Fansided

That new NBA era we keep hearing about is finally here

By Andrew Tobolowsky

Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant congratulates Dallas Mavericks power forward Dirk Nowitzki following the end of Game 4 of the NBA Western Conference Playoffs at the American Airlines Center, Sunday, May 8, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, 122-86. (Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images)
Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant congratulates Dallas Mavericks power forward Dirk Nowitzki following the end of Game 4 of the NBA Western Conference Playoffs at the American Airlines Center, Sunday, May 8, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, 122-86. (Ron Jenkins/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images) /
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Have the up-and-comers finally arrived?

There are very few great players in the NBA at any given time, and they generally remain the same people. That’s the whole hustle. Every year, teams anxious to sell tickets, coaches and GMs anxious to keep their jobs, put on a full court press about the young talent. You want the truth? Over the course of the last 20 years, several generations of young talent rose and fell, their sunlight choked off by the tall trees that were already there when they started growing.

Kobe Bryant was drafted in 1996. Tim Duncan was drafted in 1997. Dirk Nowitzki was drafted in 1998. Between the three of them, they ruled the 2000s. I know Dirk didn’t win nearly as many as the other guys, but that’s not really the point. Steve Nash’s Suns, Chris Webber’s Kings, those were great, great teams that never got their day in court, and they were kicked out of the playoffs by the Mavericks as often as by the other great teams. It’s the specter of the Suns, the Kings, the Nets, that I’m thinking of now. In fact, I think the 2011 Mavericks championship team was more or less the revenge of the 2000s, where Jason Kidd from those Nets, Peja Stojakovic from those Kings and Shawn Marion from those Suns finally got to celebrate the big win.

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LeBron James was drafted in 2003, seven years after Kobe. Between 1999 and 2014, a period of 15 years, someone besides Kobe, Dirk, Tim or LeBron won the title exactly three times — those Pistons, those Heat and those Celtics. Of course, those Celtics had Kevin Garnett, drafted in 1995, and Paul Pierce, picked one pick after Dirk. The year was 2008, and the league was still being run by guys drafted 10 years earlier.

And if you want to think about who was suffocated in that shade, you don’t have to think about anybody more than those Thunder. Looking at it now, you realize no one will ever have a drafting run like Sam Presti did in those days. In four first round picks over the course of three years (2007-2009), Presti nabbed Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, as well as Serge Ibaka. And Rodrigue Beaubois, technically, which amuses me no end. But the point is, a lot of lists of the top five guys in the NBA right now would include all three of those guys.

And yet, in the end, the old guard broke them, not the other way around. Do you have any idea how long they were the next big thing? How long the Thunder were suffocated in the shade? They had their first 50 win season in 2009, the first year all three played together. They were a terrific team for the next six years, for a total of seven really competitive years. They lost in 2009-10 to Kobe’s Lakers in the first round; to Dirk’s Mavericks in the Conference Finals; to LeBron’s Heat in the NBA Finals; to Tim’s Spurs in the Conference Finals. That last one happened in 2014 — 17 years after Tim was drafted.

The Warriors are, therefore, the very first new great team. For the Thunder, sadly, they showed up at exactly the wrong time. The Thunder’s loss in the 2015-16 playoffs, in the Western Conference Finals, went through Dirk and then through the Spurs, even if by then Tim had retired. Of course, that made Kevin Durant want to go elsewhere and yada yada yada.

But, finally, of course, and despite how clear it seems that the Warriors are totally dominant, when and if they slip or slide, it is finally, after more than 15 years of false promises, time for a new NBA. LeBron’s still making the NBA Finals out of the East every year, but that, too, will some day come to an end. And by then, all the other tall trees will be chilling on a beach, which is a weird thing for trees to do, but well earned.

So, I just want to say how remarkable it is that a few guys drafted over the course of a few years in the 1990s ran the league until the mid-2000s, and that between them and one more guy drafted 14 years ago, the rest of the league couldn’t do anything, no matter how many moves they made until 2015… and say, as well, that for the first time, in a very long time, the league really is different now, and will, finally, be something new. All those years of anointing the next big thing. Now it’s finally true.

Next: The Thunder don't know who they are

And who the next big thing will be, after the Warriors and Cavaliers, is up in the air. Isn’t that exciting? O brave new world, that has such Porzingi in it, and so on.

(Ed. Note — An earlier version of this article forget to mention that the Heat, not the Mavericks won the 2006 NBA Title. Chalk it up to wishful revisionism by the author.)

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