The Rise and Fall of the NBA Superteam (Part Two)
Did "Player Empowerment" Go Too Far?
On “Player Empowerment”
So last month, in Part One of this story, I wrote about LeBron James, and how he really invented the modern “superteam” concept when he left Cleveland for Miami in 2010. But it would take years for the seeds planted by The Decision to bloom. And to understand how it happened, we need to talk about “player empowerment.”
That was the hot phrase back in 2010, when LeBron reacted to the years he spent in Cleveland, surrounded by mediocre talent and losing in the playoffs to Boston’s Big 3, by taking his talents to South Beach and forming his own Big 3 with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Instead of letting his career trajectory be dictated by a lousy front office, LeBron James wanted to take his legacy into his own hands.
And while there was certainly backlash to the Decision, it seemed like maybe this would be the new normal for the NBA. Shortly after LeBron’s announcement, Chris Paul made a toast at Carmelo Anthony’s wedding, suggesting that he, Carmelo, and Amar’e Stoudemire would form another “Big 3” with the Knicks.
This toast did not make the Denver Nuggets or the New Orleans Hornets — the teams that had Anthony and Paul under contract at the time — happy, and suggested that owners were losing control of the league. Anthony would indeed demand a trade to the Knicks that off-season, eventually getting his wish the following February.
Players had demanded trades before, of course, just as they had changed teams in free agency before LeBron. But the difference was that now it seemed coordinated. Stars now seemed to be making decisions about where to play in conjunction with one another, years in advance, leaving owners and General Managers almost out of the discussion. This became known as “player empowerment,” and it often gets conflated with the “superteam” phenomenon. After all, the first big move of the player empowerment era — The Decision — led to one of the first modern “superteams”: the 2010-14 Miami Heat.
But while they are related, they are not really the same. In fact, as we will see, the rise and fall of the superteam was in many ways the result of efforts by owners to strike back at player empowerment trends. Superteams, in other words, were the result of the gradual collision of two opposing material trends over a decade: increased agency for star players & owners’ desires to protect their own interests.
2011: Chris Paul & CBA
Spoiler alert: That hypothetical Knicks Big 3 never happened. New York did not have the assets to make a Chris Paul trade work, and by the time the team added Anthony, Stoudemire was already breaking down with injuries — Carmelo and Amar’e would hardly play together on the Knicks. Instead, Paul would get embroiled in his own drama, first getting traded to the Lakers, only for that deal to be killed by the commissioner and replaced with a trade to the Clippers. (As we discussed in an early episode of the Lefty Specialists…)
As mentioned in that episode, Paul’s future was really caught up in the same labor fight that led to the lockout in 2011. Although the stated reasons for killing the deal to Lakers were about “competitive balance” and preserving small-market stars — some of the same fears that accompanied the rise of superteams — the end result was that Paul was sent to a DIFFERENT big market team, just one that was less committed to paying players. Such were the real stakes of the labor fight…
Indeed, the 2011 lockout resulted in a huge victory for owners — a victory that would ultimately plant more seeds of the superteam era. The new collective bargaining agreement had some provisions aimed at stopping repeats of The Decision, but the bigger changes were more typical pro-owner items: greater cost control, shorter contracts, more revenue sharing, etc. Ironically, these changes would eventually lead to more star movement and more superteams. In other words, the owners didn’t really care about preserving competitive balance or preventing superteams — they just didn’t want players having power.
2012: The Lakers
After the Lakers failed to get Chris Paul, they tried to build a more traditional superteam. Before the 2012-13 season, they added Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, adding them to a lineup that already included Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and Metta World Peace. This was much closer to the superteams of yore that I mentioned back in Part I: It was not driven by player friendships or young free agents. The Lakers are seemingly always trying to build superteams with older vets, and this team wasn’t much different (everyone but Howard was over 30; Nash was 38). And like prior superteams, this Lakers team never really gelled: They were plagued by injuries and coaching instability all season, won only 45 games, and got swept in the first round of the playoffs.
