Don't Bank On It
Oy! Dept - Here we go again, folks. Another NBA franchice - noteably the Philadelphia 76ers - has faithfully (or in thIs case, desperately) decded that they can slap together a bunch of veteran superstars with various career tradjectories and zero experience playing together as a cohesive unit and expect them to beome an immediate superteam and simply waltz to a championship. This s a faulty strategy that can be seen as a copout, as opposed to bulding a title contender through the draft, shrewed trades and free agents (as needed). It's an option but not a safe one.
So, as the low-watt media and their dedicated followers devour this latest publicity scheme, the fact that NBA history is littered wth spectacularly disappointing superteam flameouts - including the 76ers' own Julius Erving - George McGinnis - Doug Collins experiment in 1977 - will never dawn on them. This isn't to say that they always fail - they don't - but depite all the hype, it's hardly a fool-proof solution and often ends up costing the club a bundle in talent, draft picks money and reputation.
In light of the superteam failures in recent years in Phoenix, Brooklyn, Houston and Phladelphia (again?!) among others, the one most often rcollected is one of the first and potenially most powerful combo ever sssembled. After the 1967-68 season ended the Los Angeles Lakers were despondent after losing the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics for the fifth time in seven seasons despite having Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, the greatest scoring combination in NBA history. So, they decided to go for broke by acquiring none other than the most dominant player ever, Wilt Chamberlain, who once scored 100 points in one game.
Elgin Baylor (ll), Wilt Chamberlan and Jerry West
Up to that point, Baylor had career regular season averages of 27.7 points, 13.9 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while West put up 27.4/6.2/6.7 as Baylor's teammate. Now the Lakers were planning to add Camberlain's 36.0/24.6/4.5 to the mix, thereby creating a frightening combination that looked invincible even for the Celtics, winners of 10 of the previous 11 championships (their only loss was to Chamberlain's1966-67 record shattering Philadelphia 76ers, one of the first successful superteams).
Match cut to 2026 and nothing's changed much in the minds of some NBA executives because now, by the same token, LeBron James (26.8/7.5/7.4) and Jaylen Brown (20.0/6.5/2.9) are set to join forces with Joel Embiid (27.6/10.8/3.7) and the up-and-coming Tyrese Maxey (21.1/3.2/4.8). Can they pull this off on the same team? People are drooling over the prospects but there are too many very real risks involved here to guarantee a championship run incuding those mentioned above. Here are a few:
Is it, "Man, he's 41!" or "Man, he's 41?" LeBron is amazing but he is 41 and after a record 23 seasons appears to be starting to slow down. His numbers have trended down for three consecutive years, he averaged only 20.9 ppg last season, his lowest since his rookie season and he's hasn't played all 82 games since 2017-18. And he is 41. [Interesting tidbit: Including postseason play, LeBron James has logged a staggering total of 73,476 minutes played. That's equal to 51 days and 36 minutes or 1,224.6 hours or more than 7 weeks. That's a hell of a lot of mileage. And (all together now) he's 41. It's only a decreasing matter of time before the Big Uh-Oh occurs. In the meantime...
CanThey Learn to be a Team? Of couse they could but they need to put aside their...
Egos. Easier said than done. When Lebron goes into player/coach/general manager/owner mode will Joel Embid get jealous and start pouting? Will Tyrese Maxie be upset that his average is down from last year? Will Jaylen Brown complain about not getting enough touches?
Some of these can and likely could happen. But for all we currently know, the 76ers may very well blast their way to the top. All this said however, nobody should even be thinking of making any guarantees; ony a big quesion mark.
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