IT HAS been a crazy off-season and free agency for the NBA thus far. Players changing teams and conferences and teams preparing for the grind of the upcoming NBA season, we saw a lot of movements some expected some were catching us entirely by surprise.
Players opting for a higher payday and banding together isn’t new. The 90’s Bulls assembled a super team twice en route to their two three-peat conquests. So did the 90’s Rockets featuring Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen, and Charles Barkley. The last team to assemble such before the ’19 Warriors were the ’04 Lakers with perennial Hall of Famers Karl Malone and Gary Payton teaming up with Shaq and Kobe.
Shaq opted to join the Lakers from the Magic in the summer of-of ’96. KD did it in ‘16 joining an already loaded Warriors team and LeBron doing it in ‘10 with the Heat,’14 going back to Cleveland and ‘18 to join the Lakers.
But can we blame these players for wanting to band together to form dynamic duos and super teams? I grew up in an NBA landscape where dynamic duos prospered. Jordan-Pippen, Stockton-Malone, Payton-Kemp, Robinson-Duncan and Kobe-Shaq, among others.
Now, we have KD-Kyrie in Brooklyn, Steph-Klay in Golden State, Harden-Westbrook in Houston, and the duo’s in Los Angeles of Kawhi-PG and Lebron-AD. These combinations give parity and opportunities for more teams to assert themselves in the league. What we see now seems a throwback to those years and presents a more balanced league. These events may be better in developing a new generation of fans who will not only root for players but their teams as well, doing away with bandwagon fanbases.
I have been a long time Lakers fan and the years of super teams dominating were not as enjoyable as the 90’s teams I used to watch. Yes,I was rooting for the Lakers to form their super team this free-agency but I’m more excited about this recent turn of events in the NBA landscape. Who you got next season?
Notes from the sidelines:
Congratulations to the Mindanao Peace Council, Football for Humanity, DRFA and Maharlika Sports for successfully organizing the sports summit and football training featuring Owen Southgate and Leo Carlson of the National Youth Football Association of Sweden and the English.