The Year of Parity, Chapter 1: June, July, and the Death of the Superteam

For the first time in a very long time, the NBA is balanced. The era of superteams has apparently passed and the year of parity has begun. For once in a very long time, eight to ten teams could make their case as NBA Finals contenders, and potentially even find themselves there. One such team resides in Salt Lake City. The Jazz have legitimate hope. How did the NBA end up here and will this trend last the entire season are two questions I want to answer not just now, but all the way until June 2020.  Here is an in-depth, multipart series about the NBA’s 2019-20 season: The Year of Parity. 

Chapter One: June, July, and the Death of the Super-Team

Kawhi Leonard, fittingly nicknamed The Claw, clutched NBA superpowers with a Thanos-like grip in his giant man hands and destroyed the superteam era and big three combinations in the NBA. In fact, he basically did it twice. 

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Flash back to June of last summer and it was nearly a storybook ending. The Toronto Raptors held a 3-2 series lead after Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Kevin Durant was slated to make a triumphant return to postseason play, only to suffer a catastrophic Achilles’ injury early in the game. Nevertheless, the Warriors fought like a band of brothers with their season on the line. After all, they were a superteam, a big four the NBA had yet to contain. Down one All-Star, sure, but the team had Splash Brothers Steph Curry and Klay Thompon on the perimeter with All-Star and all-defense talent Draymond Green getting them free and getting them the ball. But the game was in Toronto, Jurassic Park, where fans craved the first ring in franchise history. To pull that off at home, against one of the greatest teams ever assembled, would require a Herculean effort. Enter 4th Quarter Kawhi. With 5:13 left in the game, Leonard hit a pull-up three-pointer to put the Raptors up 96-95. A few ticks later and he steps into a tough leaner off the glass, then hits a deep three at the top of the arc a possession later, and then criss-crosses into the lane for a swish the next possession to put the Raptor lead at six, 103-97, with three minutes remaining. The momentum had swung, the crowd was chaos, the game and the series was over. What NBA.com termed “a party that would have stretched from coast-to-coast in Canada” was about to begin. With the arena and their superstar rocking and rolling, Kawhi held the ball at half-court for the ensuing possession, with something magnificent about to be added to his recent run and highlight reel. That moment? An inexplicable Toronto timeout. Following that break, Toronto scored just once more and Golden State got threes from Thompson, Curry and Thompson again to end the game and snag the win, 106-105. Defeating superteams could have had a Disney movie-like ending as the what-if and the vision is too thrilling to not tell or fantasize about, but will become one of the best forgotten moments in NBA history. At home, first franchise championship, one of the best individual fourth quarter, 10-straight runs to put the Ultimate Warrior’s Team to bed. Instead, the real ending would have to wait two more days. In the last home game of Oracle Arena, the Warriors were without Durant, and then without Thompson. There were too little depth and too much Raptor for Golden State to mount another comeback. The story was finished as the Drake Raptors celebrated with the Larry O’Brien trophy. Perhaps wanting that dramatic victory over NBA powers that he just barely missed out on, Leonard made sure his next match with Big Threes was extra spicy.

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A few months after taking home the Finals MVP trophy, Leonard found himself as the prize free agent in the class of 2019. Nearly a quarter of the NBA would be on the move, but none were bigger than Leonard, especially now that Durant was to miss an entire NBA season with his Achilles’ injury. Leonard spent a month celebrating life as a champion, and probably listened to talking heads proclaim him as the best player in the NBA at that time. It wasn’t hyperbole. It wasn’t disrespect to any of the other in the game. It was simply fact, straight-up true. So as July crept up, and the beginning of a seismic free agency on the horizon, NBA franchises knew wherever Leonard signed could tilt the fortunes of the NBA in a variety of directions. The East could be more balanced and competitive with a rerun in Toronto or teams with space in New York and Brooklyn dreamed of bright lights amid Leonard’s fame. But the real players were West Coast, LA specifically. The Los Angeles Lakers had just swung for the fences to acquire big man Anthony Davis to pair with LeBron James and it seemed destined that Leonard would return home to LA to form the newest, and arguably the biggest, threesome in the NBA. Across the hall in Staples were the Clippers, a little less shiny but equally a possibility. The moratorium lifted and all that could be heard from Leonard’s camps were crickets. Things were tight and no news ended multiple days as other signings dropped. KD went to Brooklyn with Kyrie Irving, Thompson resigned with Golden State, Jimmy Butler went to Miami, Kemba Walker to Boston, and all of the top talents of that free agency class were penned and committed except for Leonard. The Lakers and Clippers, still in the running for Kawhi. sat out on other targets to wait patiently for the reigning Finals MVP. They had the space to add top talent or mid-tier talented depth, but Leonard was a bigger catch. The wait, even with consequences, was worth it. As more time went on, it seemed the Lakers were inevitable. Of course, he’d choose the Lakers over the Clippers. Why would anyone want the little brother in Staples Center? The Lakers had the banners, not the Clippers. Of course, he’d choose LeBron James over Lou Williams. The Lakers had the stars, not the Clippers. It was still LeBron’s world, but Kawhi would take over as the central star and main guy on multiple championships in a row. After all, the NBA was used to big combinations and inevitability. That clearly meant purple and gold. That is until July 10, around two in the morning, when Leonard went big with his announcement  and indeed signed with Los Angeles, just the Clippers not the Lakers. The real fireworks occurred when it was reported that Leonard wasn’t going solo. He didn’t necessarily want a big three with the Lakers, but he did want a superstar pairing. He could’ve had the biggest of pairings, Davis and LBJ, but that wasn’t his style, and maybe not what he wanted out of the NBA. Somehow working his magic, Leonard’s 10-0 run this time around ended in a victory: Paul George was requesting out of Oklahoma City and was traded to the Clips for a million-and-one draft picks. Leonard got his man, got his team, and subsequently restored balance to the NBA. With KD spurning the Warriors and going to Brooklyn, the league’s balance of power had shifted slightly. Golden State’s dynasty had crumbled. In Brooklyn, there was a tandem now with Durant and Irving. In Golden State, a tandem of sorts would revolve around Curry with D’Angelo Russell, an Eastern Conference all-star but maybe not a Western Conference all-star, coming to join while Thompson recovered from his knee injury. In an understatement: that Golden State roster just wouldn’t be the same. And then this: Leonard and PG13, the top two two-way players in the NBA on the same squad NOT as a Laker in a bigger formation. Snap, the Big Three era was done. And bam, the league of parity was just beginning.

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(To be continued…)