Poll: Would you lose interest in the NBA if Leonard went to Lakers

[celticsclay]

Hey all,

I want to preface this by saying I find this extremely extremely unlikely to happen for a lot of reasons, but I was genuinely curious how others felt about this. My reaction to the best player in the league and reigning champion and finals MVP teaming up on one squad with two other top 10 players (and this is true for any team not just the lakers) would be one of real disgust.

I would view this move as the Durant to Warriors move or Heat Big 3 on steroids. A huge difference in my mind was that none of the players involved in that were reigning champions (and durant was not even considered the best player in the league when he did it, most had Lebron by a lot).

I couldn't really maintain my level of interest in the NBA if this were to happen, I was actually the most excited about the NBA I have been in years heading into next season cause it was wide opening and very exciting. You right now pre-free agency could see about 10 teams being champs next season with some breaks (Toronto, Denver, Bucks, Philly, Warriors, Rockets, Clippers, Utah maybe us if we get Kemba AND a good center somehow). In my opinion it would be such a travesty for this to occur and I would definitely watch a lot less general basketball (though maybe a similar amount of Celtics. What do others think?   

Please feel free to explain your vote.

[Pvictor11]

If it happens, I Will continue following the Celtics, watching the games when I can, but I won't be checking anything else, like stats of other players, box score of other games, standings etc. So, I Will keep interested in the celtics, but not the NBA in general

[CelticSooner]

So much so that even if the C's were in the same position I would look at it as bad for the league. The ratings would be great because casuals love their narratives but every fan base in the league outside of Lakers would be standing there with their arms folded basically depending on injuries. What fun is that? This is still entertainment is it not. Moving from one super team to the next is BORING.

[Roy H.]

Yeah, I’d be pretty much done.

In the next CBA, allow players to sign for up to 50% of the cap. Or make a rule that hard caps how much can be spent on your top five players.

[Who]

No different than Steph, Durant, Draymond and Klay.

Lost interest then. I would lose interest again if this happened. That said, today's style of play league wide is a much much bigger turn off for me than that GSW team or proposed LAL team.

[celticsclay]

So much so that even if the C's were in the same position I would look at it as bad for the league. The ratings would be great because casuals love their narratives but every fan base in the league outside of Lakers would be standing there with their arms folded basically depending on injuries. What fun is that? This is still entertainment is it not. Moving from one super team to the next is BORING.

Yeah I mean it just gets hard to get excited about a game if you are in Miami for example watching Whiteside, Dragic and Winslow running around and not even being able to envision a playoff game where you could compete with an all star team like that. To take us for example, if Durant is on the Knicks, Leonard is in Toronto, Philly has Embid harris and simmons. Rockets have paul, butler, harden. Golden state has curry and green with a darkhorse Klay arriving in playoffs, Bucks have giannis middleton bledsoe. The Lakers have Lebron and Davis. Any of those teams can win and it is awesome. That is exciting and would be a great NBA season and playoffs. The first round could actually be exciting!

[celticsclay]

No different than Steph, Durant, Draymond and Klay.

Lost interest then. I would lose interest again if this happened. That said, today's style of play league wide is a much much bigger turn off for me than that GSW team or proposed LAL team.

Maybe this doesn't matter to others, but it would really bother me even more than that (and that bothered me a lot) for the fact that Leonard is the best basketball player in the world right now and just won the championship. None of that was true with the warriors superteam formation (which again sucked). I believe some of the the warriors or maybe durant even mentioned not feeling like they could have joined up if the warriors had not blown that lead.

[footey]

It wouldn't impact me because I follow the Celtics. I will still watch all their games.

It would totally suck, though.

Sadly, interest in the NBA would probably increase, because there would be a new super team.

I actually think this may happen. For Kawhi to specifically ask to meet with Magic and Buss, that just has the feel of someone very interested in joining them.

If Silver had any balls (and he doesn't), he'd void Davis' waiver of his trade kicker. The trade kicker was not a condition to completing the trade.

Furthermore, Silver and the league should like into the quid pro quo between the trade kicker waiver, and the sign up of Davis to Space Jam 2. They should at least look into how much he was being paid.

As Commissioner he has a lot of power to step in to stop this nonsense, but he is so pro-player movement/rights, to the detriment of team balance, this league is destined to be a showcase for large markets (basically the Lakers) and everyone else ranting (like me right now). 

It is no exaggeration to say that 75% of ESPN news/talking head coverage is about the NBA, and 75% of their NBA coverage is about the Lakers.  No matter how bad they've been. Can you imaging how much it will be if they create this new super team?

[BringToughnessBack]

I would as usual watch Celtics games but would tune out rest of league. The good news is that if Leonard goes to LA, Toronto falls back to the pack.

[footey]

Kawhi better be careful. He has rebuilt his reputation with the championship win in Toronto. He is free to leave, but if he decides to team up with Lebron and Davis, he will (and should) get the KD treatment when he joined the Warriors. 

[greg683x]

nevermind the league, it would be a terrible, terrible look for the players of this generation.

It already is pretty frustrating seeing that these guys would rather team up than compete against each other and be rivals, but this would take it to a WAY higher level.  For me, the most frustrating part of all of this crap is that the Celtics were the trend setters for this back in 2008, we started this whole thing with KG, Pierce, and Ray Allen.  Except we did it via trades made with our own assets, we were a well run organization.   Somehow this blossomed into players colluding with themselves to get an easy road to rings and a good legacy without having to put their blood sweat and tears into it.

but to answer the OPs question, Id still follow the Celtics but Id do it with much less optimism.  It would just be a sad look. 

[greg683x]

No different than Steph, Durant, Draymond and Klay.

Lost interest then. I would lose interest again if this happened. That said, today's style of play league wide is a much much bigger turn off for me than that GSW team or proposed LAL team.

theres a pretty big difference.

Yes, KD jumping to Golden State was a bad look, but Golden Sate drafted 3 of those players themselves, you cant hold that against them

This is just three all NBA players that want to coast to easy rings and getting Lebron as close to Jordan as possible

[celticinorlando]

Nope. It would cripple the Raptors and make the East a 2 or 3 team race

[GreenEnvy]

Yeah I would buy the Celtics-only league pass and not really care about the League in general.

Kawhi on the Lakers would be sickening.

[Phantom255x]

Yeah I'd lose a lot of interest.

Basically would feel like the NBA and media helped the Lakers. From going up to #4 on Draft night which probably allowed them to keep Kuzma after the AD trade, and then Magic resigns but basically can still help them apparently recruit.