Kevin Garnett joined the Boston Celtics in 2007 via trade, teaming up with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen to create the most famous Big 3 of the 2000s. Those Celtics would see success right away, as they took home the NBA championship in 2008.
At the time, the league was really glad to see these three legends team up to compete for the championship, but after the 2010s, the public’s perception changed and now superteams are considered a bad thing. It all started when LeBron James joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami in 2010.
Things got a lot worse when Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors in 2016, creating one of the most overpowered teams of all time. These two moments were key to fans and former players disliking superteams. When discussing this trend, Garnett doesn’t think he and his teammates did something wrong. They emulated what they saw and that was it.
Talking with Sean Highkin of Bleacher Report, the 2008 NBA champion explained why he thinks his situation with the Minnesota Timberwolves was different from LeBron in Cleveland and Durant in Oklahoma City.
Going to Boston and immediately winning the title in year one, did you hear any of the same criticism at the time that LeBron faced in Miami or Kevin Durant did when he went to Golden State? “He couldn’t do it by himself so he had to team up.”
I kind of see myself different from the Kevin Durant situation or the LeBron situation. LeBron is and was the face of the league, whether we want to admit that or not. And that’s a real thing. So for him to not be able to do it in Cleveland was a big asterisk next to his name. I felt like I had been proven up until the decision I made to go to Boston. Then, it was putting the pieces together and seeing if it worked. And we had a coach [Doc Rivers] who had been beat up over the years and questioned about if his style works. And we put all that in a pot and it worked, and now you have a new presence in the league. Now Boston is reactivated as a superpower.
And I think LeBron going to Miami actually reactivated the East. They had a duo called Shaq and Kobe that was just stepping over people in the West. And then you had the Spurs in San Antonio who were mopping everybody up. So to have the East kind of be reactivated with teams like Indiana and Detroit and Boston, it was a good thing for the league. And then the emergence of Orlando and other teams gave it a true balance where it wasn’t lopsided.
Garnett admits that going to the Celtics led more players to look for superteams, explaining that organizations wanted to emulate what the Detroit Pistons created with five good players, but they wanted to take it to the next level, assembling talented squads with All-Star players.
I can say that, just like when I came out of high school and gave people a script of ‘This can work if it’s done like this,’ I thought that decision to go to Boston had the same kind of ripple effect. It made other players go, “OK, I can do that.” Because Detroit had something special on their hands, but they didn’t see those five as stars. Tayshaun [Prince] had to blossom into what he was. Rip [Hamilton] wasn’t known as a great mid-range shooter like he was. Chauncey [Billups] was bounced from team to team. Sheed had his own challenges. Ben Wallace wasn’t drafted, wasn’t a big name. And those guys came together and made something unbelievable. When those guys won how they won, Doc used that as a script for us. He wanted to build it around us three with all these great pieces around us. And then you see LeBron do the same thing. It’s all history from there on out.
KG and his Celtics had to go through those teams he mentioned in the East. Before, during, and after winning the championship, the Celtics faced the Heat, Pistons and Magic, starring in hard-fought duels against the other squads.
Even before the Celtics, the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers were a superteam, but they don’t get all the criticism that other squads get. Right now, the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers have two superteams, and they somehow balance each other.
Fans think they would clash in the NBA Finals if nothing bad happened, but so far they’re struggling to get things going. So, superteams won’t disappear soon, but creating one won’t assure a franchise that they’ll win the championship effortlessly.
