Is Teambuilding obsolete?

NoXInNixon

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I enjoy sports on two levels. First, and most importantly, I enjoy the thrill of watching unimaginably talented people performing amazing athletic feats, especially if they're players on a team I root for. And I enjoy the tension of hoping my team or my player will win.

But I, like most of you, also enjoy thinking and debating about the decisions that go into putting a team together. If my team's success depends upon the GM making a continuous series of good decisions, I get engaged in questioning those decisions. Who to draft, who to trade, who to sign. In baseball, when to bring a prospect up from the minors.

But looking at today's NBA, I question if being a good GM even matters at all. The three best teams in the NBA right now got that way because superstars chose to play for them. No other teams had a chance to sign or trade for the players that the Lakers, Clippers, and Nets got. Their GMs didn't do anything better than other teams GMs. They just happened to be the teams that the players chose to turn into superteams.

Is this the new NBA? Does team-building matter any more? Even the Heat already had Wade before adding LeBron and Bosh. The Celtics already had PP before adding Garnett and Allen.

And, yeah, it's possible for a championship team to be built through trades and the draft, like Toronto and Golden State, but it feels like it's getting harder and harder to do so. And it makes me enjoy the fact league less.

Does anyone else feel this way? And is there a solution? Would something like compensatory draft picks work in the NBA if a team signs away a max salary player, the team he's leaving gets an extra draft pick or something? Or is this not really a problem?
 

luckiestman

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Warriors, Bucks, and the Raps for the most part were built in a non “that’s what friends are for” style. So it’s not dead.
 

lovegtm

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how soon we forget the Heatles
The Heatles were fine imo. They got beat by a homegrown Dallas team and were lucky to win one of the next 3 titles, because San Antonio and OKC did great internal development.

This is a dumb narrative and it's boring to refute it over and over for casual fans who are mad that LA is warm and has movie stars.
 

luckiestman

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The Heatles were fine imo. They got beat by a homegrown Dallas team and were lucky to win one of the next 3 titles, because San Antonio and OKC did great internal development.
Heatles won twice and made the finals 4x and were a friends team up. Am I misunderstanding the thread?
 

lovegtm

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Heatles won twice and made the finals 4x and were a friends team up. Am I misunderstanding the thread?
The point is that the league was still very competitive, and most of the other competition was homegrown teams.

Unless the topic of the thread is “should friends never be allowed to play together “
 

jon abbey

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The Clippers flamed out famously in their one year together so far and the Nets have played two games together. LeBron and Shaq are the only two superstars I can think of in a long time who chose their FA destination and then won a title there.
 

lovegtm

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The Clippers flamed out famously in their one year together so far and the Nets have played two games together. LeBron and Shaq are the only two superstars I can think of in a long time who chose their FA destination and then won a title there.
And Shaq didn’t join a super-team—Kobe wasn’t developed yet and it wasn’t at all obvious he was taking the best path to a title.

Again, this is a low-information debate for people with LA inferiority complexes.
 

AMS25

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The small market teams have no choice but to draft and develop and use their assets to make trades. It's fine. I'm following the tanking Thunder this year, and it's fun watching the kids play. It reminds me of OKC's first year in Oklahoma, when Durant and Westbrook were just raw talent.
 

slamminsammya

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The Nets this year have two great players but they are also incredibly deep with talent they discovered or developed. Add to that the organization and planning required to have the cap space to sign KD and Kyrie when they became available and you can see it wasn't just a GM sitting back doing nothing.
 

lexrageorge

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Heat also benefited immensely from drafting Dwayne Wade, who played a key role in both of the Heat's title eras.

There will be teams that have advantages when it comes to attracting premier free agents. The only way for the Celtics to become a destination is to draft and develop well and hope someone is enticed to team up with Tatum and Brown, which is hardly the worst strategy.
 

Captaincoop

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Heat also benefited immensely from drafting Dwayne Wade, who played a key role in both of the Heat's title eras.

There will be teams that have advantages when it comes to attracting premier free agents. The only way for the Celtics to become a destination is to draft and develop well and hope someone is enticed to team up with Tatum and Brown, which is hardly the worst strategy.
There have always been teams that have advantages in free agency. What has changed is that this generation of players doesn't wait until free agency to give up on their current team and force its hand to let them pick their teammates a la Anthony Davis.

I do think a significant amount of the blame is on the league for the way they've structured the salary cap and for encouraging a system where teams lose on purpose for years at a time.
 

benhogan

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The way Kawhi and AD forced their way out of San Antonio and New Orleans, respectively, was bad for the game. The rest of it doesn’t bother me.
yea, that was kind of unseemly. I don't care for the way Klutch/Rich Paul operate, but before them was Arn Tellem and before Arn there was David Falk...

Then again if the CBA is going to artificially cap max salaries, the players should decide where they want to live/play.
 

