The biggest buzz in sports this week has got to be LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh (the three best players on the market this year) all signing with the Miami Heat. Half of the credit probably belongs to Pat Riley for recruiting them, but the other half goes to the three superstars agreeing to put aside their egos to work together.
King James just killed the city of Cleveland and his hometown of Akron to increase his chances of winning, and most of Ohio and New York will regard him as a villain from now on. On the flip side, the Akron Hammer is taking a pay-cut and agreeing to share the spotlight with an equally skilled superstar in D-Wade and a guaranteed all-star in CB4. Though James is clearly narcissistic and selfish, he has also shown that money and popularity are lower priorities in his life. He'll play the villain for the rest of his career, have trouble living in Ohio, lose some of his sponsorships, and earn a little less money, but at least no one can claim he doesn't want to win.
All three members of this new superstar trio have played in the league for 7 years, but the oldest of them is D-Wade at just 28 years old. He still has at least 8 more years of fight left in him, so long as he can stay healthy. If they can get the rest of the supporting cast together by the summer of 2011, Miami will have a basketball dynasty to last the entire decade.
Notice that there are a lot of "ifs" in the Heat's future. Although they have two of the three best players in the NBA (the other being Kobe Bryant in LA), plus a great third man in Chris Bosh, the Heat only have 9 active players (4 of them are rookies), they lack cap room, and they don't have the mid-level exception this summer. So, it appears their fourth and fifth best players are the decent defensive point guard Mario Chalmers and the recently-signed 3-pt specialist Mike Miller. The remaining three or more players on their roster are likely going to be signed to minimum-value contracts (which means they'll probably be terrible). They need to find more pieces next year (a true center to free up Bosh to play power forward would be nice), and they will need to build chemistry between their existing group.
King James, D-Wade, and Chris Bosh are all good friends, and LeBron at the very least is fine with sharing the ball (as long as he can trust his teammates to play well). But it will not be an easy transition for these three guys. Each of them was the best player on his respective team for his entire career up to this point. Now none of them is a clear number one, and each of them will have to re-imagine his role on the court.
Three interesting pieces of news in the NBA this week that have fallen under the radar because of LeBron's decision are:
1) Carlos Boozer signing with the Chicago Bulls to make them a serious playoff-contender. They failed to grab LeBron or D-Wade, but I wouldn't count them out just yet. Derrick Rose is still developing into a superstar point guard and there are plenty of role players on the Bulls franchise that most teams would love to have.
2) Kevin Durant signing a 5-year extension with the Oklahoma City Thunder (good for him, good for the city, good for the team, and probably good for the NBA's public image too).
3) And a trade between the New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors sending Kelenna Azubuike, Ronny Turiaf and Anthony Randolph to the big apple in exchange for up-and-coming big man David Lee.
I like Lee. He's big and puts up good numbers. And with the drafting of Ekpe Udoh, Anthony Randolph's future with the Warriors was definitely in question. The two are too similar in size and style, and I groaned when the Warriors drafted Udoh with the 6th pick. He's still not worth it, but now I feel better because we have Lee. We also lost Azubuike and Turiaf. Turiaf isn't a great player, but he brings such energy and enthusiasm that it infects his teammates. Lee is infinitely better though. As for Azubuike, we needed him for two things: defense and shooting. Anthony Morrow and Charlie Bell can collectively make up for the shooting, but not the defense. Monta Ellis doesn't work well enough at 2-Guard, and I prefer Stephen Curry to be our Point Guard. That leaves Ellis without a real role on the team. He still has amazing talent and skill, so he could earn the Warriors a lot in a trade. But we would need a new 2-Guard or Swingman to replace him. Preferably someone with better defense than the guys we have now. The roster still looks like a mess, but at least there are several bright spots to build the franchise around.
All this talk of free agency, the NBA Draft, and the excitement of 2010's NBA Finals has had me thinking about the great tandems and trios in the history of basketball. Mostly the history after 1979 when the 3-point line was introduced and Magic Johnson was drafted. I don't know much about basketball before that year, and I wouldn't trust the statistics to help me either since the game was so different back then.
Here is a list of my favorite tandems and trios in the NBA since 1980:
10) Golden State Warriors: Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin.
Run-TMC. For the sake of making the list less arbitrary, I used metric stats for all the players in their years together, and surprisingly Run-TMC ranked very highly on the list. Several championship tandems and trios fared worse than them statistically. Stats don't reflect actual success, though. Regardless, my love for this trio lands them a spot on my top 10 list.
9) Seattle Supersonics: Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.
A classic for those who grew up watching basketball in the 1990s. I've always been a big fan of great defense over flashy offense, regardless of what sport I'm watching, and these two were regular candidates for the all-defensive team. They could also generate solid offensive numbers, and they had flare too. Their signature alley-oop connection was more fan-pleasing than game-winning. Unfortunately, Shawn Kemp's drug problems and Gary Payton's score-first mentality killed the tandem, and they never won a championship.
