If the choice for NBA players is anything like baseball’s old reserve clause, or the full-blown player empowerment era we have now, give me the latter. Let’s be clear on that.
NBA players have earned the right to self-determination when it comes to their careers — coaches, teammates and location. And, of course, for how much. That ship has sailed. They are the reason the average NBA team is now worth almost $3 billion, and why team valuations will only get bigger after the next media rights deal is finalized. They’re the show. So, if guys want to play together, go for it.
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You just wonder how many franchises will keep going along for the ride.
Phoenix’s acquisition of Kevin Durant Tuesday creates the NBA’s latest iteration of the Mega Powers, with KD now joining Devin Booker, Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton. But the wreckage of what Durant left behind in Brooklyn, after he and Kyrie Irving left town, is still smoldering.
Their plan to create a dynasty in the East never got out of pupa stage, with both Durant and Irving both questioning Nets management’s organizational commitment at various stages. Both looked to get out last summer, with Durant demanding Steve Nash be fired (which, ultimately, he was) before opting to return. Both, at various stages, asked to be traded, then rescinded their trade demands, then unrescinded them. All while playing just 74 games together in their three-plus years in Brooklyn for varying reasons — both on and off the court.
It was, charitably, a mess. Uncharitably, it was a colossal failure.
Yet there are very few around the league who think we’ve seen the last of the SuperFriends trend.
“It will most likely make (owners) be more selective in the humans they build with,” one exec texted Friday morning, “but most owners are intoxicated by stars and name recognition.”
The recent track record of such teams is wanting. (This is not the same as a franchise that becomes great through drafting, as the Warriors did by taking Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green between 2009 and 2012, or how the Grizzlies have come of age by selecting Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. back to back in ’18 and ’19.)
Durant is now on his fourth superteam in the last seven seasons. There was his original team, the Thunder, a homegrown colossus, with KD co-anchoring a team with Russell Westbrook and center Steven Adams, which reached the Western Conference finals in 2016; the Warriors, of course, from 2017-19; the Nets, with Irving (and, for about five seconds, James Harden), from 2020-22; and now, the Suns.
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But Durant’s only won titles with those Warriors, going back-to-back in 2017 and 2018. And since then, the only superteam to win a title was LeBron James’ and Anthony Davis’ Lakers, in the Orlando Bubble, in 2020.
The grouping of CP3, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan couldn’t lift the Clippers past the Warriors. Paul and Harden made the Western Conference finals with Houston in ’16, but went no further. Paul and Harden fizzled together in Houston, after Westbrook and Paul George had had modest success in OKC. Joel Embiid and Jimmy Butler couldn’t co-exist in Philly, though both have expressed regret that they couldn’t make it work. Harden, Durant and Irving played exactly 16 games together in Brooklyn.
Nonetheless, team builders say the trend isn’t abating any time soon.
“It’s always worth the risk,” a longtime GM texted Friday. “Also, Brooklyn emerged in a pretty good spot (thanks to Phoenix).”
Another exec quoted the bank robber Willie Sutton – who, when asked why he robbed so much, said simply, ‘because that’s where the money is.”
“Our job is to build the best teams we can,” the exec said.
And Durant’s new group will, indeed, be formidable. How, exactly, will defenses try to contain KD at the elbow, Booker on the wing, Ayton diving to the cup and CP3 manipulating any coverage breakdown to get one of those three a wide-open look? Before suffering an MCL sprain in early January, Durant was playing at an MVP level, preposterously efficient (top 10 in both PER and True Shooting Percentage) while averaging 29.7 points per game.
But the Suns had to give up a lot – a lot – to bring in the 34-year-old superstar, sending Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder (who was flipped by the Nets to Milwaukee for two seconds), four unprotected first-round picks between 2023 and 2029 and agreeing to a pick swap with Brooklyn in 2028.
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The Suns now have very little proven depth remaining behind their starters, a common issue with superteams. And it’s especially scary for the Suns, given the recent injury history of Durant, Paul and Booker.
“Having three juggernauts is great until an injury or something happens,” another GM texted Friday.
There’s also this. At its highest levels, the NBA has devolved to a group of nomads, wandering from city to city, team to team, in search of…what? Championships? Money? Lifestyle? All of the above?