BaseballJones

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@benhogan

What do you think NBA salaries would actually look like in practice if the league kept a team salary cap but eliminated the individual max salary? Obviously their individual max would still exist - no player could make more than the team salary cap, and in reality, couldn't make more than the team cap less league minimum salaries for the rest of the roster. But with that in mind, what do you think salaries would end up looking like? Would someone like Luka get 80% of the team salary cap?
 

NoXInNixon

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The Nets this year have two great players but they are also incredibly deep with talent they discovered or developed. Add to that the organization and planning required to have the cap space to sign KD and Kyrie when they became available and you can see it wasn't just a GM sitting back doing nothing.
It doesn't require any great skill to have a lot of cap space after being a terrible team for several years in a row. And their incredibly deep team was a playoff non-factor last season, so their team building is like 10% responsible for how good they are.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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@benhogan

What do you think NBA salaries would actually look like in practice if the league kept a team salary cap but eliminated the individual max salary? Obviously their individual max would still exist - no player could make more than the team salary cap, and in reality, couldn't make more than the team cap less league minimum salaries for the rest of the roster. But with that in mind, what do you think salaries would end up looking like? Would someone like Luka get 80% of the team salary cap?
If you kept the concept of Bird Rights, you could have a top player make more than the cap, assuming the owner was willing to go into the luxury tax to keep a competitive team together. Michael Jordan made more than the cap at a certain point in his career, back before max salaries were in the CBA.

In any event, not every player has tried to maximize their salary. Durant turned down the supermax to jump to Golden State, cost himself millions but probably doesn't regret the move. Davis too cost himself supermax eligibility (has to be signed with the team that drafted you, or traded for you while you were on your rookie contract), so he got the 30% max instead of the 35% max. I'm not sure money is the way to control player movement.

Edit: or to think about it another way, money isn't just about salary. Playing in a big market for a glamorous team and winning titles could translate into more money in endorsements and other off court earnings than a player loses by not focusing solely on maximizing their salary.
 
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NoXInNixon

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The way Kawhi and AD forced their way out of San Antonio and New Orleans, respectively, was bad for the game. The rest of it doesn’t bother me.
Why isn't Paul George lumped in with those other two?
 

mauf

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yea, that was kind of unseemly. I don't care for the way Klutch/Rich Paul operate, but before them was Arn Tellem and before Arn there was David Falk...

Then again if the CBA is going to artificially cap max salaries, the players should decide where they want to live/play.
I agree that what Rich Paul did wasn’t a big departure from precedent. The game-changer was Kawhi getting away with collecting his guaranteed money on a contract he freely signed while sitting out with what was widely assumed to be a fake injury. That precedent completely changed the way that AD’s garden-variety trade demand played out, with the Pelicans feeling they needed to bench AD to protect their investment and other teams being fearful to trade for a one-year rental lest they not get the bargained-for value. The Lakers’ lottery luck spared the league a major shitshow if AD was prepared to do what Kawhi did (which, in fairness to AD, he might not have been).
 

mauf

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Why isn't Paul George lumped in with those other two?
Because Paul George quietly asked the Thunder to trade him, which allowed them to get fair value for him. He didn’t publicly demand a trade (which he would have been within his rights to do), never mind sit out a full season with a dubious injury.
 

NoXInNixon

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The point is that the league was still very competitive, and most of the other competition was homegrown teams.

Unless the topic of the thread is “should friends never be allowed to play together “
I don't know if it's a problem that the best players in the league are now more powerful than they've ever been before. But it sure seems like at this moment in time the best way to assemble an NBA title contender is to be a place where the best players want to play.

Sure, Toronto won a single title with a home grown team. But they needed absolutely everything to go right in that one year.

But the Lakers stunk, and they did nothing except sign LeBron and have AD demand to be traded there, and that alone got them a title and they're favorites to do it again.

In five years, are we going to be back here again with Luka and Zion (or whoever the best two under-30 players will be in five years) just picking a team and winning rings with them?
 

mauf

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It doesn't require any great skill to have a lot of cap space after being a terrible team for several years in a row. And their incredibly deep team was a playoff non-factor last season, so their team building is like 10% responsible for how good they are.
Your quarrel fundamentally is with KD being free to choose where he lives and works.

As you say, the Nets were an average team at best last season. It stands to reason, therefore, that KD could have turned at least half the teams in the league into instant contenders (assuming he’s fully recovered and in peak form, as he appears to be). There are perhaps four or five players in the league at any given time who have that ability. The league makes it slightly worse with the officiating, but it’s the nature of the sport that one dominant player will always have the ability to alter the league’s balance of power.

As others have said, you could mitigate this to some extent by relaxing or eliminating the cap on individual salaries. But that won’t eliminate the problem — sure, you’ll have guys like Giannis who take the extra money, but you will always have bankable stars whose endorsement income rivals or exceeds their salaries; short of forcing them to play forever for the team that drafted them, they’re going to play where (or with whom) they want.
 

