When I was growing up in the aughts, the NBA was being stereotyped as a league that was too superstar-driven for its own good — a league where defense didn’t matter and all the best teams relied on their best players calling isos and hoping for the best. It wasn’t wholly unearned, with guys like Kobe and AI being the faces of the league, but it obviously wasn’t all the way true, either, with the Pistons and Spurs winning championships playing team ball, several teams being elite on the back of their bigs rather than guards, and people like Steve Nash, Chris Paul, and Jason Kidd existing and being among the best distributors in the history of the league.
A Tar Heel Preview of the 2021 NBA Season
