This is dumb.

I had never considered it, but now I truly think the idea of having fewer teams needs to be discussed. It’s becoming too top heavy for it not to be considered.

I think cities should get to keep their teams, but perhaps make different divisions in the NBA? Where the top 6-12 teams compete in the A league, and the bottom 16-24 teams compete in the B league? 

The team that wins the B league moves up to the A league and the team that finishes last in the A league moves down to the league? Sort of like Premier League in soccer (which I don’t watch). Idk, I’m open to other suggestions but this is ridiculous.

I have no problem with what GSW have done. What they’ve done IMO isn’t nearly as bad as what the Heat or the KG/Ray Allen Celtics for the league. It’s not like they brought in a "dream team." They basically drafted brilliantly and took advantage of being able to offer  a player the max before they had to lock up all of their guys. It would be no different than if Philly adds LeBron or even Paul George while Embiid and Simmons continue to grow into stars. 

What’s funny is if GSW had added any other all star free agent in 2016(Bradley Beal, DeMar Derozan, Al Horford) I feel no one would have a problem with it, it’s the fact that they added LeBron. The thing is that it’s not like the Warriors even played the tank game like Phily. They drafted Curry 7th, Thompson 11th, Draymond Green 35th. They also turned 3 journeyman the Washington Wizards dumped(Javale Mcgee, Nick Young, Shaun Livingston) into key rotational players. You can argue it’s not fair or the Warriors are ruining the league but ultimately they’ve built an all time dynasty without having to use a single top 5 pick. 

 Actually Houston was up 3-2 and if it had been Steph’s ankles and not CP3’s hamstring, Houston could of been in the finals.

Credit to GS, they got their 3 best players not from high draft picks. Winning culture and coach got them KD

 I think, unfortunately, the league is headed to two distinct places that are going to happen simultaneously.

A). The best players are going to continue to fawn over each other and race to join a team where they can play with each other. There are obviously a lot of fans who love this tickle fest among the players, but not me.

B) The remaining teams who have been left out of the dance are going to take tanking to new levels to try to out-do each other. It’s a more attractive option than trying to be the No. 8 seed and being mediocre/average endlessly.

It’s just a matter of time before some team, in a race to out-smart the tankers, just forfiets every game and doesn’t even bother fielding a team. I would actually have more respect for a team that did that instead of teams trying to fleece their flock like Benny Hinn.

 Lakers in the 80’s had Magic, Kareem, Worthy, McAdoo. That’s 4 all timers. Not to mention great role players. Cooper &Wilkes. 

No one bitches that Magic or Kareem had help  

The three other major pieces of the team have been drafted. The Warriors have been awfully bad for so numerous seasons over the last thirty years, kudos to them for having reversed destiny as they target a third title in four years.

Some want to join already solid teams, others like Kyrie want to create their own legacy. I don’t think there’s anything to change about it, there are already tons of rules to make things balanced in the league.

http://www.weballin.net

 A Hard Cap would help to stabilize the league.  limit the number of exceptions a team can have as well.  That should stop players from pooling on certain teams.  

 Team would be good without KD..I mean they drafted well, play a good system, good front office, etc. Blame your team for during a shitty job drafting. 

 The warriors just happened to be really smart and lucky. A bunch of events transpired to allow them to build the team they currently have and none of it was illegal or underhanded in any way. First, they drafted curry and were lucky to not have him really take off as a player until after they locked him up on probably the biggest bargain deal in the history of the nba, which allowed them tremendous flexibility in building their roster. 

They drafted Klay and draymond and found a coach who knew exactly how to utilize their respective skill sets, and also resisted the urge to trade them for Kevin Love, which they were criticized for at the time. They were able to lure igoudala in free agency (in part because curry was on such a bargain deal) who proved to be a perfect complementary player. 

In 2016 of course they happened to be just banged up enough to lose the finals, which made it more acceptable for Durant to go there and the cap just happened to spike tremendously which allowed them the means to sign him. So you had a disgruntled player and a team that gave him the perfect situation to win multiple titles. It was really a no-brainer decision when you think about it and it’s hard to fault either the player or the team. 

I blame the league for not being more creative in coming up with proper incentives that improve competitive balance. Since 1-2 players can really shift the balance of power and stars can make more money on their brand than with their salary, maybe having no salary cap w/ a more extreme profit sharing deal could be helpful if mandated towards roster building.  If someone wants to pay KD $200 mil/yr, they are welcome to do it, but it would require bigger markets to subsidize small markets/perennial losers at a higher rate to incentivize them to compete. 

The above may be a terrible suggestion and obviously you can’t prevent bad draft picks and dumb contracts in FA. But if the trend of upper echelon players’ willingness to forfeit money on the table to stack the deck continues, a stronger remedy is probably necessary to prevent half the league from being redundant and the product from becoming stale. 

Unfortunately, few reasonable solutions can help solve the problem of stars wanting to join up and form superteams (particularly if they take discounts), and most have their flaws.

