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The era of the NBA “super team” is over.
What started with the formation of Boston’s “Big Three” in 2007 bled over into the formation of the “Heatles” in Miami, the 2014-2017 Cleveland Cavaliers, and failed attempts by many other teams to artificially assemble three prime Hall of Fame bound super stars into a championship unit. That model of team building is officially dead.
This slow death started when Golden State and their three home-grown All-Stars took down an injury depleted Cleveland Cavaliers “super team” in the 2015 NBA Finals. The next year, a
healthy version of the Cavs pulled one of the biggest upsets in recent memory by beating a 72-win Warriors team to re-establish the primacy of the “super team” model. Golden State countered by adding Kevin Durant to form their own “super team” and win the next two titles.
Then came 2019.
The Toronto Raptors finished what the Warriors had started in 2015. They added Kawhi Leonard to a roster full of good, but not great players and upset the injury-depleted Warriors – along with their three All-Stars and two All-NBA players – in the 2019 NBA finals. The Raptors put the final nail in the coffin of the “super team.”
It’s too difficult and expensive to assemble three All-NBA level players in today's NBA. Getting the money and contract length to line up as well as securing the right role players has made the three superstar model untenable. What we now see is a move towards building a team around one superstar (All-NBA player), a second star (All-Star player), and one All-NBA caliber defender. Seven of the last 10 teams to reach the NBA Finals have met this criteria, and two of the remaining three “kind of” meet it. The chart below should help clarify:
The bottom line is that you need one superstar (All-NBA player), one All-star, and one elite defender to compete for a title. BUT in some cases like 2019 Toronto, 2020 Miami, and 2020 L.A. their star or superstar was a high-level two-way player that allowed them to contend for a title without having the third piece. In other words, they still had two elite offensive players and one elite defender, they just had one player who was able to fulfill both roles.
When you look at it in this context, it really helps you separate the “good” teams from the teams that could realistically win it all. Let’s apply this filter to this year’s playoffs:
Miami and Boston both met the criteria as championship-caliber clubs but injuries and bench play swayed the series in favor of Boston.
Brooklyn’s injuries and lack of impactful defenders led two "superstars" getting swept by Boston.
Milwaukee lacked a second high-level perimeter scorer with All-Star Khris Middleton missing the entire series against Boston.
Phoenix seemed tailor-made for a championship run, but CP3 forgot how to play basketball for the last three games of the Dallas series and the Suns offense cratered in the second half of their second round loss to the Mavericks.
The Mavs lacked the infrastructure to be serious title contenders without a high-level second scorer (no disrespect to Jalen Brunson) and ZERO impactful defenders.
The Sixers met all the criteria on paper to be championship contenders with two elite scorers (James Harden/Joel Embiid) and two elite defenders (Embiid/Matisse Thybulle). This makes it all the more maddening to see James Harden absolutely fold in the playoffs the way he did AGAIN this year.
Despite an elite offensive engine in Ja Morant and an All-NBA defender in Jaren Jackson Jr., Memphis lacked a second high-caliber scorer to compete at a championship level.
Even a team like the Chicago Bulls had the proper DNA to make a deep playoff run before injuries destroyed their season. Alex Caruso & Lonzo Ball BOTH defended at an ALL-NBA level while Zach Lavine put together another All-Star season and Demar Derozan returned to All-NBA form and had the Bulls flirting with first place well into the new year.
You get the idea. So what about the Hawks? What are they lacking?
1. A Second All-Star Level Scorer
Bogdan Bogdanovic shows flashes of it, but he hasn’t been healthy enough to do it consistently. He’s also an absolutely HEINOUS defender. No other Hawk is even close.
The appeal of adding a Bradley Beal, Zach Lavine or any of other stars allegedly tied to the Hawks is that having two All-Star level scorers has proven to be more valuable than 3-4 guys that average 11-15, but could give you 20 on any given night. The latter SOUNDS good, but teams are having much more success with two guys that are guaranteed to get you 20 every night and a handful of role players that can hit open shots.
The problem here is two-fold:
One, you have to find a star that can play off the ball. Lavine & Beal could work because both are good spot-up shooters, while stars like Donovan Mitchell & Kyrie Irving are high-usage iso scorers. Those fits just won’t work.
The second issue is the players available are not good on BOTH ends, so even if you get one you still have to find…
2. An Elite (All-NBA) Defender
Capela is very good, but he’s not on the same level as Rudy Gobert or Joel Embiid. He lacks the size they have to bang with bigger centers and doesn’t have the guard-like mobility or freakish athleticism of smaller centers like Bam Adebayo & Robert Williams.
The Hawks had four above-average defenders this past season in Capela, Delon Wright, Onyeka Okungwu, and DeAndre Hunter but had average to bad defenders everywhere else. Hunter and Okungwu both have the potential to be All-NBA defenders, but they simply haven’t been healthy enough or consistent enough to reach that potential.
This is why Atlanta took two big swings at defensive stoppers in the 2019 draft with Hunter and Cam Reddish. They took two players that projected to be elite defenders & crossed their fingers hoping and praying one would turn into that two–way wing that everyone in the NBA wants.
Can the Hawks plug both holes in one offseason? It’s possible, but it would require them to gut a great portion of the roster, and likely bring back multiple max-ish contracts that would
put them into luxury tax territory. The most likely option may be to try and acquire that second big offensive piece (Lavine would be a decent target) and give it one more year to see if Hunter or Okungwu can turn into the elite defensive anchor you need to contend.
Either way, the Hawks as currently constructed do NOT have the infrastructure for title contention. They can win a playoff series or possibly return to the conference finals if Trae Young goes Super Saiyan for multiple rounds, but they are no different than the 2022 Mavs, 2020 Nuggets, or 2019 Blazers as teams with a singular elite star capped by a lack of additional difference makers around them.
To put it simply, the Hawks are more than one piece away. Here’s hoping Travis Schlenk recognizes this and follows the NBA’s new formula to building a title contender around Trae Young.
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