Since 2017, Paul has gone from the Clippers to the Rockets to the Thunder to the Suns, and was close to going to the Nets last week for Irving. Since 2017, Irving has gone from the Cavs to the Celtics to the Nets to the Mavericks. Since 2020, Harden has gone from the Rockets to the Nets to the Sixers. Since ’19, Westbrook has gone from the Thunder to the Rockets to the Wizards to the Lakers to, now, the Jazz – and he won’t play a minute for the Jazz.
And of course, since ’16, Durant’s bounced from the Thunder to the Warriors to the Nets – and, now, to the Suns.
And, you wonder: are any of these dudes happy, being basketball mercenaries? (There are, to be sure, more than a few of you who do not care a whit about player happiness, given that so many make barns full of money.)
They’ll get paid wherever they play, so it isn’t about money. Nor is this some tripe about owed loyalty; there is no loyalty in pro sports. An older player makes less money than a younger one; an injured player, often, is soon out of the league if he can’t get healthy. Teams do players dirty every single day, and will trade or cut them at the drop of a hat. So players owe teams nothing but their best effort and availability as long as they are there.
But what drives them to constantly seek greener pastures? Is it the pursuit, realistic or not, of championships? Simply wielding the substantial power each has, as they and their camps leak their trade requests? The sugar high of trending on IG and Twitter?
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“Everything in basketball for them is more transient,” a prominent agent texted Thursday. “Because it’s the norm, it’s just accepted as common practice. I think most players would embrace more stability, but it doesn’t seem to exist in any area of their lives.”
Their (former) teams certainly aren’t happy when superstars leave, but those teams will be all-in the next time anyone like them becomes available. There isn’t a team in the league that wouldn’t have done what Brooklyn did in acquiring both KD and Kyrie. Nets ownership has already pivoted from assessing the charred remains of its NBA team to celebrating its creation of a behemoth WNBA team, with Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot all joining Sabrina Ionescu on the Liberty.
I get it. The trade deadline and the draft are big business. And don’t think for one second the NBA hates the deadline dominating ESPN and sports radio the week of the Super Bowl in the minds of fans. Y’all love this stuff.
Meanwhile, many of those same fans, and NBA Twitter, excoriate guys like Damian Lillard and Bradley Beal – and, their teams – for their loyalty, wanting normalcy. Guys like Dame and Beal are, supposedly, suckers because they want to stay and try to build championship teams where their feet are.
Someone smart Thursday recalled Dan Issel, who had a Hall of Fame career on very good Denver Nuggets teams in the ’80s, alongside another future HOFer in Alex English. And people would say of guys like Issel (and English), “it’s too bad he’ll never win a championship, because he’s stuck in Denver, and they’ll never let him go.” Which was true. Think of Reggie Miller in Indy or Mitch Richmond in Sacramento, who spent all (Miller) or most (Richmond) of their careers on teams that weren’t good enough to contend for titles.
Maybe this is generational. The world is different than it was in Magic’s or Bird’s day. If those guys had the freedom today’s players have, you best bet a lot of them would have flexed. (And, of course, Magic did.) But stability is more fleeting today. Millennials had more debt coming out of college, couldn’t buy houses as soon as we could back in the day (if at all), and delayed starting a family. (Ironically, Gen-Zers are more likely to move back in with their parents than to move all over the country.)
But when it comes to basketball….not to dunk on AAU culture, but many of today’s elite players grow up jumping from team to team before they hit high school. Then, they go from high school to high school. And, now, college is all about the transfer portal.
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None of this, then, has happened in the NBA by accident. In exchange for players taking a smaller percentage of Basketball Related Income, making rich owners even wealthier, teams had to agree to a bunch of things that have wound up favoring players.
Raising the minimum each team had to pay from at least 75 percent of the salary cap in a given season to the current 90 percent put more money in the system, which has flowed to more players. The implementation of the “Derrick Rose Rule” for over-performing young players gave young superstars greater say in who they wanted to grow with on their existing teams. Enhanced revenue sharing made the poorest NBA teams flusher, and more financially able to compete for talent.
And the players’ power only increased after the league’s last, massive TV deal with its media partners in 2016, which gave an already-great team like Golden State a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition of Durant that summer.
The Warriors became the most potent extension of what LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh started in 2010: superstars putting the league on hold until they get what they want, and where they want to get it. Miami’s last title was almost a decade ago; James has been gone from South Beach for more than eight years. But what the SuperFriends put together, few owners will tear asunder.
“I mean, Phoenix just replaced Brooklyn,” one last exec texted. “So (there’s) the same number of super teams in the league.”
(Top Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