Hard Cap– Unfair to labor. Players would have to take serious discounts to join up, and those unselfish(?) players will be paid below their worth while owners avoid luxury taxes. 

Eliminate Max Salary– Probably the best policy. True superstars (~top 5 players) get paid what they’re worth (most top 5 players are underpaid based on production). Marginalizes veterans and low level starters (hard to pay Iguodala $17M when Durant and Curry each get $50M). Guarantees top heavy teams versus teams with many solid players.

Eliminate Salary Cap– The most pro-labor arrangement. To the spender goes the spoils! If Paul Allen wants to spend his fortune on the Blazers, let him. Pressure will mount on cheap owners to sell the team, and billionaires love buying NBA teams. Better than yachts even.

Combine one of these solutions with Expansion– many large cities in North America don’t have NBA teams. Seattle, Vancouver, San Diego, and Baltimore all seem like strong locations to me. With more teams the money can be spread more evenly. This could increase tanking, but the changes in lottery odds dilute the effect. Right now over half of NBA teams make the playoffs, a higher percentage than in football and baseball. 

Any structural changes create new loopholes, but any of these scenarios could mitigate our current situation.

 People aren’t born great basketball players..it’s all about putting in the work to succeed..you can’t blame players for being "over-talented"

capitalizes on a decision that every owner agreed to which enables them to add Durant to great roster they had already assembled and then everybody wants to think of ways to break them up or how unfair it is.  How is it unfair or bad for the league?   I bet you guys were real fun to play games with as a kid.  

If you’re getting your ass whipped in 2k do you pause the game to change some rules maybe?  Fuck it maybe lower the difficulty to rookie to get back in the game before turning it back up?  

How about just get better?  Try harder?  The fact that this isn’t your approach tells me a lot about you without ever needing to meet you.

 If Lebron didn’t go to Miami, the thunder would have won in 2012 and resigned Harden, and you would have have an even worst dynasty. This is karma for "not 4, not 5, not 6"

 Another thing they didn’t do was overpay for Harrison Barnes.  They let him go.

He got about $23-24 mill, while GS signed Durant for about $25mill

I think it can just be hard considering the warriors were 73-9 the season before KD joined. It has never happened before that a a top 3 player joined (statisically) the best team of all time. Also, I think the argumenet here is that KD pushed them to a 7 game series and did not have a bad team. 

This is where it is hard to compare it to Lebron. Throughout his first stint with Cavs his second best player was Mo Williams, Big Z, Larry hughes and Antawn Jamison. 

I think we are also victims of creating this issue that no one seems to mention. It is the fans and media who carry on about "rings". Even here when we are witnesssing one of the greatest of all time in LBJ and people are still talking about rings and how it will define him. We won’t shut up about rings rings rings rings. This fasination about rings and placing so much emphsis on a team achievement on one player is insane ad unfair. And the emphsis fans and media place on it has driven players to ‘chase’ rings and team up. It rings are the be all and end all then why stay with a team that has no chace to win against a team that has simply just drafted well.

I mean it is crazy because I still see people say Kobe is better than Lebron because he has more rings. We need to stop this fasination and realise the game of basketball is a team sport. 

Did GSW did anything wrong? No, they have used their draft picks well, built a dynasty from the scratch (non top 5 drat picks) and got a great coach. They created space for KD, paid a price of a young SF and their starting C.

 Did Durant do anything wrong? No. he went for best team to win, He was never gonna be rightfully rated without a ring. People keep doubting player legacy without a ring and then complain when they do their best to win it?

 But,the league should have foreseen the situation when they knew about the increase in the cap, Since Silver took over he has been very active and trying to make many changes. stop hack a shaq, stop tanking,etc. But he didn’t foreseen the most important thing, an all time great team has the chance to add an all time great player in his prime without sacrifice. This has killed the league competitiveness, and it killed his effort against tanking. Sam Hinkie process seem like the strategy to go for many teams. GSW got relaxed a bit against Houston but survived once again, and probably continue to dominate for the next few years too with this core

Motivation is a bit of an equalizer.

I feel like after this series GSW’s days of dominating are done. They may grit out one or even two more titles if the breaks fall their way. But I don’t think they’ll ever have it easy like they did from 2015-17 again. 

With pretty much every previous dynasty, there was a point when you could see that while they were still just as talented as before, they were happy with their achievements and they just didn’t want it as much anymore. I think that actually happened with GSW in the Rockets series, but CP3’s injury allowed them to win anyway. 

 It is not GSW fault that most of the GM’s in NBA suck, and most teams have no idenity and are trying to make money off of talent.  

 Don’t get me wrong, they were awesome building that team. The luck part was getting Durant. They had 3 max contracts and two other big contracts. Then bam the cap goes up by 40 million. Trade Boguts, then get Durant.

As a Celtic fan I look forward to playing the Warriors in the finals. Those are going to be epic all-time series.