How do you build a winner in a post-Warriors NBA?

There was a defining moment early in the 2017 NBA Finals when it became clear that the Cleveland Cavaliers, great as they were, had no chance of overtaking the mighty Golden State Warriors and repeating as champions. The Cavaliers would give it their all for five games, winning one and making another couple competitive, but they had already tipped their hand in the first half of the series opener.

Effectively, they were already done.

The moment came late in the second quarter, with about three and a half minutes to go. The Cavaliers were still making it a game at the time; they were down just eight, 53-45, with the ball. On this possession, four Cavaliers cleared out to the left side of the floor, leaving LeBron James in isolation on the right side, one-on-one against Kevin Durant, ready to go to work. It was an approach that had worked countless times for the Cavaliers throughout the last three years — get the ball to LeBron, let him attack and work his magic.

On this possession, though, nothing worked. He jabbed right, crossed over, went left and drove to the basket; Durant stayed with him, showing perfect footwork. As LeBron approached the rim, he suddenly crashed into a double team of KD and the sort-of-guarding-Tristan-Thompson-but-not-really-guarding-him Draymond Green. LeBron tried to get out of trouble by finding Kyrie Irving for a drive-and-kick corner 3, but Kyrie was wrapped up by the impossibly long limbs of Klay Thompson, and he had no shot. Turnover.

Two Warriors — Durant and Stephen Curry — leaked out ahead of the pack in transition. They were met by approximately 1.5 Cavaliers, as J.R. Smith got back quickly and Iman Shumpert hustled to stay with him, a step or two behind. Durant crossed halfcourt with the ball, approaching the free throw line; Smith made eye contact with him, seemingly committing to contesting him at the rim. He then noticed Curry, to Durant’s left, also approaching the arc and preparing to spot-up on the left wing. Smith was faced with guarding two of the most talented scorers in the history of the sport at the same time. Naturally, he panicked. He hesitated for a split-second, then picked his poison and closed out on Curry, hoping that Shumpert could catch up to KD. He couldn’t. A second later, Smith watched from 20 feet away as Durant shook the backboard with a thunderous dunk and Shumpert, gasping for breath, tailed hopelessly behind.

It was just two points, but it told you everything you needed to know. In a span of about nine seconds, the Warriors turned one of the most feared plays in basketball — a LeBron drive-and-kick to Kyrie — into a laughably easy dunk on the other end. They did it with a combination of quickness, length, defensive coordination, instinctive transition play, foot speed, floor spacing and, in Durant’s case, a terrifying ability to attack the basket. In nine seconds, they showed they could do it all. Even the casual fan could see it: The Warriors were not merely an offensive juggernaut or a stingy defensive team. They were an everything team. There are no niche destroyers of worlds; you either wreck everyone’s shit indiscriminately or you don’t. The Dubs did.

As our collective sense of the Warriors’ supremacy continued to set in throughout these Finals, you couldn’t help but think: They weren’t just dominating one series or one postseason even. This team was so good, it was reshaping the NBA as we know it. In a league where fans, media pundits and players themselves have always defined success by counting championship rings, the Warriors were making everyone reevaluate the challenge of winning one. They were making the other league’s 29 teams ask: If we can’t ever beat these guys, then what are we even doing here?

It takes a long, long time and a boatload of luck to build an NBA champion. Consider the construction of the modern-day Cavaliers, who finally won their first title in 2016 — it’s entirely fair to say that roster was six years in the making. That’s how long it took them to get from The Decision, when LeBron James left in the summer of 2010, to The Comeback, when they toppled the Warriors from down 3-1 in the NBA Finals. During that stretch, they spent four full seasons bottoming out, earning a total of five high lottery picks. Every single one of those five picks either turned into a championship-caliber starter or a trade chip that produced one — Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters (who reeled in J.R. Smith) and the Anthony Bennett/Andrew Wiggins one-two punch (which landed them Kevin Love).

And oh, by the way: The best player on the planet happened to live in their backyard and chose to join them despite their four-year run of ineptitude. The Cavaliers needed a long stretch of losing, followed by a crazy run of lottery and free agency luck, all just to win one championship. And even that one, they got by the skin of their teeth. If not for an ill-timed Draymond temper tantrum, they might still be searching.

To most of the NBA, the Cavaliers’ run this decade is something to envy. The goal in this league is to build a title-winner, and the Cavaliers did it. A six-year turnaround like that leaves rival executives scratching their heads and pondering: How can we do that? How close are we? What more do we need?

In a typical NBA ecosystem, those questions are answerable enough. You have defined strata of teams, each with a clear purview of their title chances. You’ve got the lottery dwellers, the middle-class playoff teams and the true contenders that are just one piece away. Except wait. Here’s the critical question: Today, in 2017, do true contenders even exist? In a league that the Warriors have dominated so thoroughly, has the concept of “being one piece away” simply been stricken from the vernacular? The Cavaliers spent six years collecting elite talent, including one of the sport’s all-time Mount Rushmore guys, and even they got positively waxed in the Finals. Are even the Cavaliers one piece away from Golden State now? What would that piece be?