So it seemed like LeBron’s Decision might be a one-off thing…
2013: The Rockets
After his abysmal season in Los Angeles, Dwight Howard went to Houston and joined James Harden. The Harden/Howard Rockets, which lasted from 2013-16, are an important link in this trend that is easy to overlook. Although they made the Conference Finals in 2015, they were not an especially memorable team and they actually improved when Howard left, so few fans really think of them as a “superteam.” But in key respects, they are definitely in the lineage.
First of all, on a basic level, these Rockets teams meet our definition (from Part One) of a team built around two or more players who first emerged as stars on another team.1 But, crucially, they differed from the Heat or that hypothetical Knicks Big 3 in that Harden and Howard were put together by GM Daryl Morey; they were not friends.
In fact, the reason both stars were available was directly related to the gains the owners made in the previous CBA. The main reason Dwight Howard didn’t stay in LA after 2013 was due to the major new luxury tax penalties they would have faced had they resigned him — penalties that were added in the 2011 CBA. As a result, the only young star the Lakers had left, blowing up the failed superteam and setting LA up for the worst six-year stretch in franchise history while Howard went to Houston.
James Harden’s journey to Houston was even more depressing. After spending his first three seasons in Oklahoma City as part of a trio of future MVPs playing for what seemed like a budding small-market dynasty, Harden was traded to Houston after a contract dispute with the Thunder — a dispute that was triggered by harsher new luxury tax penalties.2
In other words, neither move was the result of “player autonomy.” These were front office decisions, like earlier superteams, and they were reactions to the new CBA. Like the stars on most earlier superteams, Howard and Harden didn’t mesh together naturally: Howard was never comfortable playing in pick-and-rolls with Harden, preferring to stay near the basket. But they DID improve. This was not a disaster, like the superteams of yore or the previous year’s Lakers, and that was a lesson to teams around the league.
2014: The Cavaliers
After four years in Miami, LeBron James went back to Cleveland and built his second superteam. Kyrie Irving was already there, but James insisted the Cavaliers trade Andrew Wiggins, the recent #1 overall pick, in Minnesota in exchange for Kevin Love. This once again gave James two All-Stars as teammates — but, notably, these two All-Stars differed from Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in that they weren’t his friends. In fact, Love was in a situation similar to the one James Harden faced in Oklahoma City: a small-market team unwilling to make a long-term commitment to a young star. And LeBron’s relationship with Irving would eventually get strained enough that Irving would request a trade — a key moment in the construction of ANOTHER superteam.
2016: The Warriors
By my definition, the Golden State Warriors were NOT a superteam, since the core of that dynasty — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, — were all drafted and developed by the franchise. Only Kevin Durant was added via free agency, and they won a title and set the regular season wins record before he ever got there.
Still, it’s impossible to talk about the rise of superteams without talking about Durant going to the Warriors, for the simple reason that they were SO dominant that they inspired an arms race around the league. The 2017 Warriors steamrolled through the league, going 16-1 in the playoffs, and so it seemed like teams with only one former MVP (or, god forbid, ZERO) had no chance against them. This rapidly expedited the superteam trend, starting with the next off-season.
The Age of the Superteam (2017-2023)
It was the off-season after Durant won his first title with the Warriors that the “Superteam Era” really began in earnest. And as we can see, it was really the culmination of two major trends. The obvious, immediate thing was the dominance of those Warriors, which caused other teams to take drastic, all-in measures to compete with them for a championship.
But the other thing, as you can see if you look over this brief history, was the increasing number of dissatisfied stars who were changing teams more frequently in the post-2011 NBA. Stories about disgruntled stars — guys wanting out and demanding trades, and having very specific requests about where to get traded — would dominate NBA discourse for the next six years, and shape the superteam era.
Just for a quick recap:
In 2017, Kyrie Irving asked to be traded off the Cleveland Cavaliers, no longer wanting to play alongside LeBron James.
That same off-season, the Indiana Pacers traded Paul George to Oklahoma City because they were worried he would leave to play in California after the season.
Around the same time, Carmelo Anthony also demanded a trade from the Knicks, after years of feuding with Phil Jackson.
