I’m a passionate basketball fan, so naturally I was very interested in seeing the Warriors break the ’95-’96 Bulls regular season wins record last week. Not to be outdone, in typical fashion, Kobe Bryant turned in a 60 point outburst in his final career game. I can’t tell you which one was more impressive, because there is no right answer, regardless of what ESPN may tell you. Both events have one thing in common, however, and that is the signaling of a new era in basketball.
Everyone knows that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird are great friends, even as they battled each other for championships in the 1980’s. They’ve both said on numerous occasions, however, that they wouldn’t have wanted to team up for a ‘super team.’ In the basketball era of all the different ‘Big 3’ combinations like Lebron/Wade/Bosh, Allen/Pierce/Garnett, Paul/Griffin/DeAndre, Curry/Thompson/Green, etc, there are not as many fierce rivalries anymore. In recent years, the top players are coming together to attempt to win championships together. This diminishes the talent pool in each conference and weakens rivalries.
Look at the Eastern Conference right now and tell me two teams that really hate one another. You can’t do it, because nobody stays on the same team long enough anymore. If Kobe was still in his prime, he would have tried to single-handedly prevent the Warriors from breaking Jordan’s record, because that’s who he is as a player. He was one of the fiercest competitors the league has seen since Michael Jordan. Looking back at the golden era of the NBA in the 80s and 90s, the rivalries do not compare to today. The Bad Boys, the Showtime Lakers, Bird’s Celtics Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Malone and Stockton, Olajuwan and Drexler, the list goes on and on. There are no more real rivalries in the NBA, and that’s a shame if you ask me.
I don’t want to watch Lebron give passionate hugs to his opponents as he whips them by twenty points, and vice versa. This week, I was listening to Colin Cowherd, and he made a comment about Kobe Bryant that I really liked. He talked about how Lebron, Chris Paul, Wade, and Carmelo hang out during the off-season and train together. We can probably attribute some of this to the rise of USA basketball after the original Dream Team in the early 90s. The other portion could have to do with the media. Players nowadays are much more connected over social media, leading to closer friendships. Cowherd noted that Kobe Bryant would never treat his opponents the same way as Lebron and company. Kobe drove Shaq out of town, so why would he ever go knocking on Lebron’s door asking to form a super team.
The Warriors embody the new NBA. They beat you with small-ball and shooting. As the rest of the league adapts to this style, we see former greats like Kobe walk out the door into the uncertainty of retirement. Always a fiery competitor, I think Kobe will struggle with life after basketball. I also hope to God that the Warriors keep this team together because man, are they fun to watch. If the Spurs and Warriors can keep their current core players locked up for the foreseeable future, we may have a new ‘real’ rivalry on our hands.
