ReggiesKnicks wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:ReggiesKnicks wrote:
Hmm...why is that?
The Celtics in 2008 were exceptional, same with the 2013 Heat, the 2021 Brooklyn Nets also showed a lot in limited minutes.
The 2008 Celtics underperformed in the post-season but still won the title and dominated the regular season.
The 2013 Heat had already started seeing Wade decline but had one of the best stretches of basketball ever.
The 2021 Nets had moments but injuries kept them from staying together.
What is different between these teams and the Warriors isn't "The Warriors worked because of Durant and the other teams didn't work because they had Durant", nor is it because of Curry or Kerr's system.
The Warriors were the best ever because they had underpaid stars and were able to keep their nucleus of 5 players together and then add a Top 5 player in the NBA at the height of his powers.
The Celtics had to trade part of their roster and assets for Kevin Garnett.
The Heat in 2011 had no bench since they had to sign Bosh/Wade/LeBron to slightly max deals, but then once they did flesh out credible role players in 2013, Wade was no longer what he was.
The Nets had to make trades and had injuries.
This whole idea that the Warriors succeeded because of system or the players and these other rosters didn't get to the same levels because of what you are insinuating is incorrect. Curry was signed to a below-max deal as a unanimous MVP, the NBA saw the single largest salary cap increase in NBA history, and Kevin Durant saw free agency when seldom do Top 5 players in the NBA hit free agency.
I mean, if you just want to say that all that matters is the sum of talent on the roster, then we just plain disagree.
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Well that isn't all I am saying, but which of the teams you deem as "super teams" had Klay Thompson as the clear-cut 4th best player and Andre Iguodala as the 5th best piece?
We can move beyond that though. The Heat, Celtics and Nets all lacked a foundation. They didn't have a nucleus which went to back-to-back NBA Finals and were a couple baskets short or a nut-kick away from winning back-to-back titles prior to the addition of Kevin Durant. They had a system which was tested and true and all the players sans Durant knew the system and their roles. Ironically, the player who struggled most in 2017 was Klay Thompson, whose skill-set is move and shoot, move and shoot, think about dribbling and shoot.
The Miami Heat had a relatively new coach and had to build a system. The Nets never had time to gel due to injuries and also had a coach who hasn't been considered for any vacancies over the past 2 years (I know you will say "Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving got him fired", which may be true, but the fact is Nash hasn't gotten another opportunity). The Celtics were one of the best defenses ever while Garnett in 2008 approached the On-Court ratings of that Warriors team.
My point is the Warriors had a structure and system in place and then added a player whose skill-set fit into their system and filled a need. The Celtics, Heat and Nets all lacked that, some stripped part of their core to acquire a player to make the super team and on different occasions the Celtics and Heat resembled the greatest team of all-time.
So I think it is fair to say that the Warriors did have a particular strong 4th & 5th best players in Klay & Iggy once Durant came, though I'd also point out that their further depth was damaged. They lost Barnes, Bogut & Barbosa from their core 8 man rotation, and while adding KD with one of those spots made it worth it, going from Bogut & Barbosa to Zaza & Clark was a pretty big drop off. Prior to this year the Warriors had a legit "strength in numbers" thing going, but after this they were basically rolling 6 deep, which is not deep at all.
Over at Miami, they were notoriously top-heavy at first, but then they acquired Battier & Allen who were awesome, and I'd absolutely say they were deeper from 6 onward relative to the '16-17 Warriors.
I'll skip the Celtics and come back:
On the Nets, oh this was entirely KD & Kyrie's fault. Remember, they had Jarrett Freaking Allen on the team and they wanted him gone so they could play with their buddy, the ancient DeAndre Jordan. They basically destroyed their own team's depth for no good reason at all.
They also got their first coach - now reigning COY Atkinson - fired largely because he objected to getting rid of Allen and playing Jordan, and KD pushed for Nash. Nash then learned immediately that KD & Kyrie literally refused to play any kind of sophisticated defensive scheme as part of their whole thesis is that they ought to be able to "just hoop" and win, and "just hooping" meant basic man defense.
