Warriors just copying the path of past NBA champs

Earlier this week, NBA Twitter imploded when the Golden State Warriors signed free-agent big man DeMarcus Cousins, to a one-year, $5.3 million contract. Cousins is a former All-Star. He joins a team with four All-Stars already in place. Great. The NBA is finished. Next year is a foregone conclusion. How in the heck could league Commissioner Adam Silver allow this to happen? Doesn’t he care? That has been the reaction the last couple of days in the NBA universe and, frankly, I don’t get it. Wait ... actually, I do. Because no fan base has a shorter memory, or a stronger penchant for romanticism, than the NBA’s.

Parity has never been part of the NBA.

Let me type that again: Never.

What is happening now is no different than how things have always been — more or less. The only difference is how teams are put together. General managers and owners used to decide everything. Now they don’t, and players have a lot more say.

But, but ... Kevin Durant! He ruined the league!

No, he didn’t. His move to Golden State made it better, because the Warriors are redefining basketball excellence, leaving the league no choice but to try and catch them.

It’s not much different than what happened in 1982, when the defending champions Lakers — a team that already had Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, two of the 10 best players ever — held the No. 1 overall pick and drafted James Worthy, a future Hall of Famer.

Those Lakers, relative to their era, weren’t much different than these Warriors. Their roster had three Hall of Famers AND the NBA’s defensive player of the year in Michael Cooper. They also had shooting guard Byron Scott, who averaged almost 22 points a game in 1987-88, the year the Lakers repeated as champs.

I don’t recall anyone complaining when the Lakers added Scott, via a 1983 trade with the Clippers (then in San Diego), to a team with three Hall of Famers. Or when they added Worthy to a team with the best point guard and center ever after the team won a coin toss with the Clippers for the No. 1 pick in ‘82.

In fact, Los Angeles was lauded for its maneuvering in acquiring that No. 1 pick — through a trade with Cleveland three years earlier.

The Celtics were similarly applauded in 1985 for adding Bill Walton to a team that already had five former or future All-Stars in its starting lineup: Larry Bird. Kevin Mchale. Robert Parish. Dennis Johnson. Danny Ainge.

Walton joined that group as a sixth man after general manager Red Auerbach shipped Cedric Maxwell to the Clippers for Walton’s rights.

But, wait, there’s more. Walton wanted to join only the Celtics or the Lakers. He talked to Larry Bird. Bird told him to come join him. Meanwhile, Jerry West, the Lakers’ general manager at the time, hesitated because of Walton’s lingering foot injury. Sound familiar? It should. Because the NBA’s history is nothing if not a tale of the best teams in any given era finding ways to reload.

This is how it’s always been for decades in the NBA: A couple of cities collect a handful of stars through drafting and shrewd trades and dominate the league for long stretches. In some years, there are few teams that have a chance to win it all. In others, there is one team, and an entire season can feel like a formality.

What the Warriors are doing, and have done, isn’t new. The Celtics won eight straight titles in the 60s and won 10 of 12 overall. The Lakers won five championships in the 80s.

The Bulls won six in the 90s and could have won eight straight if Michael Jordan hadn’t temporarily retired. (At least that’s what The Cult of Jordan argues. They might even be right.)

I remember Jordan’s run well. Every year after Chicago won its first title — against an aging Lakers’ squad — fans and analysts would try to convince themselves someone else had a chance. But no one else did. And we knew it. Yet we watched.

Religiously and relentlessly. Partly because we wanted to see if a team could knock off Jordan, but mostly because we wanted to watch Jordan.

That’s the difference between the NBA and other leagues’ stars. The NBA always features transcendent athletes who draw us in no matter how dominant they are.

Remember when Jordan retired for the second time? And the league fretted over who was going to step up?

After a forgettable SpursKnicks Finals in 1999 — a season shortened by labor issues — the Lakers returned to greatness. Or, I should say, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant brought them there.

The league’s two best players. On one team. In their primes. Imagine that.

They won three straight titles and didn’t break a sweat in the Finals. Portland pushed them in the 2000 Western Conference Finals and Sacramento did the same in 2002. Other than that? Yawn, right? Except those Lakers were mesmerizing to watch. Mostly for O’Neal’s unseen combination of size, skill, power and explosiveness and for Bryant evolving into Jordan 2.0.

Think of it this way: When the league has a superteam — what we used to call a dynasty — we watch, and debate, and revel, or wait-and-pray-andhope for someone to knock them off.

When the league is missing that team, we tune out.

After the Celtics dominated the 60s, the 70s turned into the most egalitarian decade in the league’s modern history. Eight different franchises won titles, including one that’s already relocated, the Seattle SuperSonics. What happened? You stopped watching. (Numerous playoff games in the decade were shown on tape delay by CBS) The NBA panicked. And then, in 1979, Bird and Magic arrived to save it.

With personalities. With teams stacked with All-Stars and future Hall of Famers.

But it wasn’t just those two teams that had over-the-top talent. The 76ers ran through the playoffs in 1983, losing one game thanks to Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Mo Cheeks and Andrew Toney.

The Pistons added threetime All-Star Mark Aguirre, midway through the 1988-89 season, to a team with three future Hall of Famers and a handful of exceptional role players (and Bill Laimbeer).

They lost twice in that season’s playoffs. Warriors are just the latest Only four teams won a title in the 1980s. The same was true of the 1990s. Five teams won in the 2000s. Six teams have won championships this decade. If the Warriors are upset next year — and it could happen — that will make it seven.

In 2017, the Warriors lost once in the playoffs (to the Cavaliers in the Finals). But only because Kawhi Leonard, San Antonio’s all-world forward, hurt his ankle in the second half of Game 1 of Western finals. If not, the Warriors would not have swept the Spurs.

In 2018, the Warriors lost five games before they got to the Finals, and might have been eliminated before the Finals if Houston’s Chris Paul hadn’t strained his hamstring at the end of Game 5 of the Western finals.

In other words, in both years, the outcome of the conference finals could have gone the other way. As for the 2018 Finals? Yeah, it’s true that, like many, I was bored after the second game. LeBron James put in an epic effort to kick off the series, but J.R. Smith forgot the score, the Cavaliers lost in overtime, the Warriors won Game 2 somewhat easily and boom — the series was done.

The next two games served as a chance for fans to watch James suit up a couple more times in his Cleveland uniform. And that’s about it. There was no tension, no anxiety, and no question as to who would be holding the trophy.

Yet you watched. I watched. A lot of the country watched, as the ratings were at a fouryear high during the playoffs.

Again, it’s about perspective and memory. And stars. When they dominate, you watch.

And when they don’t dominate? You don’t. Aside from the aberration that was the 70s, it’s been that way forever.