The superstar NBA player Kevin Durant signed with the super-team Golden State Warriors. NBA commissioner Adam Silver does not think this is a super-duper development.
Silver said it’s fine that Durant exercised his rights as a free agent. However, Silver said the concentration of superstars on one team is not good for the league and wants the next collective bargaining agreement to be one that “encourages the distribution of great players throughout the league.”
That won’t happen. It’s an unattainable goal because there aren’t enough superstars to go around. Players are never going to accept more limitations to their free-agent rights.
Besides that, Silver is wrong about Durant-to-Warriors hurting the league. Durant’s move will make the NBA’s business better. The story line in 2015-16 will be the rest of the league trying to stop the super-duper Warriors, and that story sells.
As much as people say they want competitive balance, what they really want is entertainment. There will be nothing more enjoyable than seeing if anyone can stop the Warriors. How do you stop a team with Durant, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson?
The Warriors will be the hot ticket wherever they go. People will tune in when they are on national TV or even buy a subscription for access to all of their games. Warriors vs. LeBron James in the final would break all TV ratings records.
Even those bitter about the Warriors’ overflowing talent will watch them, if for no other reason than spite.
“Just like when LeBron James went to Miami, I loved that there was a villain,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told ESPN. “They become the villain. I’m fine with that. Everybody’s going to root for them to lose.”
Warriors vs. Everybody is better than the NFL’s watered-down parity. NFL teams try to finish 9-7 instead of 7-9. Luck and injuries determine too much. Mediocrity is rewarded.
The NBA has to offer something more than bland parity, and super teams fit the bill. They always have. The NBA’s history is one of superstars, super teams and dynasties.
The Celtics have 17 championships and the Lakers 16. No other franchise has more than the six won by Michael Jordan’s Bulls. Tim Duncan’s Spurs won five. Silver said he wants to engineer parity, but his league already has just the right amount: a different champion in each of the past four seasons and six of the past seven.
There’s no need for Silver and the owners to try to spread the superstar wealth. It would be a futile exercise, anyway, because the math is working against them. There are multiple times more teams than players who can lead them to championships.
Nine out of 10 NBA champions and eight out of 10 runners-up have had at least one player voted first- or second-team All-NBA in the year they won the title. Right now those 10 players are clustered on seven teams. But even if Silver could magically mandate that all 10 of those players must play on different teams, that still would leave 20 teams without one.
The best Silver can hope for is that superstar players frequently switch teams and join a franchise that doesn’t already have one. But the main reason the current crop of MVP-caliber players change teams is because they want to play with other MVP-caliber players.
There’s not much NBA owners can do about that. They already tried. The current CBA includes huge disincentives for the best players to switch teams as free agents and financial penalties for teams who accumulate high payrolls.
Superstars keep switching teams, anyway. Now that the owners can’t credibly cry poor, players won’t agree to even more free-agent restrictions when the next CBA is negotiated in 2017. Owners with superstars don’t want to make it harder to keep them, add more of them and build a team around them.
The super-team era is here to stay. Silver and everyone else should embrace it and enjoy the Warriors show.