The Cavaliers were lucky to win once, and that was before the Warriors upgraded from Harrison Barnes to Durant. In early June of this year, we all toyed with the idea that the Cavaliers could pull the upset again, and then the Warriors showed up for the Finals and reinforced the idea: No no, you don’t understand — we upgraded from Harrison Barnes to goddamn Kevin Durant. The 2017 Warriors were competing on an entirely different plane. It was like they’d invented a new sport. You can try to challenge this team if you want, but is anything going to work? There’s buzz about the Cavaliers trying to swap Love for Paul George, but would even that make a difference? You’re not adding George for nothing — you’re losing an All-Star of your own and effectively rearranging the deck chairs. Will it help? In the grand, count-the-ringzzz scheme of things, probably not.

And more broadly: If the Cavaliers with PG13 can’t unseat the Warriors from their throne, what hope does anyone else have?

The basic recipe for a winning team hasn’t changed. The ingredients you need are still the same — a lot of time, a lot of luck and a deep understanding of how players’ personalities and skill sets fit together. That all remains true. What’s changed for everyone outside the Bay Area is the probability of the title pipe dream actually panning out.

Danny Ainge, whose Celtics have rebuilt quickly and are now the leading challengers to LeBron and the Cavaliers out East, understands this well. “The formula to become an elite team hasn’t changed,” Ainge told ESPN’s Zach Lowe, in a story that was published last Tuesday. “What you’re asking is if Golden State has changed things so that you have no chance.”

Three days later, news broke that Ainge was trading the No. 1 overall pick in the draft to Philadelphia. The timing of Ainge’s Warrior musings vis a vis this blockbuster trade is pretty clearly, I’d argue, no coincidence. Trading the top pick for a more diversified handful of assets is precisely the sort of move that makes sense in a post-Warriors NBA. Getting a top talent on your roster right now is a way to build a team and chase immediate greatness; Ainge instead chose to wait and hoard future assets, including what could potentially be a very juicy Kings pick in 2019.

The ironic thing is he did it by dealing with the “Trust the Process” Sixers — the same team that spent years bottoming out to accumulate assets. The thinking behind Sam Hinkie’s tanking experiment was not exactly about chasing one No. 1 pick and drafting one transcendent guy. More accurately, it was about piling up draft opportunities and getting multiple bites at the proverbial apple. Now, the Celtics are taking those bites instead. The Celtics will have multiple chances to draft a franchise star; the Sixers will instead bank on just one player, Markelle Fultz. Will Fultz blossom next to Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and Dario Saric, or will the Sixers encounter difficulties putting together their gaudy-on-paper collection of talent? Injuries, fit difficulties or simple draft busts could await — or the Sixers could become a title contender in four years. The Sixers are now committed, one way or the other, to finding out. For the most part, the treasure trove of future assets is gone; this is their team now.

As for the Celtics, the Fultz trade is a fascinating move because of what it says about the team’s long-term journey. Ainge’s team is a pseudocontender right now, having just played a five-game Eastern Conference Finals against the Cavaliers, but even so, they’re not necessarily committed to the present. Fultz just turned 19; he’ll probably start coming into his own around 2019, and he’ll be on a team-friendly rookie contract until 2021. The Celtics could commit to pursuing a title during that window or they could wait even longer. Adding that future pick increases their future flexibility, allowing them to pounce on any number of opportunities in the years ahead.

In this league, with a dominant Warriors team looming over everything, doesn’t this make sense? Is it not better to wait than to commit? You may get a lesser player now (not that Josh Jackson is any slouch), but taking the long view here might be warranted. In their own ways, both the Sixers and Celtics are doing that. Philly is committing to a core group now, whereas Boston maintains the flexibility to tweak that core in the coming years. Both teams, though, are gearing up for the distant future.

Conventional wisdom says that when one team wins the championship, the runners-up are the teams with the best shot at dethroning them. According to their won/lost records this past season, this means the leading threats to the Dubs/Cavs supremacy are the other top seeds out West — namely the Spurs, Rockets and Clippers. But in this case, is that really true? Are any of those teams what you’d consider close? Are any of them one piece away? Are they even two? How can you continue on the road to contention when it doesn’t even appear that such a road exists?

Aside from the teams like Boston and Philadelphia that are clearly gunning for the future, you have those squads that can’t do so because they’re too committed to being a present-day also-ran. Perhaps the saddest of those sob stories is being told in South Texas.

