Today's professional basketball is very different from the impression we used to have, with superstars moving around, many short-term contracts, and stricter luxury tax rules to balance the strength of teams, and one thing to be expected: dynasties may disappear.
Over the past four years, the final championship team has been constantly changing. Think about the 2020 Lakers championship winning lineup, only Howard and Rondo left the team and then returned to the team, and Horton Tucker did not play that year, and the Raptors who reached the top the previous year have fallen apart after Leonard left the team, and the Warriors in 2018 failed to continue to win consecutive championships due to injury problems and Durant's departure.
Looking at the Bucks, who just won the championship last season, although they left the three cores of Antetokounmpo, Milton and Holliday, they failed to leave another key role, P.J. Tucker, because of the luxury tax. If they can't defend their title this year, and given the Nets' strong challenge, there could be a fifth championship in five years, something that hasn't happened since 1977 or 1981.
In 2012, because the Thunder were reluctant to trigger the luxury tax, Harden was traded to the Rockets, a situation that the league welcomed, and then the league president David Stern wanted "players to be shared" and wanted the teams to be more evenly balanced. The collective bargaining agreement in 2011 did not really kill the birth of the superpower, but it did make it much more difficult to maintain the space fleet.
The team that can be called "Dynasty" in recent years is the Warriors in the 2014-2019 period, when the background was a broadcast contract update, resulting in a salary cap revision that gave them the opportunity to sign Durant. 2025 is the time of the next broadcast contract update, and there is also a chance to see the next Super Team appear.
But in these three to five years, the situation in the league is still strange and changeable, and in the list of the top 100 players published by Sports Pictures, 9 of the top 19 stars have changed teams at least once in the past three years. In the past decade, 4 of the 5 FMVPs, James, Durant, Leonard and Iguodala have all changed teams at least twice. The 76ers, who had a bright future last year, are now in the dark, and if the Blazers and Wizards don't cheer up, the stars of the house may also leave, and Sports Illustrated columnist Becco describes the current NBA as fleeting, inconsistent, dazzling, and full of rules.
"You used to look at seven to ten years of planning, but now there's going to be a big change in three to five years." A long-time team management staff member said so.
The increasingly frequent star changes, and the team's general managers who are always in a state of anxiety, this is now the NBA, a salary expert Kuhn said: "The current situation has fulfilled the wishes of the league management." ”
But has the league gotten better now? Can a healthy Warriors team return to glory? Can LeBron, already 37, win the title again? Can The Alphabet Brother defend his title without another top ten player as an assistant? We'll see.