USA TODAY International Edition
2 now bigger than 3 in NBA
LOS ANGELES – The Lakers want to temper talk about their NBA championship aspirations or any notion that they have an intracity rivalry with the cross- arena Clippers.
That will not stop Lakers coach Frank Vogel, however, from proclaiming what it means to have LeBron James and Anthony Davis on his team.
“We got the best of them, of all the duos,” Vogel said. “We have two top- five players, two guys that really just do it all. And I’d put those two guys against anybody in the league.”
Those two players represent a growing and paradoxical trend in today’s NBA. More stars feel increasingly empowered to partner with other stars in hopes to win an NBA championship. Amid increased spending restrictions, though, teams have shifted from having so- called “Big Threes” into teams with a superstar duo.
“I’m not sure if it was done purposefully, but I think this is maybe the most exciting the league has ever been in a while,” Davis said. “It’s going to be fun.”
It sure will.
The Clippers have their own duo with forwards Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, a partnership that happened largely because Leonard made it clear his interest in the Clippers hinged on their ability to acquire George from Oklahoma City. So the Clippers traded Shai Gilgeous- Alexander, Danilo Gallinari and a handful of draft picks to the Thunder in July.
Amid concerns about the chemistry between James Harden and Chris Paul, the
Rockets dealt Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook.
Kevin Durant seemed fulfilled in Golden State after winning two NBA titles and two Finals MVP Awards with three other All- Stars. So he joined friend Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn after Irving had his own issues playing in Boston.
The Jazz already have a duo in point guard Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, while the 76ers hope Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons will become stars.
“It changed the league, but it’s good for the league,” George said. “Everybody was looking for a ‘ Big Three.’ That didn’t work for a lot of teams. So this is a new dynamic for the new generation of this league.”
The “Big Three” worked for some teams, though.
In the 2007 offseason, the Celtics acquired Ray Allen ( and Glen Davis). Then they acquired Kevin Garnett from the Timberwolves. The very next season, the Celtics hoisted their first NBA championship trophy in 21 years.
Two years later, James and Chris Bosh took their talents to South Beach and won two NBA titles in four Heat Finals appearances with Dwyane Wade.
In their last NBA Finals appearance in 2014, the Heat lost to a Spurs team that groomed Leonard to have a larger role than their established veterans in Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
After James returned to Cleveland the following offseason, the Cavaliers traded their No. 1 pick used on Andrew Wiggins to Minnesota for Kevin Love. In between two Finals losses to the Warriors, James, Love and Irving delivered Cleveland its first NBA title after overcoming a 3- 1 series deficit.
Less than a month later, the Warriors signed Durant to pair with three other All- Stars in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. In related news, Golden State beat Cleveland in the next two NBA Finals.
Star search
The common denominator among all of these NBA champions? They had at least three stars. Clippers coach Doc Rivers, who coached the Celtics’ 2008 NBA title team, says it required something more than just rolling the ball out for those players.
“The third guy always struggles on every team, even though they’ve played well,” Rivers said. “In a lot of the systems, the third guy got the short end in some ways or made the sacrifices to win in some way.”
Allen, for example, saw his numbers drop substantially in Boston. He averaged 16.6 points in five seasons with the Celtics, a vast difference from the 21.5 he averaged in his first 11 seasons. Bosh experienced something similar in Miami. He had averaged 20.2 points per game through seven seasons in Toronto. With the Heat? He averaged 17.8 in the five seasons he played with both James and Wade.
Similar story for Love. He averaged 19.2 points in six seasons in Minnesota and 17.1 points in the four seasons he played with James in Cleveland.
Given the experience of being the focal point of other Big Threes in his career, how does James see the dynamic change from a team having a star duo instead of a “Big Three”?
“At the end of the day, you’re going to have a good team, a great team,” James said. “Obviously you need great players out on the floor to be able to exploit defenses and take and make big shots when the game calls for it. But in order to win in this league, you have to have a great team. That is our only mind- set. Obviously, it starts and ends with me and AD and how we approach the game both on and off the floor. But it will trickle to everybody else.”
So the Lakers made James’ and Davis’ on- court chemistry their training camp priority.
“I do want to have LeBron and AD play as much together as possible in practice because they’re going to be the ones who play the most together throughout the season,” Vogel said. “So I want to get that chemistry accelerated as much as possible. But the guys around them are going to change every practice.”
‘ Bought into one goal’
The Clippers opened training camp with limitations surrounding Leonard and George. The team does not plan to handle Leonard under a so- called “load management” program as the Raptors did after they acquired him last season.
George will return at some point in November. According to Rivers, George could miss at least the first 10 regularseason games.
The other factor? How well the Clippers emulate what the Raptors did last season. Then, Leonard won Finals MVP while he and ex- Spurs teammate Danny Green complemented point guard Kyle Lowry and forward Pascal Siakam.
“Me and Danny went over there and knew what a championship team needs,” Leonard said. “We make sacrifices as players as well. So we just went in with that group of talent and everybody was smart. We just bought into one goal.”
The Lakers and the Clippers have 82 regular- season games and presumably the postseason to prove how well they can play together. They have tried to maximize the learning curve ahead of time, though.
The Lakers organized informal workouts during the summer and held a minicamp in Las Vegas.
After losing to the Warriors in six games of the first round of the playoffs, the Clippers held informal scrimmages following Memorial Day weekend. They did the same thing after Labor Day.
The Clippers have a bench that led the league in scoring ( 53.2) and assists ( 10.8) and a handful of those reserves are returning. They include Lou Williams ( the NBA’s best reserve last season at 20 points per game), Montrezl Harrell ( ranked third in bench scoring at 16.6 points per game) and pesky defender Patrick Beverley.
Therefore, Rivers argued, “I don’t need a third guy; I just need a bunch of guys.”
Said Williams: “I don’t think we should stop being ourselves because we have the addition of those guys. All of those things mesh well together, especially when you’re trying to do something at a high level. I don’t know if there is a way to tell Pat Beverley to chill out. I don’t think that changes. I don’t expect our mind- set to change either.”
Meanwhile, the Lakers believe they have addressed their shooting needs by acquiring Danny Green, Avery Bradley and Quinn Cook.
With center DeMarcus Cousins suffering a likely season- ending left knee injury, JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard will compete for minutes.
And Rajon Rondo will likely hold both the Lakers’ stars and role players accountable.
Rondo chastised Davis for arriving late to the team’s media day.
“Definitely huge for me,” Davis said of Rondo. “He’s able to help me out as I transition.”
Both teams have transition off the court, too.
The Lakers organized team dinners and attended a Mystics- Aces WNBA playoff game in Las Vegas.
Shortly after the Clippers acquired George and Paul on July 5, they communicated frequently in group text messages. George, who has often gone fishing during the offseason, organized a team fishing trip. The Clippers also went paintballing, with center Ivica Zubac describing Beverley as a player who shot both at his opponents and his teammates.
And Leonard attended Kobe Bryant’s recent minicamp for a select handful of players and spoke to him for an hour by “bouncing some ideas off of him.”
Perhaps the two touched on the NBA’s most recent trend on fielding a duo of stars. The Lakers and Clippers, among other teams, will soon find out which one handles their pair the best.