For three years now — basically ever since the Warriors rose to power with Draymond in the lineup, Curry at the next level and Steve Kerr on the sidelines — NBA fans have longed for an epic seven-game showdown in the Western Conference Finals between Golden State and San Antonio. The Warriors are the new power, and the Spurs have owned the conference historically and are fighting to maintain control; a confrontation between the two is the climax we’ve all waited for. It hasn’t happened. Twice, the Spurs got knocked out in the opening rounds by an underdog, first the Clippers and then OKC; then this year, they finally made it to the Conference Finals and got trampled. They’ve yet to truly challenge Golden State.

You could endlessly debate why. Maybe they’re too dependent on Kawhi Leonard (they were outscored by 10.7 points per 100 possessions with him off the floor in the playoffs.) Maybe their big men, especially LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol, aren’t able to hang with their more athletic counterparts in the modern NBA. Maybe the supporting cast just isn’t that good. Whatever the reason, the Spurs since 2014 have been very good but not title-winning elite. Is there any hope of another piece this summer changing that? The absolute best case is they land Chris Paul, but even that comes at a major price. They’d have to shed major salary to make the math work, possibly even losing a cornerstone guy like Danny Green. It’s hard to imagine the 2018 Spurs, even if they somehow add CP3, making the Finals.

What about the Rockets? They surprised the whole league last year by winning 55 games, but doing any better than will be immensely difficult. This Rockets team is what it is. Their core leadership group of Daryl Morey, Mike D’Antoni and James Harden chose a style and committed to it — they’re going to bomb lots of 3s, score lots of points and skate by with mediocre defense. They’ve already mastered that style, and it’s hard to see how they can do any better. It’s also hard to see how they pivot away from it, given the money and years they’ve committed to players like Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon who so perfectly embody it. There are little improvements you can make at the margins, such as adding a 3-and-D wing at the mid-level (names like Thabo Sefolosha, Luc Mbah a Moute and James Johnson have been tossed around), but would a move like that really put you over the top? Realistically, the best-case scenario in Houston is another healthy season and another 55 wins. Anything more is a pipe dream.

Then you have the Clippers and, well, we’ve been over this. They’ve been trying for six years now to get over the top with their current core, and for various reasons, they’ve never quite perfected the dynamic. Now that core is on the verge of crumbling, as every meaningful player besides DeAndre Jordan is hitting free agency simultaneously. Doc Rivers will be lucky to bring back the flawed team he has now in its entirety. Making his roster any better? That feels mighty unlikely.

It’s possible that the next team to seriously threaten for a championship isn’t any of the above. The greatest threats to Golden State might be the more distant ones. In the “Who will unseat Golden State first?” parlor game, a team like the Spurs is a popular answer, but it may well make more sense to bet on someone with more of a long-term plan.

Boston, if this year’s No. 3 and/or that future Lakers or Kings pick yields a cornerstone player, is a good pick to be a threat in the distant future. Philly, if the Embiid/Simmons/Fultz nucleus stays healthy and coalesces well, could also be a terror. The Bucks are interesting, as they’re quietly building a Warriors-like army of young players with the length and athleticism to switch everything and play a smothering defense. Minnesota has its flaws, but it also has quite possibly the most skilled big man in the league and a couple of other intriguing young players. Utah, Denver and Portland all have a fair amount of raw talent and the assets to acquire even more later.

Of the seven teams listed above, only two of them finished higher than 42-40 this past season. The Wolves lost 51 games, including 13 of their last 16. In today’s landscape, though, that’s not the point. Building for success in the Warriors’ NBA means planning for the long haul. The teams that can best do it are the ones that will have a ghost of a chance.

The Warriors aren’t going anywhere. All their key players are between the ages of 26 and 28, and under contract for a while; it would be a miracle if they were anything but heavy title favorites next year, and probably for at least a season or two after that. Jeff Sherman, NBA oddsmaker at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, has already told ESPN that the Dubs next season are “going to be the highest favorite we’ve ever had going into a season, any team in any sport.”

Which, well, duh. That’s a given. The Warriors’ status as 2018 favorites is so obvious that it’s hardly even worth discussing. But as this offseason gets underway, and the other 29 teams begin planning their futures in a Dubs-centric NBA, it will be fun to ask some of the more long-term questions that their dominance poses.

The 2017 NBA Draft is today. In another week and change, the start of free agency will be upon us. If you’re following an NBA team that doesn’t abut the San Francisco Bay — any of them, you name one — what does your front office have planned for this summer? They’ll draft dudes, sure, and they’ll go after whatever free agents they have the cap space to sign, but what’s their master plan? Are they building for right now, or are they thinking about 2022?

Next: Rebuilding the Thunder with one NBA2k17 offseason

For some teams, the strategy this time of year has traditionally been “take the best player available.” For others, it’s been “find that one missing piece.” In today’s league, is it time to pursue another line of thinking altogether, building for the distant future instead of the present — and perhaps with a narrowed focus on finding the kind of versatile, athletic players who can compete in a post-Warriors NBA? It’s the Dubs’ world and we live in it; for everyone else, the challenge is figuring out exactly how to live.

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