The rise of the Super Teams

2.) Nelson must go. Defense wins championships. Enough said?

No, outscoring your opponents wins championships, no matter how you do it.

His legacy took a major hit in my book when he proved he couldn’t stay with Cleveland, make those around him better, and incorporate draft picks/ trade pieces into the fold. What he did is called “selling out” and Jordan, Barkley, Bird, Hakeem, Dominique, Stockton, and a whole host of others never felt the need to do it.

Barkley was right when he stated that Lebron can win all he wants and he’ll never be at Jordan’s level. I will never see Lebron in the same light again either.

 Switch to the D league. I’m pretty sure our guys would be above average playing there?

Stephen Curry needs to become a superstar, make his teammates better, and ultimately be the reason the Warriors win a lot of games. That’s the Warriors best way to attract other superstars.

1. Fix the strength, conditioning and training system. There will always be freak accidents and injuries, but better performance in this area will add a couple of games per year, extend players’ useful lives, and build confidence in the organization among active players.

2. Stockpile second round picks. They’re good currency for trades, and as non-guaranteed contracts avoid the "locked into mediocrity’ syndrome that first-rounders can create.

3. Build personal relationships between management and players. See: Cleveland vs Miami, Toronto vs Lakers, previous Warriors vs ourselves. Pay attention to who your players’ friends are in the league. If, for example, dWade calls dWright his “little brother”, recognize that how you treat dWright is going to have an impact on how your team is perceived by top-tier players, even if he isn’t one.

4. Acquire smart players. If the choice is between solid talent with high BBIQ and potentially great talent with low BBIQ, go with intelligence. Intelligence will maximize athleticism – the reverse is never true. Smart players tend to have good fundamental skills, cause they see how it pays off. Smart players are obsessed with improving their skills.

5. Find a coach who wants to coach this team. Someone who sees the roster and knows he can add wins by developing the (hated word) potential. Someone who thinks these guys will be fun to coach and fun to win with. The holy grail would be a young Phil Jackson. If you have smart players, you need a really smart coach. Nellie was that guy once, mebbe, but not now. The odds are your coach was a rotation player who “got more minutes than he deserved” late in his playing career. Quietly ask around among the player-announcers. I’m willing to bet there is a guy somewhere in his early 40’s or late 30’s who fits that bill and that we’ve barely heard of. Doesn’t matter if we know him or not – what matters will be that the players play for him.

So looking at your 5 – does Monta fit the bill? He’s got half a season to prove that he does. Lee, Curry, and Lin clearly do; dWright, AB, Udoh, Reggie appear to; BWright I frankly can’t tell. The luxury tax is irrelevant until we have a reason to be there – and right now we don’t. Nelson will be gone inside a year at the latest. Smarter = better defense via better fundamentals. So I’d say a top-tier big is what’s really left, and yes, we need another one badly.

Take Nellie out of the equation is the first step. Bring in a hard nosed coach who preaches defense and a winning philosophy.
This whole Miami Thrice thing won’t happen again in a long while but I do agree, the nee owners need to take risks and step over the salary cap in the future to land big talent, who will come here and make significant difference and fill in those gaps that we will be lacking.
Realistically, we gotta look long term. A west conference title is still years away and a title is no less than 5 yrs away, if you ask me. Build the team up gradually with savvy player moves and a solid coaching staff and upper mgmt.

I think this was a pretty savvy move by LBJ to shore up his legacy

I don’t think anyone ever questioned whether it was “savvy.” The issue was more that it was douchy, insensitive, primadonna-ish, wimpy and gutless. Heart, backbone, and balls are much more admirable traits in the eyes of most sports fans than “savviness.”

It all starts with the front office.
 The front office choses who to draft, who to trade and who to sign which are the decisions that can create a Super Team. With Lacob and Guber taking over the team we’ve had a major improvement there.

Next we need a superstar.
 Curry, Ellis and Lee are stars. Not supa stars. The remaining holes are at Small Forward, Center and possibly the Shooting Guard if Monta Ellis becomes ineffective due to his lack of size. We can aquire a superstar through trade but I don’t believe Lebron, Wade, Kobe and Dwight are going anywhere.
We can aquire a superstar through Free Agency. There’s alot of people saying that we should pursue Carmelo in free agency and that is a great idea as long as we dont have to put ourselves in the position where we get him or bust especially since the trendy thing to do with Super Stars is to sign with teams that have other super stars.
We can aquire a super star through draft. Of course this is all about scouting, what our record is at the end of the season and how the ping pong balls roll out if we are in fact in the lottery.
I don’t forsee the Warriors aquiring a super star outside of a draft miracle or a disgruntled super star requesting or requiring a trade.
Then we need a coach.
Being that it is highly unlikely we will get a super star, we need a coach that will stress defense and teamwork. The Rockets had two injured superstars in Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. However they made the playoffs in a stunning 20+ win streak with teamwork and defense. The Warriors will have better tools than the Rockets and be a super team if the coach preaches defense and teamwork. Don Nelson isn’t known for that style of play what so ever. It will be interesting to see if we get a new coach and what his style will be.