James "have championship, will travel" has been a kind of bad influence in the league. Starting with Miami, he lured Bosh to play with him and Wade. Then going back to Cleveland, the .500 team miraculously won the lottery, which yielded Love. Irving was there, so presto, a championship. And now you have the Warriors piling on with Durant, and the Spurs who scarfed up Aldridge and Gasol. The Celtics detractors would chime in on KG and Allen, but Ainge pulled off a couple of trades to get his stars to go with Pierce. The other teams were FA plucks.
From a FA standpoint, James started the empire building in free agency. Now all the big FAs want to go to the best teams. And it seems easy to do that--just get rid of enough players to fit them under or near the cap--which is as soft as molasses in the NBA. The League doesn't have an answer for this, since the FA rules are those of both the league and the players association.
That's the way it is. Makes you wonder if drafting talented 19yos will ever get you anywhere.
Clearly, more than that is needed.
The Warriors were largely created by drafting 19 year olds. Curry wasn't even a top 5 pick
The Warriors certainly have had exceedingly good fortune. Virtually no one expected Curry, Green, or even Thompson to be as good as they are. And the Warriors were paying all three virtually peanuts when one of the game's best players just happened to be a free agent. Couldn't have worked out any better for them.
I'd call multiple lottery wins without odds "good fortune". I call what the Warriors did "genius". They spotted talent and picked it up - drafted 3 all-NBA level players without using a top 5 pick on them.
Can't hate on the Warriors management for that (and then clearing cap space to sign KD). You can hate on the Warriors celebrating mid game more than any team I've ever seen and leading the league in arrogance, but not for how the team was constructed.
Great point RL35.
We probably shouldn't overlook or undervalue the input the great Jerry West has had in the overall decision-making process for the Dubs since joining the organization in 2011 which has likely been understated in the media; nor the success he had as general manager in rebuilding the Grizzlies leading to NBA Executive of the Year honors in 2004, his second such award.
And, of course, there's the small matter of the role he played in assembling the Lakers teams in the 80s, also as general manager. Success follows him around like a shadow.
The Logo is the only Laker I've ever allowed or will ever allow myself to like. He's a fascinating person. If only somehow he could've been a Celtic.
From Wikipedia:
Jerry Alan West was born into a poor household in Chelyan, West Virginia.[1] He was the fifth of six children of his mother Cecil Sue West, a housewife, and her husband Howard Stewart West, a coal mine electrician.[2] West was a shy, introverted boy, who became even more withdrawn when his closest brother David died in the Korean War at age 22 when Jerry was 12.[1] He was so small and frail that he needed vitamin injections from his doctor and was kept apart from children's sports, to prevent him from getting seriously hurt.[1] Growing up, West spent his days hunting and fishing, but his main distraction was shooting at a basketball hoop that a neighbor had nailed to his storage shed. West spent days shooting baskets from every possible angle, ignoring mud and snow in the backyard, as well as his mother's whippings when he came home hours late for dinner; he played so often that the NBA acknowledged it as "obsessive".[1]
Topic: does warriors dominance equal hayward (Read 10006 times)