success is not the end-all be-all for individuals, but when considering the success of an era, it is. Harden has played well. Howard did as well. But the H&H era ended as a failure. Different standards.
Congrats to that Heat team then for beating a broken down Celtic trio with a Pierce playing half speed. Also, I wonder why LeBron would leave such a great team as you say and go back to the Cavs. Oh that's right, he saw that his co-"stars" were aging. Same thing that happened quickly to that Celtic trio you and I are arguing about. Like I said, a peak Celtics trio would be more successful because they would have more time physically. There is simply more chemistry with that trio vs the Heat trio.