The following season, Kawhi Leonard refused to show up to play for the San Antonio Spurs after a conflict with the team’s medical staff.
That off-season, Jimmy Butler demanded a trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Then Anthony Davis indicated he wouldn’t resign with the New Orleans Pelicans, and requested a trade to the Lakers.
The season after that, James Harden did not show up to training camp on time and demanded the Rockets trade him to Brooklyn.
All of these players changed teams, eventually playing for one or more “superteams” in the next few years. Obviously none of these players invented trade demands or holdouts, but the sheer number over such a short time was unprecedented. Not only that, but there was a level of coordination to these demands:
Carmelo Anthony added the Thunder to the list of teams he’d play for only after Paul George went there.
Kawhi Leonard signed with the Clippers in 2019, on the condition that they get George from the Thunder.
Harden demanded a trade to Brooklyn after Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant signed there.
Anthony Davis wanted to play with LeBron James in LA, and LeBron wanted to play with Davis (and both were represented by Rich Paul).
The whole thing made it seem like power in the league was shifting to players. And the result was, typically, stars playing with other stars — i.e., superteams.
The Problem With “Player Empowerment”
The issue with “player empowerment” was that it was always primarily a marketing term, and like most marketing terms, it was never very accurate. It was not really “players” who were empowered — it was stars. And the extent to which they were “empowered” was always exaggerated. Stars could demand trades or hold out or insist coaches get fired, but these were rather blunt instruments when it came to building a team. For all the talk “GM LeBron,” his power was always very crude — he couldn’t really negotiate contracts or run a scouting department or construct trades — and nobody else ever really attained that level of power.
And superteams were the result. Since the main way a star could flex his power was by saying “I want you to trade for my friend” or “if you sign that guy, then I’ll sign with you,” GMs started putting together teams of stars who wanted to play together. It wasn’t like GMs were unwilling participants — they were following a template set by LA and Houston and Golden State.
Of course, that didn’t stop executives around the league from freaking out. In a 2021 New Yorker profile of Rich Paul, an anonymous GM was quoted saying, “Player empowerment is a catchall for the fact that the league has done a terrible job of empowering teams… The players have all of the leverage in every situation. I think it’s the worst thing that ever happened to professional sports on all levels.” The worst thing that ever happened to professional sports! On all levels! (You can always count on GMs to keep things in proper perspective like that…)
The premise of these takes was that superteams would destroy competitive balance in the league, but obviously that was just a cover for owners and executives feeling threatened by the modicum of power exerted by a few players. And while they were fretting and whining, a funny thing happened to all those superteams: They turned out to not be very good…
As mentioned all the way back at the start of Part I, the superteam era has been an era of unprecedented parity, with no repeat champions, and no defending champion even making it back to the Conference Finals. The age of the superteam has been the NBA’s first period WITHOUT a major dynasty in four decades. And a big part of that was the instability of these superteams, at least one of which either fell apart or broke down every year.
In 2017, Gordon Hayward got injured one game into the season, and the Celtics superteam never made the Finals.
The Carmelo/PG/Westbrook Thunder couldn’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs.
An injury to Kevin Durant ended the Warriors’ run, and locker room turmoil drove him to Brooklyn in 2019.
In Brooklyn, the Durant/Irving/Harden superteam was derailed by injuries (and vaccine mandates).
After Kawhi Leonard helped get the Clippers to their first Conference Finals in franchise history in 2021, a torn ACL disrupted their 2021-22 season.
In the end, the only superteam to really live up to the hype was, once again, the team with LeBron James on it. (Even here, “live up to the hype” might be a stretch — the Lakers won a title in the 2020 bubble, and have not come close to replicating that success since.)
And once a superteam fails, it’s tempting for both players and fans to quickly blow it up and start again, creating a musical chairs element to the last few seasons: Paul George goes to Oklahoma City to play with Russell Westbrook on the Thunder, and when that doesn’t work he goes to LA to play with Kawhi on the Clippers, who after a couple of years, sign… Russell Westbrook (who, in the meantime, has played alongside James Harden with the Rockets, Bradley Beal with the Wizards, and LeBron James with the Lakers).
