It might be the Golden State age of basketball
Cleveland’s James the first to admit the champion Warriors are ‘built to last a few years’
SAN FRANCISCO— As he pondered the future for himself, his team and the NBA as a whole, with defeat weighing freshly on his mind, his body weary from a fortnight of unimaginable stress, LeBron James had no answers.
“I need to sit down and figure this thing out,” he said.
He and everybody else connected with the league.
The Golden State Warriors — still relatively young, still in a growing phase, immensely talented and the latest super team, in the parlance of the day — had just dispatched James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in a fivegame championship series, establishing themselves as a dynasty in the making and a target for the other 29 teams to shoot at. But can they? Is there a way, with a new CBA coming in July that is expected to have a chilling effect on significant player movement, with such an array of talent on one roster, with the number of superstars in their prime who might be on the market dwindling year to year, for teams to amass the players necessary to take a run at the Warriors?
After all, Golden State has won two of the last three championships and only lost the other one thanks to a historic comeback by the Cavaliers.
Their very best players — NBA final MVP Kevin Durant and two-time regular season MVP Stephen Curry — are still in their prime and they’ve given no indication they’re going anywhere. Draymond Green is under contract, Klay Thompson is the wild card but his chance at more titles rest best with staying in Golden State, and finding other role players to fill in the roster shouldn’t be all that difficult given the franchise’s allure.
“Teams and franchises are going to be trying to figure out ways that they can put personnel together, the right group of guys together to be able to hopefully compete against this team,” James said. “They’re assembled as good as you can assemble, and I played against some really, really good teams that (were) assembled perfectly, and they’re right up there.”
The argument of whether the Warriors are good or bad for the NBA will rage for as long as they are dominant; fans seem not to mind since the justcompleted final series, which was a record-setting Game 4 performance by the Cavs away from being a sweep, drew television ratings that were the best in years. Attendance in a rather ho-hum regular season many thought was just a prelude to the Warriors-Cavs championship series, was at all-time high levels. The league’s global social media impact has never been greater, its worldwide grasp never tighter.
If “super teams” are bad for the league, it’s hard to figure out how they are.
But sports in its truest form is about competition and now it’s up to the rest of the NBA to figure out a way to challenge a team that looks to be poised for a long run at the top of the heap.
It will take creativity in putting together a roster, a willingness to spend oodles of money constructing that roster, and the luck and good health that all championship-calibre teams must have.
It can be done — every dominant team has been caught and surpassed over time — but it won’t be easy.
“So there’s going to be a lot of teams that’s trying to figure out ways to put personnel together to try and match that if they’re able to actually face them in the playoff series, both Eastern Conference and Western Conference,” James said, ominously. “Because they’re built for — from my eyes, they’re built to last a few years.”