It looks like the superteam era is here to stay. Even though front offices have received a lot of criticism for creating overpowered squads to have an easier path to the championship, this won’t change shortly.
Plenty of people blame LeBron James for starting this ‘culture,’ including Julius Erving, who blasted The King’s practices a couple of months ago. After Bron created a superteam with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, other teams like the Golden State Warriors did the same.
Right now, we have two of these squads, the Brooklyn Nets (although Kyrie Irving is likely to miss a bunch of games this season) and Los Angeles Lakers, where LeBron plays right now.
A lot has been said about this, with fingers pointing at who should take the blame for this. You can say LeBron and Kevin Durant had something to do with this, but Gabrielle Union thinks differently. Dwyane Wade’s wife believes we should look at the 2000s to find the responsible for this situation.
According to the actress, the Boston Celtics of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen are to blame for this. Talking with JJ Redick on his ‘The Old Man and the Three’ podcast, Union took a big shot at the Celtics’ Big 3, saying they don’t want to admit they started this trend.
“I was here for all of that s—,” Union said. “But I was also here for when KG (Garnett) and Paul and [Rajon] Rondo and Ray [Allen] all came together, even though they don’t want to admit it that they kicked that b—- off. There’s been superteams before. They just didn’t, they didn’t have, it wasn’t in this era with this platform and with social media and sports talk radio 24/7. It’s different, and how you look at it, it’s different. And the whole, ‘Built, not bought,’ whatever. Boring is what it says to me. Okay, you built it. Did anyone come? No, your fans are leaving at f—— halftime. Cheerleaders can’t be bothered.”
Before those Celtics, we have superteams like the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers, the Houston Rockets that featured Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen, and more.
Things are different now. As Union said, social media has played a big role in this. Moreover, knowing that old stars don’t approve stars teaming up to have an easier path to the title, whenever a team assembles a squad with three or more All-Star players, you know fans will have a lot to say about it.
Creating a superteam doesn’t necessarily assure success, as the 2013 Lakers demonstrated. Then again, more often than not, these powerhouses dominate their rivals on the way to the championship. Union knows who to blame, but there’s nothing she can do to change what the Celtics achieve with their superteam.
