Talent's All You Need

With free agency coming up, in which the entire NBA as we know it could be changed, or nothing major will happen at all, and the Lakers recently winning their second straight title, I began to wonder: Is talent all you need to win in the NBA?

We hear so much about coaching, strategies, zone defenses, etcetera, etcetera. But does any of that really matter when it comes down to it? Does the team with the greatest amount of good to great players - usually three - win every year, no matter who their coach is, or what their strategy is?

Think about it, how many times in the NBA do underdogs win? In a league that has had held the NBA Finals 62 times, the Celtics and Lakers have won a combined 32 of those 62 championships. And in every one of those years, they undoubtedly had the most talented team in the league.

During the early 50s, the then Minneapolis Lakers had George Mikan, one of the earliest and most dominant big men in the game, who led his team to five titles. With the NBA just getting its start, and far behind in terms of popularity to college basketball, no team had as talented nor as unstoppable a player as Mikan.

In the 60s, the most dominant dynasty in the history of sports took shape. The Celtics were a force to be reckoned with, boasting a total of six Hall of Famers ... at the same time, for the majority of their championships, with Bill Russell, John Havlicek, and Bob Cousy leading the way. No team had as much talent as the Celts did for the entire decade, and therefore they won every title with the exception of one, the 1966-67 title was won by the 76ers.

When Russell and Cousy grew old by the end of the 60s, a balance swept across the league, as the 70s saw eight different teams win the title. This was largely due to the NBA-ABA merger that dispersed former ABA stars all over the NBA disturbing some of the balance of power, as well as the growth of the league from 14 to 22 teams. With the dominant players of the 60s retiring, and a new crop of young players asserting themselves in the league, most teams didn't have two dominant players, with the exception of the Celtics (John Havlicek and Dave Cowens) and the Knicks (Walt Frazier, Willis Reed), the only two teams to win the NBA Finals twice during the 70s.

But blips in history happen, and it just so happens, that the 70s had the perfect set-up to prove history wrong. By the 80s however, everything was back to normal, and the Celtics and Lakers were at it again, as every single NBA Finals during the decade was graced with their presence.

The 80s Lakers and Celtics were two of the most dominant teams in basketball history. The Lakers were led by Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and James Worthy and won a total of five titles during the 80s. Their main competitor throughout the decade was no other than the Celtics. The Celtics had a Big Three of their own in Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, all of whom whom were a part of all three Celtic titles during the 1980s. Then there were the Pistons, who were known as the bad boys of the league. Like every other successful team they had a few star players of their own in Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman and Bill Laimbeer, but although all four were great, Dumars and Rodman were too young to beat Magic and Bird earlier in the 80s, and could only pull off two titles before Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of the Bulls and Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler of the Rockets.

During the 90s, the teams with the best players continued to win, but with the salary cap having been reinstated before the 1984-85 season, most teams only had two star players; the Bulls had Jordan and Pippen, the Magic had Karl Malone and John Stockton, the Magic had Shaq and Penny Hardaway, and the Rockets had Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. With the league so well balanced, the talent so spread out, and Michael Jordan being well, how should I put this, Like Mike, there was little competition for the Bulls, one of the main reasons they won six championships in the 90s. No matter who the coach was, no team could take down the best player in basketball, not only at the time, but possibly ever, and his talented right hand man Scottie Pippen, which made for the most talent out of any duo in the NBA for most of the 90s.

The Bulls dynasty was broken up when Jordan, Pippen and Phil Jackson all left, and the very talented David Robinson and his young partner in crime in the post Tim Duncan became the best tandem in basketball and won the 1999 NBA Finals. But it didn't last long, as the Lakers' young star soon came into his own; Kobe Bryant, the trusty star sidekick to the best player in the game, Shaquille O'Neal, helped the Lakers win three straight titles to starts off the 2000s. When Shaq left, the most talented team title was given back to the Spurs, with Tim Duncan now the most dominant player, and Robinson serving as the sidekick. Once Robinson left in 2003, Duncan got his help from Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli as well as some other supporting cast players.

But Parker and Ginobli sometimes weren't powerful enough, and although the Spurs won three titles, none of them were back-to-back, winning the title every other year from 2003 to 2007. Throughout the 2000s, with constant player movement, so many different teams won. There were the star-studded Pistons with the fearsome starting five of Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace; then you had Shaq moving to Miami and being a huge help to the young star Dwayne Wade; then the Celtics with their new additions Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to help out Paul Pierce. After that year, Kobe finally received the help he needed to get over the hill with Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Derek Fisher pitching in, to win the next two titles.

What did all of these teams have in common? They all had two star players, usually a big man and a guard or small forward, or one star and two exceptional players. I'm not saying it's a revolutionary thought, but it proves the fact that no one can win alone, and that very rarely in the NBA do teams come out of nowhere to win or do Cinderella stories occur. That's why only five different teams have won the championship this decade, only four the previous decade, four during the 80s and just two during the 70s. With free agency and a larger amount of teams it's gotten tougher to build a dynasty, explaining the increase in championship teams per decade, but not by much, as more and more exceptional players are teaming up with stars.

Can it be argued that coaches bring at least something to the table? Without a doubt. In my article just a few weeks ago, I talked about how Phil Jackson's keys to success were not only coaching the best players but also getting the most out of his bench players. History however shows that in order to be a contender you have to have the most talent out of any team in the league. Whether or not it's the coach tapping into that potential talent or a solid bench that pushes the team over the edge to help actually win that title is debatable, but in order to have a chance to win the title, a team definitely needs to have the most talent in the league.

Well, I didn't write this for nothing. With one of the most highly anticipated sporting "events" coming up in the NBA's free agency, it will be not only fun, but monumental, to see who goes where. If LeBron teams up with Wade or Bosh or Stoudemire, or whatever else happens, this year's free agency could change the balance of power in the league for at least a decade, with all of the aforementioned guys being ages 28 and under. It's tough to tell what's going to happen, but one things for sure: if the top players decide to forgo the big money and join forces, we could have the biggest and best dynasty in sports history on our hands.