This decade: The Lakers are going to fade, and then the Thunder will take over the West. The Thunder will be the Anti-Heat, the Cool.
The narrative: Good vs Evil, Ambition vs Ego, Organic vs Processed, Basketball vs Fame, Homemade vs Store-bought, and (counter-intuitively) the Old Model vs the New. The Heat could become so dominant in 2-3 years time that other superstars have to team up to compete. If CP3 doesn’t join the Super-friends, he will join Carmelo plus one.
After the success of the Celtics and soon the Heat, this is the way teams will have to be built now – not on individual heroes fighting for individual histories (Jordan), but ‘friends’ staying at each others houses after away games in each others cities until free agency allows them to combine into Juggernauts. Building a team from the ground up, around a single, dominating, franchise star may become obsolete if the Heat model works as well as it could.
- Henry
I read this yesterday and then listened to the Planet Money podcast on LeBrononomics (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/07/09/128413796/the-friday-podcast-lebronomics).
Like.
I kinda can’t argue with any of this. When you think the Thunder were a heartbeat from taking the Lakers to 7, and they will have internalised that pain pretty deeply – it might not be long at all. One injury to any of Pau/Kobe/Odom/Artest/Bynum and the Thunder is the team to be beat next year (assuming the Lakers stay quiet at the deadline the way they have the last couple of seasons). Come on late October!