OurF'ingCity

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The way Kawhi and AD forced their way out of San Antonio and New Orleans, respectively, was bad for the game. The rest of it doesn’t bother me.
I agree with you to some extent, but in a weird way couldn’t you actually view this as doing those teams a favor? The players are essentially telling their teams there is no chance they will re-sign there so they might as well get some value in trade while they can.

The unseemly part is sitting out with fake injuries which I believe both Kawhi and AD did to some extent. But that should be able to be addressed via suspensions/fines/etc.
 

AMS25

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Because Paul George quietly asked the Thunder to trade him, which allowed them to get fair value for him. He didn’t publicly demand a trade (which he would have been within his rights to do), never mind sit out a full season with a dubious injury.
Russell Westbrook quietly worked out a trade to Houston with the Thunder as well. As long as the Thunder can extract some draft picks from a trade, OKC is fine with trading away grumpy superstars.
 

lovegtm

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I don't know if it's a problem that the best players in the league are now more powerful than they've ever been before. But it sure seems like at this moment in time the best way to assemble an NBA title contender is to be a place where the best players want to play.

Sure, Toronto won a single title with a home grown team. But they needed absolutely everything to go right in that one year.

But the Lakers stunk, and they did nothing except sign LeBron and have AD demand to be traded there, and that alone got them a title and they're favorites to do it again.

In five years, are we going to be back here again with Luka and Zion (or whoever the best two under-30 players will be in five years) just picking a team and winning rings with them?
You’re really fixated on this LeBron to LA example. Tons of other evidence has been presented, showing that the thing you think is a huge problem really isn’t, and you keep coming back to that one data point.

Honestly, if you literally remove just one player (LeBron), there are no examples of recent titles being won (or even contended for) by a couple guys teaming up together.

I try not to get personal in general, so I’ll just say that your thought processes in this particular instance seem extremely muddled.
 

OurF'ingCity

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You’re really fixated on this LeBron to LA example. Tons of other evidence has been presented, showing that the thing you think is a huge problem really isn’t, and you keep coming back to that one data point.

Honestly, if you literally remove just one player (LeBron), there are no examples of recent titles being won (or even contended for) by a couple guys teaming up together.

I try not to get personal in general, so I’ll just say that your thought processes in this particular instance seem extremely muddled.
Yeah, most of this is just due to the rather unique fact that LeBron is both (a) the best player the league has ever seen, probably and (b) is very comfortable moving teams in free agency.

I guess the other kind-of example is Durant to the Dubs but that was just one player making a decision and wasn’t really a “star team up” since the rest of that GS roster was home grown.
 

Average Game James

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If you kept the concept of Bird Rights, you could have a top player make more than the cap, assuming the owner was willing to go into the luxury tax to keep a competitive team together. Michael Jordan made more than the cap at a certain point in his career, back before max salaries were in the CBA.

In any event, not every player has tried to maximize their salary. Durant turned down the supermax to jump to Golden State, cost himself millions but probably doesn't regret the move. Davis too cost himself supermax eligibility (has to be signed with the team that drafted you, or traded for you while you were on your rookie contract), so he got the 30% max instead of the 35% max. I'm not sure money is the way to control player movement.


Edit: or to think about it another way, money isn't just about salary. Playing in a big market for a glamorous team and winning titles could translate into more money in endorsements and other off court earnings than a player loses by not focusing solely on maximizing their salary.
The difference between the max and super max isn’t all that big though. 5% of the cap is like $6 million a year and it’s pretty easy to imagine the value of a big name franchise, etc helping to offset that salary gap. If there was no max salary though, maybe a team offers $50 million a year or $60 million a year. There’s a number that can offset those other factors, and teams should be able to offer it. I’m all for players getting to free agency and picking where they want to work, but I also want teams to have the tools to help convince a player to stay.
 

benhogan

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@benhogan

What do you think NBA salaries would actually look like in practice if the league kept a team salary cap but eliminated the individual max salary? Obviously their individual max would still exist - no player could make more than the team salary cap, and in reality, couldn't make more than the team cap less league minimum salaries for the rest of the roster. But with that in mind, what do you think salaries would end up looking like? Would someone like Luka get 80% of the team salary cap?
The cap is also artificial, but I like that the NBA has it.

Bron probably commands over 50% of a teams cap with no MAX
 

NoXInNixon

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Yeah, most of this is just due to the rather unique fact that LeBron is both (a) the best player the league has ever seen, probably and (b) is very comfortable moving teams in free agency.

I guess the other kind-of example is Durant to the Dubs but that was just one player making a decision and wasn’t really a “star team up” since the rest of that GS roster was home grown.
LeBron, Durant, AD, and Kawhi are four of the five best players in the league, and the teams they play for didn't have to do anything to get them except exist. And those teams currently have the best odds to win this year's title.

Maybe that isn't a long term trend, but I worry that it's the new normal.