8) Los Angeles Lakers: Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
It is difficult for me to like this tandem, especially because another one of my favorites (Anfernee Hardaway with Shaq in Orlando) had to be broken up to make this partnership possible. Still, I can't deny results. 3 championship rings together, plus 3 more apart, speak volumes about their individual abilities and their collective dominance. Although the two had trouble getting along towards the end, I actually think both of them are better team players than folks give them credit for. Kobe Bryant has evolved into a great captain and playmaker over the course of his career, and Shaquille O'Neal, for all his shenanigans and big talk, was never a troublemaker like the drug-abusing Shawn Kemp or gun-toating Gilbert Arenas. As individuals, I actually like Kobe and Shaq. I just don't like them as a couple. 8th on my Top 10 list is the best they can hope for.
7) Detriot Pistons: Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars.
The bad-boy Pistons of the late 1980s and early 1990s won two consecutive championships, and are historically the most successful team against Michael Jordan's Bulls. However, unlike the Bulls, the Pistons had no real superstars. The closest they had was the backcourt tandem of Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars. They have a relatively low efficiency rating, but they made up for it in their defense. Against Isiah's tenacity and Joe's lock-down defense, many great players like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson fell flat on their face. Most remarkable of all, neither of them is taller than 6'3".
6) San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan and David Robinson.
Tim Duncan could be paired up with either David Robinson or Tony Parker and still make this list, but I decided to go with the frontcourt tandem out of respect for David Robinson's great career and the pure dominance those two had as the "Twin Towers" around the basket. They only won two championships together, and one of those was during the strike-shortened season of 1998-99. Still, I can't think of any other pair of two big men (approximately 7' tall) that performed as well as they did.
5) Philadelphia 76ers: Julius Erving and Moses Malone.
This dynamic duo lasted only a few years, but they were the best in the league together. In an era controlled by Larry Bird's Celtics and Magic Johnson's Lakers, the 76ers put together the second best regular season performance of the decade (65 wins, 17 losses) and capped it with one of the best postseason records of all time (only one loss). Doctor J was someone the Sixers had inherited from the merging of the ABA and the NBA in the 1970s, and Moses Malone was the last piece in a championship-winning puzzle. Unfortunately for sixers fans, the front office made the mistake of trading Moses Malone for future prospects that never met expectations. Thus, the tandem was short-lived, and earned only one ring to prove their worth.
4) Boston Celtics: Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish.
I could probably name all five starting members of the 1980s Celtics, but I'm just going to stick with the three most statistically impressive members (Sorry, Danny Ainge, but you didn't make the cut). The Boston Celtics probably would have been the definitive dynasty of the 1980s if not for the Los Angeles Lakers winning more championships than them (five versus three). Still, there is no doubt of their greatness. Larry Bird was the first true three-point shooter in the NBA, and he has been the gold-standard for shooting ever since.
3) Utah Jazz: John Stockton and Karl Malone.
An incredible tandem that spent a whopping 18 years playing together. They developed an unparalleled chemistry and went to the playoffs every year. Their signature pick&roll was nearly unstoppable, and today no one runs the maneuver as well as they did. In my estimation, Stockton is one of the two best point guards of all time (the other being Magic Johnson). He's also very humble, yet polite and gentlemanly. He has the personality of a much older basketball player, from an era when basketball wasn't shown on live TV networks and players had to have a second job to earn a living. By comparison, Karl Malone has a lot more swagger and flare, and his individual ability may have been over-estimated somewhat, but he fit in just fine with Jerry Sloan's system and John Stockton's play-style. Unfortunately, they never won a championship together, having lost to Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls in their only two Finals appearances.
2) Los Angeles Lakers: Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy.
The other half of the legendary Celtics-Lakers rivalry in the 1980s. You could pair up Magic Johnson with either of the other two, and their combined efficiency rating would still be better than almost every other pair of players in NBA history. Even Abdul-Jabber and Worthy together can rank high on this top 10 list without Magic Johnson. So, you can imagine how amazing all three are together. The future success of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh may end up dwarfing this trio, but until then, I'm naming these three the best trio in NBA history. All three of them could score a lot of points, grab a ton of rebounds, and play excellent defense. On top of that, Magic Johnson's accurate no-look pass and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's unblockable skyhook rounded out "The Show" in LA. Flashy, fun, strong, fundamentally sound, and successful. I can't say enough about them.
1) Chicago Bulls: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
No surprises here. At least for me. I grew up a 90s kid and I know full well how dominant these two were on the basketball court. In terms of collective efficiency rating (the metric stat which determines an individual player's contribution to his team), these two have the highest in NBA history. They weren't just strong on the offensive side of the court, though. They were also the best at defense in their prime, earning spots on the all-defensive 1st team many times during the 90s. The Chicago Bulls, led by this Batman-and-Robin duo, won six championships in eight years. They probably would have won eight straight if Jordan had not retired for one and a half years in the middle. My favorite aspect of the tandem, though, was the fact that Jordan wasn't the primary ball-handler. Pippen had the honors of bringing the ball up the court and getting the most touches in a game. Jordan could put his complete trust in Pippen to handle the ball, and Pippen could trust Jordan to move well without the ball. That's something guys like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade have been lacking in their careers up to this point, and perhaps they'll be able to find it in each other.
That's all on basketball from me until the next season starts. I'm getting pretty excited about football instead, and I'm already piling on the expectations for another year with Mike Singletary and his tough-and-talented 49ers team.