I'll also say anyone with doubts as to whether Nash knows his stuff, um, yeah, he knows his stuff. The defensive issues on that team had everything to do with KD & Kyrie killing the existing supporting cast and refusing to act like serious NBA professionals, because they had the theory that all of these coaches trying to tell them what to do didn't know as well as they did, and they were dead wrong.
Doesn't mean the Nets couldn't have won it all, because their injuries are the only reason Giannis has a chip, but yeah, they don't get to blame their issues on a weak supporting cast or weak coaching, because they did that to themselves.
Back to the Celtics:
This is an entirely different thing because they weren't actually seen as that talented until they turned out to be way better than expected for reasons that were basically about the NBA world not understanding how good at defense KG could be with schemes that made use of the fact that Illegal Defense rules changed. We're talking about the best defender since Bill Russell here, and they rode that to greatness.
Regarding what the Celtics gave up, the funny things is, they gave up nothing of substance. At the time Al Jefferson was perceived as being valuable, but in reality he really never was. At the time Jeff Green was seen as a major prospect, but in reality, it's not clear if he ever should have been in the NBA at all. The Celtics used perceived assets to create their Big 3, but the dirty secret was that the guys they gave up were guys you should really just cut, and in some ways that makes the off-season all the more brilliant, but in others makes clear how easily Danny Ainge's grand experiment could have failed. Imagine in some parallel universe the Celtics actually trying to compete with Al Jefferson and Jeff Green as part of their core and how likely it would be that Ainge would get another job once that failed.
Re: "My point is the Warriors had a structure and system in place and then added a player whose skill-set fit into their system and filled a need", yeah I feel like this is largely my point. They became what they became because they were building with fit in mind, whereas most superteams are built assuming that if you just get enough talent on the roster, they'll have to be a dynasty, and mostly that fails.
Now I think you're saying "Yes but Durant was lucky to go to a team like that", to which I'd agree, because certainly whenever Durant makes a good decision about changing teams, he's basically just a broken clock. Clueless and fragile as he might be though, being a super long & tall guy who can shoot near GOAT level and doesn't dominate the ball makes you easy to slot in - which I'll say, relates to mentioned concepts like portability, scalability & ceiling-raising, but I'm frankly reluctant to even use those terms now because of how they're getting used by people. Giannis' real issue here isn't that a heliocentric role is definitionally not-very-portable, but in the fact that he's just not good enough in that helio role to scale the offense like the savants who normally play the position do. When you put guys with real decision making limitations at helio - Giannis, Westbrook, Paolo, etc - that's where you commit to a lower offensive ceiling.
None of this means that Giannis couldn't possibly make up for this, but there's a real issue here with at the heart of how Giannis became a legit offensive superstar that - at least to this point - has kept him from being in the top tier, and this matters more because his helio style dictates so much what his team can't do regardless of the talent around him. In contrast to guys of the "beta O, alpha D" big man archetype (Russell, late Wilt, Mutombo, late Robinson, late Garnett, etc) which generally allows the team to build around someone else offensively without much constraint, Giannis doesn't let you do that.
This then to say, I think that Steph, Klay & Dray are all inhibited by Giannis - Dray to the point where I think they'd stagger his minutes hard and relegate him effectively to a back-up, which is rough given that he is the best defender on the team, and the killer add of Giannis is supposed to be his D. While I'd certainly expect that the Warriors would have an improved defense to the extent both Giannis & Dray played big minutes, the stark difference between how to optimize for the team offensively (stagger'em) and defensively (play both as much as possible), is a real issue.
Is it enough of an issue that I'd rather stick with Harrison Barnes? Well no, I can't say anything like that, but I do think KD's skillset works better with what the Warrior core had proven to be able to be great with than Giannis' does.