Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER!! It’s 2024 and it’s getting huh-huh-hot.
Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale from the 1980s ⬆️
The playoffs and the NBA season have shown us something man — that there are no shortcuts — that winning has to be done organically, and by committee. Say what you will about the modern day (Boston Celtics) but they are certainly not the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Milwaukee Bucs, and Phoenix Suns, who were all built in the super-team model of yesteryear, like taking a bunch of great chefs and putting them all in the same kitchen (in Las Vegas) to make a dumpling.
Imagine David Chang, Nancy Silverton, Thomas Keller, and Rachael Ray all in the same kitchen tomorrow — like who’s going to stir the soup?
The NBA has changed. The world is changing too.
Gone are the days when the best player in the league could decide that he wants to break his contract and force his way to any city in the country with a couple of his golf buddies to form a championship team. The remnants of that system are still here of course, in the kaleidoscope of nepotism that is the Lebron and Bronny James saga. But for the most part we’re in a league of parity nowadays, and
I, for one, am really jazzed about it. Not only do you have to win by committee in today’s NBA, your players have to like playing with each other at the same time. The Boston Celtics are a prime example of this, as were the Golden State Warriors (even Kevin Durant was a nice to have at the end of the day).
It was never just about Steph Curry back then, there were always role players who made enormous contributions, from Andre Iguodala to Kevon Looney. The Denver Nuggets were top heavy this year after their team was gutted (unforgivable!) to save money, but they were built from scratch, just like Minnesota and Oklahoma City, two other supposedly small market teams, whatever that means. No one can look at what those teams have and believe they don’t all have a legitimate championship future.
Team sport, team game. Build from the bottom.
I think there’s something so beautiful about this new wrinkle in the game, the evolution, perhaps re-evolution of the organic build in the league. Even in sports, especially sports, winning by committee is always going to be a better product than a formulaic super team put together by ego, money, and shortsighted single-minded domination.
Golf and tennis excluded; even the dominance of Michael Jordan was supported by the sweat of Horace Grant, Toni Kukoc and Dennis Rodman, role players who buffered the greatness of #23 in the most selfish moment ever, the 90s.
The takeaway from all of this shouldn’t be wow MJ is so good you could put him on any team, and he would win, but wow MJ was so fortunate to be on such a good team all those years, because it gave him the opportunity to win on the highest of levels as often as he did.
Unlike Lebron.
It’s really a miracle that Lebron won as much as he did given the teams he had, and the dearth of talent on those teams. Perhaps the system back in the 2010’s was in a position to support that kind of title chasing, but given the recent rule changes, that system is dust.
That brings us to this year’s Finals between the Celtics and Mavericks. Perhaps because they’re so (so far?) effing boring, there’s been this ridiculous conversation around Jason Tatum. The criticism out there about his greatness, that Tatum is somehow not playing up to his contract because he’s not scoring as aggressively as other players on the Celtics. As long as they’re winning it should be so obvious that to say it is ridiculous, but it’s not yet.
The Beatles weren’t the Beatles because of John Lennon or George Harrison. They were the compounded effect of each and every one of them. As were the The Supremes, Milli Vanilli, Wu Tang, Abba, the list goes on.
Somehow, after all these years, we’re still learning that the NBA is a team sport, one built on the arithmetic of shared talent, as opposed to the urges of a singleminded ego-fueled ecosystem that tries to pit us all against each other in a winner takes all ranking system of who the most “worthy” players are.
Worthy of their contracts.
Worthy of their ranking.
Worthy of our adoration.
Worthy of eachother, even.
Congrats to the Celtics. As a Lakers fan I will always hate you but you deserve to be celebrated right now.
To the future we go
BBW