Building Teams, Not Super Teams: The Importance of Chemistry in the NBA

He was not yet twenty years old and I was an absolute fan of the NBA. It was July 2003 when the Lakers signed Karl Malone and Gary Payton. The two sacrificed salary in exchange for trying to achieve what they had not achieved for almost an entire life in Utah and Seattle: the ring. Curiously, the executioner had been the same, Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the 1996, 1997 and 1998 finals against what would now be their new coach Phil Jackson.

It was already difficult to keep that relationship between Kobe and Shaq afloat, so I don’t even want to imagine the faces that The Postman and The Glove would make when they saw the almost continuous clashes between the two when they, drawing on romanticism, had decided to lose money looking for An objective. The Pistons, with more defensive cement and more corals, deprived them of lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy and almost made them blush in a final in which they ended up winning 4-1. That’s my first great memory of a super team, of a super template. And history shows that basketball is not about collecting stars, but about making teams.

The 2021-22 season, the Lakers They had LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan on the same roster. And the Nets his ‘Big Three’ formed by Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving along with other players such as Blake Griffin or LaMarcus Aldridge. Neither of them even reached the Conference finals.

Because the great basketball dynasties in the NBA have been made up of players who had specific roles and roles. The Celtics or the Lakers of the 80s, for example. Yes, those at Showtime had Magic Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy… but also AC Green, Byron Scott and Michael Cooper… and those at the Garden had Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish… but also Dennis Johnson or Danny Ainge.

We don’t need to remember the Bulls because The Last Dance has already served to remind us and, above all, to open or reopen internal affairs wounds What happens when managing groups (and what happens in the best families).

But this article is not historical. And the current situation of our basketball leads me to reflect. Starting with the Suns’ early elimination from the NBA playoffs, third most expensive template. The saying goes that money doesn’t buy happiness, it helps, but building teams is something else.

Kevin Durant’s career is striking, Curiously, he has only won two rings with Warriors who were already champions when he arrived in 2016… and from which he left after a friction with Green that was the last straw, a last season that he considered a lack of respect and not have a close-feeling relationship with Curry. Sometimes managing egos like yours is not easy…

I don’t forget that he was also at the beginning of his career in the ‘almost’ Thunder, who were only able to win the first game of the 2012 final against the Heat. And on that Oklahoma team there were Westbrook and Harden. After passing through the Nets, KD has experienced a new chapter in the Suns: swept by the Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs after forming a super-team in the summer to which they added the big name Devin Booker to an All-Star like Bradley Beal.

I remember Shams Charania recounting coach Frank Vogel’s screams that echoed outside the locker room after losing to the Clippers back in April. But the worst was not that, the worst was the reaction: The players didn’t care, it went in one ear and out the other. A player would confess to the insider that he had a hard time containing his laughter while enduring a new fight from the coach in the subsequent training session.

I saw with my own eyes Bradley Beal himself disrespect Vogel in a change in which he shook his hand in any way. And to the American media, once again pointing out that Durant was once again not comfortable in the Phoenix attack.

A friend says that Chemistry is the coach’s responsibility, but you have to give him the ingredients to be able to carry it out. And if you only have salt you will not be able to make bread because you will need flour and a pinch of yeast.

But what a price salt has in Phoenix: 50 kilos on average next season for each of its three stars. Svetislav Pesic would say that phrase he uttered on his second arrival at Barça back in 2018: “A player who has three cars in the garage does not go for the offensive rebound.”

Transferring this to Europe we must talk about the best Euroleague quarterfinal playoff series that for me is the one between Maccabi and Panathinaikos.

When I write this article, Panathinaikos has already tied the tie at 2-2 and I have little doubt that they will win the tie, but I don’t see myself represented at all with his game. Of course, when you pull the checkbook, in the end talent wins the games. That is what happened in the last clash with a player like Sloukas who made the series return to OAKA.

But noI think that Ataman’s statements about Juancho at the beginning of the season or Vildoza before these playoffs have helped a lot to generate chemistry. What’s the point of overpaying and breaking the mark if to win a fourth game you use a rotation of six players with four of them playing more than 32 minutes?

Sincerely I feel more identified by Maccabi’s game proposal. A more hard-working team (it can be seen from a distance) and that also, due to the circumstances of the situation they have experienced this season, has led them to work on this chemistry. Hats off to Katash.

Josh Nebo said, proud of what he had achieved. in an interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom that “our unity led us to success because this could have fallen apart very easily. “In a year like this, it could have been very easy for players to give up, get up and walk away, find excuses to explain why we failed, but this team is different.”

That is the chemicalthat of #strongertogether (stronger together) figured by the situation of their country on the canvas behind the benches of the Pionir room, the exile in Serbia of the yellow team, but which the players have made their own.

2024-05-05 14:41:21
#accumulating #talent #creating #chemistry #Relief