Thursday, October 12, 2017

Super Teams

With last year's Championship, the Golden State Warriors proved to be one of the most dominant teams in NBA history. After compiling the best winning NBA record of all time the year before, they added an MVP and got even better. Many people have given Kevin Durrant and the Warriors grief for this but from someone who was rooting against them in the playoffs, I'm OK with it.

Creating super teams may be opening a can of worms for other teams to follow their lead.  I'm sure there will be many others to follow. Lebron has a way of bringing good players over to the Cavs and that will continue for the rest of his career where ever he ends up playing. (I actually started typing this post several months ago before Derrick Rose and Dwayne Wade recently signed with the Cavs.)


Any team that is good with a deep roster is a super team. The Celtics and Lakers in the 80's were super teams. They just went about creating their teams differently than the players today who are more apt to make alliances, financial sacrifices, and deals to improve their odds of winning a ring.

I really don't have a problem with the super team concept. In fact I think it would be interesting if we took things a step further. What if the team that won the title got the first round draft pick each year? The main reason I say this is because I hate seeing bad teams give up towards the end of the year so they can draft a better player for the upcoming season. Imagine what mediocre teams would do to stay out of the cellar towards the end of the year if they were actually penalized for being bad. Teams with poor records would stop tanking in order to improve their odds of a high lottery pick at the draft.

I know that incorporating such an extreme and unfair practice would disrupt balance to the force. It might take teams like Brooklyn or Philadelphia 5 years or more to slowly improve while the top teams just ran dynasties for years. One problem with the Super team concept is that it eventually turns your favorite stars into villains. Some people who loved the excitement of the Splash Brothers years ago now look at the team like they are a bad guy in WWE.

A handful of super team will dominate the league in the future, but that will make it even more exciting to see upsets when they are defeated by an underdog.

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