The problem seems to be that building around established superstars is simply too volatile. Established stars tend to be older, so they carry a greater injury risk3 and you just never know how the egos on a team like that are going to mesh. Honestly, it makes me appreciate “GM LeBron” — say what you want about him, but he’s the only player who’s actually been able to consistently make this kind of team work.
The End of an Era
It may turn out that the old-fashioned way of building a dynasty — of drafting and developing talent over several years, with a championship pedigree forged by early playoff exits — was actually the best way to do it all along. So why did things change?
Whenever people talk about superteams or the “player empowerment” movement of the 2010s, they invariably fall back on Kids These Days explanations. Players today just want to play with their friends, or skip to the end without putting in the hard work, or yada yada yada. Everyone has some theory based on amateur sociology. In the aforementioned New Yorker article, Bomani Jones said the NBA had too many teams in cities that Black men didn’t want to live in. But players in the 2010s did not invent being disgruntled, and there have been players unwilling to play in certain cities forever (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar requested a trade out of Milwaukee back in 1975).
No, it was, of course, materialism that caused this trend. Because here’s the twist ending: It wasn’t players who ushered in the superteam era — ‘twas owner greed that brought us here. The ways that teams had historically built long dynasties were all things that owners pushed to kill in collective bargaining in 2011. The traditional ways of preserving dynasties and keeping players happy involved high salaries and long-term contracts. How did Minnesota keep Kevin Garnett for 12 seasons? By offering the biggest contract in North American sports history — a contract that would be illegal under the current CBA. How did the ‘90s Bulls and ‘00s Spurs surround their superstars with talented role players? By giving long-term contracts to guys like Scottie Pippen and Manu Ginobili — contracts longer than any team is allowed to offer now.
It was owners who pushed for all these changes, of course, and owners who cut the players’ share of the revenue from 57% to 51%, which effectively encouraged shorter contracts. Look at Kevin Durant, for example: It is often mentioned that he “left money on the table” to sign with the Warriors. And that is technically true, since the Thunder could offer him a longer contract than the Warriors. But the annual salary difference was quite small because the max salary was capped (the Thunder deal would have paid him $29.8 million per year, while the Warriors offer was ~$27 million annually). And since the cap kept increasing as league revenue went up, Durant actually made MORE by signing short-term deals than he would have made if took the Oklahoma City offer.4
In other words, the league has incentivized player movement in order to protect their bottom line, limiting their own ability to maintain competitive teams. In that CBA environment, is it any wonder that star players have reacted by trying to build competitive teams on their own? And because a player’s only real leverage is to leave in free agency or demand to be traded (and only stars really have this leverage), that’s what they’ve done.
And yet the owners’ greed has struck again: The superteam era is likely done, and not just because they all failed to live up to the hype. The addition of the second apron — which was added in the latest collective-bargain agreement and goes into full effect next year — imposes major penalties on teams over a certain salary threshold, and these penalties fall hard on teams with multiple stars. A team like the Phoenix Suns, with big salaries committed to three superstars, can lose draft picks, lose the ability to make certain trades, and lose various luxury tax exemptions that make it possible to add key role players.
But it’s not clear what will replace the superteam, because the second apron is also set to affect the Denver Nuggets. Last year’s champs were built the old-fashioned way, and seemed poised for a dynastic run over the next few years (even after losing to Minnesota this year), but it’s unclear if they’ll be able to sustain that success under the new rules. It’s not clear what comes next, but if history is any judge, the owners will surely make things worse!
You can quibble over whether James Harden was really a “star” on the Thunder, since he wasn’t a starter and never made an All-Star team, but he had just won Sixth Man of the Year and his potential was obvious.
It’s also possible that the accelerated NBA schedule in the 2020 and 2021 seasons, due to Covid-19, increased the risk of injury, contributing to volatility in the league at the time.
The natural response is that long-term deals are guaranteed money, so stars might be incentivized to take longer deals to protect against injury risk — but Kevin Durant DID suffer a devastating injury and STILL got a max contract from Brooklyn afterwards.