Has LeBron Killed the NBA?
Linkage will take you to an article by CBS Sports’s Ken Berger, all about how Chris Paul has been so inspired by the Wade / James / Bosh trio that he wants to replicate it somewhere else.
Reports of this idea first surfaced at Carmelo Anthony’s wedding the weekend after James announced his decision to head to Miami. Allegedly, Paul proposed during the reception that he, Amar’e, and ‘Melo form their own three-headed monster in New York. I didn’t pay much attention to this idea at first, because it sounded like the type of thing that…well, a friend would say to his other buddies after they’d all gotten hammered at a wedding reception.
However, Berger’s reporting makes it sound like Paul’s alleged proclamation had a lot more substance to it than that. According to Berger, CP3 is now determined to force a trade to the Magic, Lakers, or Knicks before the start of the 2010-11 season.
Obviously, the first two of those scenarios would have the rest of the pieces already in place. The Knicks, though, wouldn’t be “complete” until, in theory, Carmelo rebuffed Denver and decided to sign in New York after his contract expires in 2011.
Of course, that last scenario is far from a done deal. The giant Bermuda Triangle that is the new CBA could render everything moot—though I become more convinced every day that it ultimately won’t look all that different from the current one. Nevertheless, Melo will have to decide whether to accept a 3 year, $65MM extension from the Nuggets between now and then, knowing full well that it could be his last true opportunity to pull down the type of scrill that the free agents of 2010 are now making.
Beyond the specifics of what happens with Paul, the larger implication is the troubling one, especially for small market teams such as the Cavs.
For now, Miami’s triple-star alliance has become the new paradigm for young players in the NBA to covet. We may have entered into an era where every new talent in the league will start to believe that the only path to a title is alongside two other established great players.
If so, it’s a dangerous time for the NBA. The obvious reality is that there can’t be 3 great players on all 30 teams. It would be hard for me to imagine that there can be 3 truly great players on 10 teams.
So what happens?
Hypothetically, power would concentrate in just a handful of teams—probably 5 or 6 at most. By itself, this doesn’t sound so crazy. There are only 5 or 6 legitimate title contenders at most in any given NBA season. But unlike the contenders of the past, the disparity between the talent levels of these new powers and the rest of the league would be astronomical. So astronomical, in fact, that I find it hard to believe that competition could exist at a reasonable enough level to justify the continuation of a 30-team league. What would be the point of even putting 16 teams into the playoffs if everyone knows that, for the next half-decade, only the Knicks or Heat can legitimately rise out of the East to the Finals in order to battle either LA or Oklahoma City?
On some level, I’m hesitant to push this idea too hard. For one thing, we all know that just putting the supposed pieces in place doesn’t automatically mean you get to lift the trophy. Injuries, feuds, bad luck, bad match-ups, and a thousand other factors can all ignite the wick of the bomb that blows up a paper champion.
For another thing, we have to remember that it’s been proven in years past that defense can, in fact, win titles. As Tom Haberstroh has pointed out, the best blueprint for beating super-teams like the Heat may be the type of suffocating defense that propelled the Pistons past a “more talented” Lakers team in 2004. (Note: that link is only going to be good if you have ESPN Insider. Sorry.) To create a monster of that order, you’d need talent—but not the type of high-dollar, high-octane offensive power that we’re seeing in Miami and Paul’s dream of NY.As the 2007 Cavs showed, you may only need one superstar to get there, provided that the rest of the cast is willing to chase after and rough up the opponent like prison guards.
To return to a theme we’ve covered here before, I am severely disappointed by the idea that stars will now start defaulting to making alliances as a means to winning. It’s unfair to place the blame for this squarely on Wade, LeBron, and Bosh; after all, I have to point the finger at the Garnett / Pierce / Allen combo for reintroducing the term “Big Three” into our basketball vernacular. (And Jesus Christ, do I hate Danny Ainge for that.) But at least in that case, the team was created through trades rather than three players engineering everything on their own because of a lack of confidence in their own individual abilities.
We’ll have to see where this Chris Paul story goes. But I for one am not keen on the idea of watching two or three teams run the league for the next decade, all because Pat Riley created an unprecedented opportunity in South Beach. The problem isn’t the 2010 Heat; it’s the idea that they’ve now created a precedent that could make the NBA as a whole unsustainable.
-T
