And the thing with the Lakers was that Wilt, Kareem, and Shaq (and Gasol to a much lesser extent) basically traded themselves there. We can pretend that their original teams (or 2nd team, in Wilt's case) had some kind of choice, but from a practical perspective, they didn't.Like when the Lakers had Wilt, West and Baylor or Kareem, Magic and Worthy? Or the Celtics had Russell, Jones and Hondo or Bird, McHale and Parrish?
It's always been the formula for greatness. And back then the draft worked totally differently.
For some reason, folks were fine with superteams when they weren't built through free agent decisions.
They weren't joining preexisting great teams except in Wilt's case, but they knew they were going to have an excellent chance to win big, since SoCal has always been a highly desirable location, especially when it comes to the NBA.
This era will end sooner than people think. LeBron is 33 with a ton of mileage. Hard to see him being what he is now for any more than 3 more seasons. Golden State will have to start to shed some parts, even if certain guys are willing to take less than they can get.
I do have to say, though, that it would be pretty cool if the Celtics maintain what they have right now and manage to dethrone the Warriors at some point in the next few years. Not because I'm any kind of Celtic fan, but because I think the NBA would benefit if a team could win it all without really having a top 10 player. The NBA has been thoroughly dominated by individual stars, and to show that you can build and coach a team to overcome that could be seen as progress.