LeBron James’ ‘Decision’ from 2010 still marks a historic moment in the NBA as the official beginning of the trend of forming super teams. One can debate endlessly how teams before the Miami Heat also did that, and I agree they did, but the Heat was arguably the first successful super team, and it initiated a trend in the league subsequently.
Michael Redd, the former All-Star who played for the Bucks for most of his career, recently began his own podcast, where in the first episode, he spoke about the super team era in the league.
“Some of the conversations circled, ‘Maybe we team up? What if we play together?’ right? Like that notion of super teams coming together in ’08 was happening then.”
The co-host named LeBron James’ move to the Heat and Chris Paul’s vetoed trade to the Lakers to join Kobe Bryant as the start of this trend.
“There you go, there you go, and it all spawned from that moment together because we actually found out that we like each other, that I like your game… We could both be teammates? That was a foreign thought back then.”
“At that time, the climate in the league was, we all took pride in our own individual teams, and we didn’t want to team up because it was a sign of cowardness. There’s pride in having your own squad. That was the predominant cloud in the NBA, now it’s changed over the last 15 years.”
While the old-school hoopers saw it as a cowardly move, James’ free agency move to the Miami Heat significantly changed the way history and the new generation perceived super teams. Winning two championships over four seasons, they became the first team to successfully pull off a ‘super team’ move.
The earliest super team I can recall is the 1996-97 Rockets, when Charles Barkley joined Hakeem Olajuwon to try and beat Michael Jordan’s Bulls, which they couldn’t do. Ever since then until 2010, when James joined the Heat, every super team that was formed could not win more than one championship. And the only team to have that championship was the 2007-08 Celtics.
After the Heat’s back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013, the Warriors won a championship in 2015 and fell to a masterclass from Kyrie Irving and LeBron James in the 2016 NBA Finals. They formed a super team as well with Kevin Durant the following summer to beat LeBron James’ Cavaliers.
Warriors subsequently won back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018, and ever since then, every season, one or the other franchise has been trying to form super teams in the league. Hence, the credit for this change in mindset from how players perceived super teams before to now belongs to LeBron James’ move to the Miami Heat.
In my opinion, following the colossal failures of Kevin Durant’s super teams with the Nets and Suns, the league is transitioning back to a trend of balanced teams instead of stacking the roster with elite talent but no depth.
