Wild West is wide open
Parity leaves Warriors in middle of pack
And just like that, there is parity in the NBA. A real upforgrabs thing, more so than at any time in league history. It seems that everyone is thrilled but the Warriors — and for some reason, the commissioner.
Forever stuck with the drudgery of speaking for the owners, many of whom have no understanding of basketball or how to build a winner, Adam Silver has made public his disdain for trade demands, the frantic freeagent movement and the negotiations — tampering, if you will — that created such a fascinating sequence of recent transactions. His complaints might make sense if they conveyed any grasp on reali
ty, but that is hardly the case.
As for the Warriors, who have spent the past four summers basking in the glow of envy, the new reality is this: In the latest power rankings posted by ESPN and CBS Sports, they are ranked the 11thbest team in the league and seventh in the Western Conference.
You’d lodge a rousing protest only if you haven’t followed recent developments. The six teams listed above Golden State are Denver (rated first in the West by ESPN), the Clippers (first by CBS), the Lakers, Houston, Utah and Portland. It’s abundantly clear that the Warriors have taken some severe offseason hits while all of those conference rivals have improved.
Specifically: Denver, last season’s second seed in the West, adds 6foot10 forward Michael Porter Jr., an ofteninjured player who has superstar potential. The Clippers (Kawhi Leonard, Paul George) and the Lakers (LeBron James and Anthony Davis) have lifted the L.A. market to new heights. Houston will take the floor with Russell Westbrook and James Harden. Utah acquired Mike Conley to form a dynamic backcourt with Donovan Mitchell. And Portland, which lost last season’s conference finals to the Warriors, has made a number of significantlooking changes.
Now consider the possibility of the Warriors, with a healthy Klay Thompson, making a solid lateseason run of their own. In the East, there are legitimate title contenders in Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Boston, with the recently crowned Toronto Raptors a reasonable threat if they can survive Leonard’s departure.
As many as a dozen teams with believable aspirations to the title? This is plainly shocking to fans who have followed the league. The only comparable period would be the late 1970s, when Washington (1978) and Seattle (1979) traded titles in a forgettable prelude to the Magic JohnsonLarry Bird era. But in each of those two seasons, only three teams managed to win 50 or more games.
So what we’re about to see, it appears, is entirely unprecedented — and it can’t hurt that some of the league’s most storied markets are enjoying a revival. Not since the early 1980s have Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and New York fashioned collective brilliance in the playoffs (firstround exits don’t count), but with Kyrie Irving hooking up with Kevin Durant (likely to miss this season) in Brooklyn, the notion comes back into play.
If Silver wants to take issue with something, he should come to grips with the impossibly complex nature of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, a document only a few people truly understand.
Great example: The Lakers had $32 million in available freeagent money until they traded for Davis, but the predicament seemed to escape the front office, resulting in a hectic scramble of deals that restored the $32 million. Maybe general manager Rob Pelinka gets off the hook for not knowing the details (although such matters would not escape the Warriors’ Bob Myers), but someone in the organization had to know.
Every time something important goes down, the NBA’s most respected insiders double and triplecheck their CBA research before making a declarative statement, and even then, they can’t be absolutely certain. They invariably turn for confirmation to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, who really knows his stuff, but even Marks overlooks something at times.
Consequently, fans don’t really know what the hell is going on. Every trade analysis starts not with the talent involved, but the salaries. And you wonder, in a capitalist society, if there’s really any point to salarycap implementation. The good teams should be rewarded, not stuck with lowsalary options if their payrolls get too high. The perennial losers, especially those who don’t much care about winning, should just get the hell out.
Through the many seasons of CBA confusion, the agreement did nothing for parity. It was always the same old story, just a few teams figuring they had any chance to win the title. Now, mostly because of superstars wielding longearned and richly deserved power, there’s a fresh and intriguing hierarchy in the league: one team after another featuring two superstars, and a few with three.
Trade demands? Entirely within the players’ rights. They’re looking at short careers, compared with the real world, and are invariably seeking the finest scenarios. Deals were arranged before the official June 30 opening of the freeagent window? Good! Nothing sinister about it. Teams and players have been waiting for months to make a huge score, and they have to lay some groundwork beforehand. Silver says “we have work to do” when it comes to tampering, but that’s nonsense. The only “work” is to eliminate all related penalties. Players, agents and executives
will talk out the options in private. Even if it happens in public — like Magic Johnson heralding George on the Jimmy Kimmel show or Doc Rivers comparing Leonard to Michael Jordan on ESPN — no problem. Totally harmless.
(At least one owner gets it: Dallas’ Mark Cuban, despite being on the perimeter of the recent frenzy, told reporters it was “great for the league.”)
As the freeagent business gets done with dispatch (as opposed to baseball’s ludicrous merrygoround), it’s a treat for the fans. Social media goes crazy, bound to last right into autumn. The league stays relevant, and sometimes we get very lucky, beholding a landscape of glorious equality. We should enjoy it, to the fullest, while it exists.