Scott Ostler:
Others feeling pressed to match champs’ team-building success
The Warriors’ success has left the rest of the NBA rattled.
Trapped inside our bubble of joy here in the Bay Area, it’s hard to realize that the Warriors have set off a wave of panic that is washing over the rest of the NBA.
The Warriors’ take-no-priz march through the regular season and playoffs was so awesome that they didn’t just impress the league, they rattled it.
Fear the Menace of the Dubs! Four young stars reaching their peaks, backed by the game’s best coach, a savvy general manager and a smart owner.
The task of unseating a champion is always daunting, but this time the elite contenders must feel like they’re trying to scale Mount Everest barefoot. The superteams of the past, notably the LeBron James crew in Miami, never struck this much fear, didn’t have the four-deep talent or the longterm prospects the Warriors now feature.
The league fears, but also reacts. One big Warriors-inspired change is in the method of team-building. The formula has always been to get a couple
of star players and surround them with a complementary cast, built carefully and thoughtfully over a few years.
That kind of craftsmanship is out. Now teams want to go megastar-heavy, and damn the supporting cast, and damn the future. Only big stars, two or three of them joined at the heart, can challenge the Warriors.
The Cavs already have three, but that’s not enough, so they’ll at least make a run at trading Kevin Love (and other stuff ) for Jimmy Butler, because Butler is higher than Love on the star food chain. (Although it appears Butler may not want to go to Cleveland.) The Cavs also might enter the Kristaps Porzingis sweepstakes.
The Cavs are desperate not only to give the Warriors a stronger challenge right now, but also to keep James in Cleveland beyond next season.
Lakers boss Jeanie Buss, after years of tolerating the muddling of her front office, fired her brother and the longtime GM, overhauled the whole show, and the Lakers have already swung a big trade for Brook Lopez. They will draft superkid Lonzo Ball and are eyeing Paul George. Instant contender?
The Clippers, forced into big change anyway due to expired contracts, took the bold move of stealing key adviser Jerry West from the Warriors.
Stars are shuffling and realigning themselves, hoping to form superteams to challenge the mighty Warriors. George is talking about bolting Indiana. LeBron is peeking out the door in Cleveland.
Much of the action is a result of the Warriors’ huge triple threat. They have incredible talent. They have a dynamic game plan. They have fun.
That last one sounds silly to hard-core analysts and to the people who view basketball as a massive equation, but the players in the league understand. And so do the fans. The Warriors’ joy is their X factor.
A skeptic would say: Every championship team has joy. You win, you get joy.
A skeptic would also note: The Cavs won the title last year and they didn’t come close to matching the Warriors’ socalled joy, yet Cavs fans didn’t say, “It’s great that we won, but it’s not much fun, because our guys don’t shimmy.”
The Warriors are challenging the skeptics.
Joy is an important element of the Warriors’ chemistry, and for would-be title contenders, that’s going to be as hard to match as the Warriors’ imposing collective talent.
I picture a coach next season calling timeout to scream at his players, “I’m going to put all your butts on the bench if you don’t start having more fun!”
One problem (for the rest of the league) with the Warriors’ fast-paced, semi-free-wheeling style is that it pumps enthusiasm and energy into the Warriors and into the fans, even in enemy arenas.
The rest of the NBA can’t count on waiting out the Warriors for a season or two. Yes, great teams can disintegrate quickly, but the Warriors reek of solidarity. Good sign: They just spent a few days in Vegas and, as far as we know, they survived that potential nuclear hangover.
Some NBA teams are following the Warriors’ master blueprint for success, at least Step 1: Suck like crazy for years and years to keep earning high draft picks, until you finally pick a few good ones.
The rest of the blueprint is harder to follow: Have the basketball stork bring you Steph Curry, sell the team to a real owner, snag the best coach of the last decade, land Kevin Durant.
However they did it, the Warriors have sent the league into a tizzy. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, but the Warriors wear it at a jaunty angle.