The Warriors Aren’t Ruining the NBA, They’re Showing Everyone How It’s Done
Golden State might be the best team off all time, and they did it the right way.
Golden State took a 2–0 series lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 132–113 win in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. This game was pretty competitive for the majority of the game, but the Warriors always seemed to be comfortably in the lead.
The narrative during the second straight 20 point blowout of the Finals was that the Warriors have ruined the NBA. They were a 73 win team that added the second best player on the planet, and now nobody has a chance at winning the championship until this team is done.
The Warriors haven’t ruined the NBA. They’ve simply demonstrated to everyone in the league how to construct a perennial contender. So instead of complaining that the final score of these games isn’t acceptable for you, enjoy the incredible basketball that’s on display.
The slogan of the NBA this season has been, “This is why we play.” In a sense, Golden State embodies that phrase in what they have built. Why do owners invest their money into a sports franchise? They do it to win championships. They try to hire the best front office group they can, so that they bring in a great coach, and draft great players.
Since the NBA is a salary cap league, the best way to build a championship team is through the draft. The Warriors drafted three terrific players(Curry, Thompson, Green) without picking in the top five once. This allowed them to be in prime position to sign Durant since they were under the salary cap.
So why is this ruining the league? A team that drafted well and put themselves in the best position possible to land a star free agent is a bad thing? I’d say that Cleveland’s style of buying a championship team is WAY worse.
Not only did the Warriors draft well and create a nice roster, their style of play is what made them so great in the first place. Golden State plays beautiful basketball on both ends of the floor. Everyone shares the ball, they move the ball side to side, and they’re incredibly hard to stop. On defense, they have the personnel to switch on everything, and they fly around to make scoring almost impossible.
In Golden State we have a team that built their team the right way and landed a star free agent because of their organizational excellence, and plays a beautiful style of team basketball. Then you have Cleveland that has bought their team with a bunch of one dimensional players that fit around an all around stud like James, and who play an ugly style of hero ball that only works because of the Cavs’ talent level. We’re going to say that Golden State is bad for the NBA?
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the majority of the people complaining about the Warriors ruining the NBA are rooting for James to beat them. Let’s not forget that James did the same thing six years ago when he joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami.
Was this bad for the NBA? You had two top five players in the league(James and Wade) with a top 15 player(Bosh) together, and only one of them was drafted by the Heat.
I believe that there’s an argument to made that the aggregate star power of the Miami big three and the current Warriors super team is the same. Durant and James are the same with the slight advantage to James. Curry and Wade are similar but Wade was a better player all around at the time. Thompson and Green together get the slight edge over Bosh. We’ve seen this before, but now it’s different for some reason.
Why is it different? Because the Warriors’ super team was built the right way, and Durant slid right in because his style fit perfectly. The Warriors play basketball the right way, and have players that are willing to defer to each other for the greater good of the team.
In Miami, you saw the same type of basketball that you do now in Cleveland. A bunch of isolation garbage that worked because Wade, James and Bosh got away with because of their supreme talent. The Heat of six years ago were not, and will never be considered the better team than this Warriors squad because Golden State play a better style of basketball. The Heat were a more talented team. The Warriors’ style just makes them more dominate, and therefore better for the NBA.
The Warriors’ dominance over the NBA this season is good for the league. They’re showing the rest of the teams what organizational excellence looks like. This will elevate the competition around the league because franchises will do their best in trying to duplicate what the Warriors have done.
