NBA: The ‘Team Game’ is overtaking the ‘Superstar’ in a big way
By Robby Sabo
Despite the larger than life names that exist in the NBA, the ‘team game’ is starting to finally make a comeback.
For the National Basketball Association, one critical league function has always eluded them which very present in all other professional major sports leagues.
That function is parity.
Because of a hard salary cap, NFL and NHL fans can always know their team is only a year away from competing. The days of long, organizational overhauls are gone and the times of quick change are very real.
We’ve seen it time and again.
For all the slack that baseball takes without having a salary cap at all, their new very strict luxury tax has made “development” the coveted word in all 30 front offices. They haven’t had a back to back World Series Champion since the 2000 New York Yankees.
It’s no secret how the NBA operates. They thrive on the superstar as it still remains hard to turn a franchise around. Tanking is now a new frequently used word in the NBA dictionary.
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson saved the league in the early 1980’s, and ever since they’ve continued that superstar model until today. The way the game lends itself to very few athletes per team also provides a very natural fit to the strategy.
NBA superstars are the rockstars of today’s athletic world.
It’s so pronounced these days that their offseason turns out to be the biggest news worthy time for the league. What LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony were going to to last summer was followed on a seemingly hour by hour basis.
Following the superstar model is great, but allowing it to balloon to that extent is worrisome for a team sport.
If there was one perfect phrase a newly-minted commissioner could say aloud, it was what Adam Silver said as he handed the Larry O’Brien trophy to Greg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs last June.
“You showed the world how beautiful this game is,” Silver said has he handed off the trophy.
It was a washout. the Spurs dominated the superstar filled Miami Heat in five games, with the largest margin of victory seen in NBA Finals history (70 points in their four-wins).
The beauty of the team game took a stand last spring.
Now, halfway through the 2014-15 regular season, we are quickly realizing that the team concept is carrying over in full force. With one quick glance at the Atlanta Hawks you’ll understand how true this sentiment is.
The Hawks are currently the beasts of the East. They sport a 38-6 record and are currently on a 15-game win streak.
Incredibly for the team in the league that has the most wins, they do it without one single superstar on their squad. Atlanta currently ranks sixth in the league in points with 103.2 per game. What makes them remarkable is how they’re getting to that number.
The leading scorer for Atlanta is guard Jeff Teague at 17.2 per game. Next is big man Paul Millsap at 16.9 and Al Horford at 15.1. To think a team could lead the league in wins and not have a single 18 point scorer is such a dinosaur way of thinking.
They are doing it with excellent team basketball and defense. The man who’s behind it all is head coach Mike Budenholzer. This is the second year for Budenholzer in Atlanta and already his system of unselfishness and cornerstone fundamental basketball philosophies is paying off.
Where did Budenholzer learn to perfect his craft? Under Greg Popovich and the Spurs as he spend 17 seasons as an assistant there, and the final nine seasons as the number one assistant to Popovich. He has four World Championships under his belt.
Much like the Spurs, the Hawks model is “the superstar becomes the open man.”
Popovich could get away with his model because he had a dominant superstar in Tim Duncan who is from another planet and doesn’t care about all of the accolades most stars care about.
Budenholzer is bringing together good talent and forming a great team. The open man always gets the ball and evidence of this is the fact that Atlanta averages a very good 26.1 assists per game.
While the Hawks are second in the league in assists, the number one team is the Golden State Warriors who are at 27.2 per game. And not surprisingly have the best winning percentage in the league an impressive .854 clip.
Okay so Golden State has Stephen Curry. The man is a stud and a bonafide superstar in this league. But as the past model of the NBA always claimed that you needed two superstars to win in a championship, the Warriors are flirting with dominance with only one.
Guard Klay Thompson can be argued as a superstar, there’s no doubt about it. The way the Warriors play though represents everything that’s good with team basketball. Steve Kerr runs very few isolations with his squad, moving the league further away from the superstar dominant model.
Curry only averages 22.8 points per game. I say only because if he wanted to he could flirt with 30 on a nightly basis. He has fully bought into the team concept and it’s flourishing in Oakland.
Another team leading the charge for team basketball is the Toronto Raptors.
Yet again, the Raptors have ripped through the East this season without a major marquee name on the roster. Point guard Kyle Lowrie is now in the upper-echelon, but the rate their winning has turned a lot of heads.
The Raptors leading scorer is Lowrie at 19.8 per game. Again, this is another team that doesn’t have a guy who’s chucking the ball up a considerable amount every night as they try to flirt with 25 plus each game out.
There seems to be a direct correlation between the great team this year and their leading scorer not having to be extremely high.
Shot efficiency is quickly become the hot phrase in the association.
LeBron James and the Cavaliers have formed a new big-three, yet if the playoffs started today they’d be the fifth seed. That would be a major disappointment for the city of Cleveland.
It’s obviously taking time for the three men to jell.
Despite the recent success of the “team game teams,” as everybody knows, once the postseason comes, the game slows down, fast-breaks are limited and the referees start to choke on the whistle in favor of the star. It quickly becomes a physical half-court game which favors the superstar.
Time will only tell if teams like the Hawks, Raptors and even Warriors to a degree can match what the Spurs did last year and have real playoff success. As far as today is concerned, the team game in the NBA is back.
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