LAL1947 wrote:KrAzY3 wrote:michaelm wrote:Sure, the Lakers and/or LeBron would never do anything like that.
The truth story is LeBron fans and Lakers (who have assembled super teams multiple times)fans just hate that the Warriors did it better.
Speaking for myself, I give Lebron and Wade similar flak for creating the super-team in Miami.
A point to note though, the Lakers had stacked teams in the 1980s. I think you mean the
Spurs, who had the most stacked rosters in the 2000s and won a lot of trophies by doing so... until Boston, Heat and GSW did it better with their super-teams.
There is a massive difference between drafting, building organically a great team and just talking the best free agents into congregating together.
I'm not arguing it's wrong to do it, but it's way different because one requires years of development, evaluation and savvy moves while the other requires a few players going "hey let's go win a championship together". It should be pointed out that the Warriors team was mainly built via the draft, they drafted three of the top four players on the Durant Warriors. The Spurs also evaluated and developed their talent.
So anyway... the Heat? They went out and got LeBron and Bosh, both All-Stars, and added them to Wade the one guy they actually drafted. Then, they added Ray Allen a couple years removed from being an All-Star. While the Cavs did in fact draft LeBron, the Cavs championship involved signing LeBron as a free agent, trading for Love, and only one of the three key players (Kyrie) was someone they kept in the organization.
Now, let's talk about the Lakers. How about the failed attempt to team Malone and Payton up with Shaq and Kobe? It didn't work but mainly because Shaq and Kobe were not getting along. Remember Payton was an All-Star the year before and Malone was a 20 point scorer. That's darn sure an attempt at a super team. Or, how about the failed attempt when they got Howard (Howard forced the trade) and Nash? Now they didn't sign those as free agents, they traded assets but it's still putting four all-stars together, it just didn't work out in part due to injuries. Then we get to the current Laker's core, multiple MVPs, multiple All-Stars, not one of them drafted by the Lakers.
How does any of that compare to the Spurs? The complaint all along with Durant wasn't that he ended up there. If the Warriors drafted him no one would have anything to complain about. They complained because he chose to go there as a destination. That's what people are complaining about, the player's agency (some in some cases, like AD the player is forcing a trade to a particular destination) in creating a super team. It's nothing at all like what the Spurs did but it is very much like what LeBron had done multiple times.
Part of what I find to be hypocritical is that the biggest issue people seem to have with what Durant did is that he did it so well. Even in your response, it's like we're only going to count successful attempts, just trying to stack the deck is fine as long as you suck at it.
