The Adam Silver/Kevin Durant saga has taken some interesting turns in the past few days, as Wanda Durant has had to explain to Commissioner Silver why he shouldn’t be too hard on her son.
Silver originally said that Durant going to the Warriors was bad for the NBA. He added his criticism towards not just the Warriors, but any “super team” consisting of a collection of superstars.
I suppose it all depends on what aspect of basketball you’re looking at. From a competitive balance standpoint, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the congregation of superstars on one team will effect the amount of squads that legitimately have a chance to compete for a championship, but there are a couple flaws to that assumption.
The first is that a team of superstars will necessarily play a cohesive brand of basketball that produces successful results. That’s a big assumption, especially because basketball is so chemistry driven.
The last few “super teams” in recent memory were the Boston Celtics with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, the Miami Heat with LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade, and the Los Angeles Lakers with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, and Pau Gasol.
These teams had mixed results. The Celtics got one championship, the Heat got two, and the Lakers zero.
It’s not as if these “super teams” totally dominated the league for a prolonged stretch. Yes they won a few championships, but certainly not enough to throw your arms up and and lament that the league was unwatchable because the championship was assured every season.
Also, it’s a false equivalency for guys like Silver to treat the construction of all “super teams” the same way.
The Celtics constructed through trades to surround Pierce with Garnett and Allen. Is Danny Ainge bad for basketball because he was able to pull off two shrewd trades to improve his team?
The Lakers’ situation probably proves most powerfully that anxiety over “super teams” is drastically overblown. It sounds laughable to suggest that the Lakers could be a part of this discussion, but it’s a serious case of revisionist history to discount the impact that people thought this particular Lakers team would have on the league.
They were expected to compete with the Heat year in and year out for championships. This was back when Howard was still considered the best center in the NBA, and Nash hadn’t yet broken down and was coming off an All Star appearance in his last season with the Suns.
Silver’s real displeasure with “super teams” should accurately be assessed as disappointment in how the Miami Heat built their roster: 3 superstars conspiring to meet up together years beforehand via free agency.
That shouldn’t be applauded as a case of a team’s front office brilliantly constructing a team, because there’s no skill in that beyond just making salary cap room. Pat Riley might have met with James and Bosh, but they were coming to Miami to play with their friend Wade regardless of who the Team President was.
To equate the Warriors’ situation with the Heat isn’t accurate or fair. Stephen Curry was drafted by the team. Klay Thompson was drafted by the team. Draymond Green was drafted by the team. Should a team should be demonized for drafting multiple star players?
If an already talented team has the cap space to sign another star player, why shouldn’t they? It’s not like Durant and Thompson were playing on other teams and had meetings with each other to discuss going to Golden State to join forces with Curry and Green.
It seems that Silver understands these nuances more after talking to Durant’s mother Wanda, who has always been an extremely vocal supporter of her son.
“The one thing I have learned, I was just talking to Kevin Durant’s mom, is every situation is different,” Silver said. “ This was a team in Golden State where they have three all stars who were all drafted. A team that’s under the cap. And one free agent, who also happens to be a superstar, makes a decision to go to that team. It’s very different than if multiple players from different teams had come together and said let’s all land on yet a completely different team.”
Clearly he’s referring to the Heat, and their situations are certainly different. If it took a conversation with Wanda Durant for him to reach this epiphany, then so be it.
Going back to what Silver said about “super teams” being bad for the NBA, Mark Cuban refuted that notion pretty eloquently from an economic standpoint. He brought up the fact that if just as many people are tuning in to see the Warriors lose as to win, the league is going to profit off of that polarization regarding a talented team.
Villains make a league as much money as heroes do, and if the Warriors have become a villain throughout all this, they are going to bring in a lot of revenue for the league.
“Super teams” don’t dominate the amount of championships won. Yes, recent history has shown that they’ve gotten their fair share, but teams like the 2011 Dallas Mavericks, 2014 San Antonio Spurs, and 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers dismiss the notion that in today’s NBA landscape, free agent orchestration among multiple star players converging in one location is the only way a title can be won.
Silver is perhaps projecting his own disappointment that Durant didn’t stay in Oklahoma City, but he has no rational basis to object to Durant’s decision. These players are free agents, and hence have the right to self determination.
He says that it’s evidence of the necessity for a new CBA. So does he think the reason this happened was because the salary cap is too high? With this influx of new money coming into the league, is he implying that player payrolls shouldn’t rise and that more of that money should be going to the owners?
It sounds like Silver has become more enlightened on this issue thanks to Wanda Durant, and that’s a good thing, because neither Kevin Durant nor the Warriors should be blamed for trying to both build the best team possible and win a championship.
The Warriors have constructed the core of their team through brilliant drafting. I suppose the “competitive balance” of a league can get disrupted by a team operating at a vastly superior level to other teams in the league, but Silver is demonizing success while he should be chastising other franchises who appear rudderless and inept year after year.
Teams with no ability to properly scout players, evaluate talent, build rosters, and strategize to exploit the unique traits of the pieces within their lineup are the ones who disrupt the competitive balance of this league.
If Silver is concerned that the Warriors are going to win more than 70 games too easily next season, that’s a reflection of far too many teams in this league with the inability to put a good product out on the court. Why isn’t he commenting on that?
It is easier for Silver to try to harness public frustration than to actually address the root cause of the problem he sees. Other teams in the league should draft better, hire better coaching staffs, and make better player personnel decisions to make the league more competitive.
He shouldn’t try to drag the Warriors down to the level of other teams, but work to get other teams up to the Warriors’ level.
Of course, that’s a very tall order. Most teams around the league don’t have coaches and executives adept enough to build a roster that can win 70 games. That may be the reality of this league, but to blame the Warriors for exacerbating that problem isn’t fair on Silver’s part.
The Warriors are a great organization, and perhaps Joe Lacob was right when he said the Warriors were “lightyears” ahead of other franchises. If that’s the case, Silver should embrace their greatness instead of making comments that allude to him wanting to tear them down to make other inferior teams in this league look better.