It’s not just the alphas, it’s the 5 player mix.Don’t get me wrong, Horford and Brown are great players, Horford is the classic third member of a big 3, the guy that scores the points the other two don’t.
Brown projects to a secondary scorer, an effective scorer whose offense comes from the attention the primary scorer gets (and there’s nothing wrong with this, Kevin Garnett was a secondary scorer, albeit one of the best in league history).
Tatum’s a on a different level, he’s a pure alpha scorer on a team that already has two of those guys. How do you stop someone like that when you already have to stop Kyrie and Gordo?
In this context what matters is shooting ability, not ball handling or overall scoring. You could still pull double teams on the ball carrier at times if there were weak players on the floor. But with that 5, there’s not going to be a guy shooting below ~38% from 3, never mind a weak link.
Said differently, offensively I’d rather have a team of 4 LeBron’s and 1 Kyle Korver in their prime than 5 LeBron’s. What’s the point of a 5th alpha when you can add a stud shooter instead? I’d probably rather 3 LeBron’s and 2 Korver than 4:1. What are you going to do about Kyrie/Gordo/Tatum? You sure as shit aren’t going to leave Al and JB alone. They’ll kill you.