Welcome to the Winner’s Circle, a weekly column by Bet For The Win senior writer Prince J. Grimes. Here, you’ll read about stats and trends that can help you make informed betting predictions for the week ahead and beyond. Got something you want to see in the next Winners Circle, shoot Prince a message and check back next week for the response.
There used to be a time we thought having a couple of superstar players on your team at least guaranteed competitiveness — a chance to win a playoff series and potentially push for a title.
That idea took a hit Monday with the Boston Celtics’ sweep of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets. While Boston has a couple of budding superstars itself, the team as a whole is a lot more carefully constructed than Brooklyn. And that showed up on the court — only Game 1 felt as close as the final score suggested.
This is a byproduct of the player empowerment era, which I’m not completely against. But which also has an obvious downside when it comes to team construction: players ain’t GMs.
I can’t be sure exactly how much input Durant and Irving had on building this incredibly flawed roster — Durant says he doesn’t overstep at all — but it’s clear they have some influence. Irving expressed as much after Monday’s loss, stating his desire to remain in Brooklyn and help manage the franchise with Durant, team owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks.
Kyrie says he plans to re-sign with the Nets: "When I say I'm here with Kev, I think that really entails us managing this franchise together alongside Joe and Sean."
— Scott Cacciola (@ScottCacciola) April 26, 2022
Eh, good luck with that, guys.
Whatever the players’ influence, the way they’re doing this now hasn’t worked. Brooklyn looked promising on paper, entering the season as the preseason betting favorite to win this year’s title. But that seems a popular trap of the player-GM if we’re to believe LeBron played a role in the Lakers acquiring Russell Westbrook. The move maybe looked good on paper but completely ignored the reality of a clunky fit.
The sweep of Brooklyn’s paper team followed a rocky season which saw another of the team’s stars, James Harden force his way off the roster after Durant apparently pushed to get him there. In acquiring Harden, the Nets had to part with some of their best young players. In trading him, they got back a different flawed All-Star who didn’t play a single minute after the deal.
If this is all the result of players having an oversized role in managing a franchise, count me out on this. We saw the experiment work for a season in Los Angeles when they traded a bunch of young talent for Anthony Davis and won a title for it. But then it went terribly wrong this season, as LeBron and company inexplicably missed the playoffs with the second-best preseason title odds. The team with the best odds just became the first preseason favorite since at least 1984-85 to not win a single playoff game, according to historical odds on Basketball-Reference.
Going back to 1984-85, every preseason favourite to win the NBA championship has gone on to win at least ONE playoff game — until now.
The Brooklyn Nets are the first team in recorded history to start the year as the title favourite and fail to win at least one playoff game…
— Josh Eberley 🇨🇦 (@JoshEberley) April 26, 2022
Over the years, teams that won titles have more often than not been teams whose cores were built organically, whether through the draft or through tactical front office decisions. Only LeBron’s teams have been able to occasionally buck that trend. Even if Durant doesn’t dictate the front office decisions, he at the very least chose Irving as his co-pilot, and that’s presented its own set of circumstances.
I do believe star players should have some type of pull in roster construction, because they’re the ones who ultimately have to drive the ship on the court. But strong front offices are still vital to a team’s success. If that balance isn’t appropriately managed, what happened to the Nets and Lakers this season might become more normal. Next time, it won’t be such a surprise to see one of the game’s giants swept in the first round, or miss the postseason altogether.
Here are a few more things I’m looking at in the week ahead.
