The Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the league’s smallest market teams, just took a 3-1 lead over Minnesota to come within a game of the NBA Finals. They have a very good chance of facing the Indiana Pacers, which is only a few steps higher than OKC on the list of small markets.
This is where we tend to say “what a nightmare for the NBA.”
But this is actually a dream scenario for Adam Silver, who has championed the demolition of the NBA’s business structure under the guise of wanting NFL-style parity in his league. This collective bargaining agreement is designed to do a few different things. Among them: tear down expensive contenders and create a constantly churning wheel of contenders who have their few years in the spotlight before they're fed to the wood chipper.
Silver and the NBA don’t get to have it both ways. If the NBA Finals are a ratings flop, then so be it. If expensive teams like the Celtics have to go through the pain of this CBA, then so too should the league that created it.
The ultimate dream is people watching the NBA Finals for spectacle, not specific teams. And that's an admirable vision, but it flies in the face of what the league has been built on. David Stern’s genius was that he highlighted individual stars because that was the league’s advantage. NFL stars wear helmets and are covered up most of the time. Saquon Barkley can walk past a casual like me without being bothered.
The NBA’s strength is the most recognizable stars in American sports. We see their faces, their tattoos, and how they wear their socks. You can tell when they get a haircut, which is a level of familiarity you just don’t see anywhere else.
The league is tossing all that into the trash like a Mitchell Robinson free throw. A Thunder-Pacers Finals would be an appropriate test of Silver’s vision, as expensive teams like the Celtics are among the first to be thrown into the grinding gears of parity. OKC and Indy combined are only about 70% the size of Boston. And Boston is less than half the size of New York. Losing the Celtics and Knicks in consecutive rounds only to see the Pacers get through has to feel like a gut punch to the bean counters in the league office.
But it’s a great test of Silver’s theory. It’s a starting point for the league to see whether the draw of crowning a professional basketball champion is bigger than watching the names people recognize get crowned themselves. Is America ready to learn about new teams, or are they going to just watch something else until a name they recognize is involved?
Silver has a long way to go to get to the parity he’s dreamed of. The Celtics are among the chum the league sacrificed to pursue it. Boston did just about everything right in putting together its contender. It has homegrown talent, found at the top, bottom and even outside the draft. They have nailed free agent signings and trades. They have developed players into the best versions of themselves.
They won a championship and then learned a hard lesson in what it took to do it again. Teams who stumbled like this before have gotten chances to re-tool and rectify their mistakes. But because one team, the Golden State Warriors, benefited from a weird quirk and had a long run, the league decided things had to change.
The Celtics aren’t getting the same chance that every other team in this spot had. They are forced to start tearing their team down with their stars still in their primes. And even though Jayson Tatum is trying to come back from a devastating injury, the team he’s coming back to will undoubtedly be worse than the one he left because Brad Stevens has no choice.
The Celtics are going to get progressively worse until they break up this core and are forced to conform to Silver’s NBA dream. Whatever the return is for Jrue Holiday will make Boston less than what they were. The same for when Kristaps Porzingis ultimately gets moved. Eventually, Jaylen Brown will have to go as well, because Silver wants more talent spread around the league, regardless of whether organizations have done anything to deserve a reward of that caliber. Penny-pinching owners, inept front offices, and culture-less coaching staffs be damned, every one of these teams is going to get someone good.
The Celtics were robbed of an opportunity to see their work through, and that's a damn shame.
But this isn't just some big market rant. The OKC Thunder aren't going to see their work through either. The machine Silver built will consume all teams, including the darling Thunder. Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren have one more season left on their rookie deals and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has two years left before his super-max. They're not going to be able to keep those three, plus Isaiah Hartenstein (who is owed $28.5 million in each of the next two seasons) and Lu Dort (who is getting $35 million over the next three seasons) for much longer. Alex Caruso’s new four-year, $81 million extension starts next season, too.
The Thunder are seen as the future of the league, but they're going to be ripped apart before we know it. This team is one of the league's youngest but they only have a few years left under this system.
And while we’re here, the Pacers aren’t going to be around as constituted for much longer, either. Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam will combine for $90 million next season and Myles Turner is a free agent. Andrew Nembhard’s new extension kicks in starting at $18 million next season. Obi Toppin will make $14 million. They're not going to be cheap after this year, and they're just starting to find their footing. How much longer do they have before they're priced out of contending?
This is the future of the NBA. Silver wants every fan base to feel like they have a chance, but then once that chance comes, the team they grew to love gets ripped away from them. Just as teams are starting to build a following, the league’s system pulls it from the hands of the fans who invested their time and money following it.
I think a Thunder-Pacers Finals would be a hell of a lot of fun. I think every game of that series will have wild swings and crazy stretches that will be worth watching. And that's what makes this such a great test.
Will people watch it anyway? Will people invest their time in such an unanticipated matchup? And if they do, how will they react to the teams they started to learn and love getting broken up so quickly?
Silver’s vision for the NBA has begun in earnest. We’re in this for the long haul, and no one knows where this thing will go. He’d better be right, because these first few seasons are going to get messy,