The number of teams who can credibly believe they are capable of becoming NBA champions remains as small as ever. The NBA beyond those four or five title contenders remains a cavernous clutter of teams without workable way of joining them. Even this season, it’s realistically just the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, and then maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers.

But the Warriors were widely believed to be one of the teams on the outside in October of 2014 before they entirely remade their offense, maximized their collective talents, turned role players into All-Stars and max contract players and wandered into a historical regular season and championship. 

There has been a redrawing for the possibilities of how to construct a title winning team away from the SuperDuperStar Theory. This theory originated in a time period when the NBA had far fewer teams and either no three-point line at all, or one that was used sparingly. The basic premise is the teams with the greatest individual players typically win the Finals and almost every title has been won by a team with an all-time great player and typically another one or two future Hall of Famers. The impact of the supporting cast and system was fairly discounted because so many Finals simply came down to which best player was better in a seven-game sample.

Assembling the three best available players in a vacuum has become immeasurably problematic. The intelligence and luck it takes to create teams like the Warriors and Spurs is gigantic. These teams have tremendous and elaborate collections of talent but it has been the player assigned to defend a top-10 player of all-time in LeBron James who has won Finals MVP in Kawhi Leonard and Andre Iguodala. There is perhaps no better symbol for this new era than comparing Leonard and Iguodala to the Finals MVPs that have come before them. There is a wolfishness to how the Warriors and Spurs play collectively on both sides of the floor that overwhelm not just single superstar teams but even teams with a collection of superstars.

The current run of Big 3’s began in 2007 when the Boston Celtics added Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to Paul Pierce in a single offseason. They immediately won the title in 2008, likely would have played the Lakers again in The Finals in 2009 if not for Garnett’s knee injury, lost to the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2010 Finals, and then were taken down by the Miami Heat in 2011 and 2012.

Garnett’s successful template of escape was already well-proven by LeBron James’ free agency in 2010, and he even gave LeBron a direct nudge with his indelible advice that “loyalty is something that hurts you at times because you can’t get youth back” when the Celtics eliminated the Cavs in the second round that May.

There is now a proliferation of teams copying the Spurs and Warriors, just as there was a rush of general managers trying to assemble super teams following the Heat. There has been a consolidation of talent with stars themselves believing in the Big 3 formula and directly or indirectly orchestrating their creation, but they’re still just 2-for-5 in successfully winning the championship since 2011.

Chris Paul planned on joining Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony with the Knicks until he instead was going to form a Big 3 with Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum (who they’d hoped would become Dwight Howard), but then he of course ended up with Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and the Los Angeles Clippers. Paul and Griffin are top-10 players and have won just three total playoff series in four seasons and have yet to reach even a Conference Finals.

Howard came to Los Angeles a year later with a Lakers’ team already on the wrong side of their primes and ultimately chose a Big 2 with James Harden after the initial Brooklyn option with Deron Williams fell through.

After going to four straight Finals with the Heat, LeBron returned to the Cavaliers with a Big 3 partnership of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love instead of Mo Williams and Antawn Jamison. The current Cleveland Big 3 perhaps best exemplifies this cautionary tale because 1+1+1 is equaling less than two and half with how they are putting a limited version of both Love and Irving on the floor given their roles on offense and their deficiencies on defense.

The Cavaliers firing David Blatt was more about how much better the Warriors and Spurs are than them as opposed to any limitations he may have as a coach. There is a formula out there waiting to be discovered for the Cavaliers to become the best version of themselves just like what happened with Steve Kerr and the Warriors.

The Warriors rebuked the multiple superstar theory when deciding against trading Klay Thompson for Love, which produced extensive outrage from just about everyone. While asking the question of whether Love was really franchise player on a playoff team good, I thought the Warriors would be improved trading for him with a replacement level shooting guard instead of Thompson. 

Pairing Stephen Curry with Kevin Love was a recognizable formula for a juggernaut offensively and the belief was there would be enough remaining defense in Andrew Bogut, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala and Harrison Barnes to cover for their apparent deficiencies.

At some point fairly early last season, it became plainly apparent that the Warriors wouldn’t even trade Green for Love straight-up. We’re now at the point where Green has fully surpassed Love and the question is whether you’d rather build a franchise around Green or Blake Griffin, who has played at an MVP level for several years and not quite 27. 

Moving to an even higher station, Green is not a better individual player than Kevin Durant, but trading Green for Durant would be an excruciating net negative for the Warriors. Green’s abilities on defense and even his playmaking on offense are more valuable to the Warriors than the MVP of the league offensive dynamism of Durant.

The Warriors turned a second round pick in Green to one of the most invaluable players in the NBA, while the Cavaliers turned one of the most valuable players in the NBA in 2014 into a dragging afterthought in Love, who probably would be unplayable against the Warriors and Spurs in a seven-game series unless it is almost exclusively on a second unit. 

Similarly, Dwyane Wade was always a better player than Joe Johnson but Johnson would have been the better fit for the 2010-2014 Heat because he’s a high volume 37 percent on three-pointers, compared to 28.9 percent for Wade. Wade’s best three-point shooting season with LeBron was in 10-11 when he shot 30.6 percent on 206 attempts; he also moved away from the shot almost entirely, dropping from 2.6 attempts per 36 minutes to 1.2/1.0/0.6 in the final three seasons.

The Heat succeeded in playing small after Dallas completely confounded LeBron in 2011. The skill-set of Chris Bosh evolved with his three-point shooting and rim protection to allow the Heat to play a version of smallball with Shane Battier getting by defending bigs. The Heat won two of four Finals because they had the better strategy in 2012 against Scott Brooks and the Thunder giving too many minutes to Kendrick Perkins and Derek Fisher, while 2013 was basically a toss-up with the Spurs and needed LeBron to find another gear losing his headband in Game 6, and a remarkable shot from Ray Allen. 

Phil Jackson’s teams with the Bulls and Lakers, running the Triangle, were superb passers and their supporting casts have become simplistically overlooked in time. The Triangle forces you to take an inordinate amount of mid-range shots, which worked in a previous version of the NBA and if you had Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. The Bulls and Lakers would have to play the game in a much different way to be as successful today as they were in their era. 

The Thunder have two of the best five players in the NBA, along with a rarefied rim protecting big man who can also credibly hit a mid-range jumper and even three-pointers. They might have the best Big 3 in the NBA, but they have yet to find that finishing piece to make them capable of becoming greater than the sum of their parts. This is where great players are being limited; contenders need top-5 or top-10 talents and the audaciousness of a flawless team construction and system to win a title. The Warriors and Spurs have been historically great this season because they have to be. 

James Harden could never become MVP runner-up James Harden with the Thunder, like Love with the Cavaliers, he would have always had to sacrifice something. The trade is a disaster for the Thunder not because of the player Harden has become with the Rockets but because they haven’t been able to turn any of their role players into a perfect Draymond Green-like fit.

You can be a limited player but have great success in the NBA if you can defend multiple types of players and hit open three-pointers (especially from the corner). Harrison Barnes is the incontrovertible example of this mastery and the Thunder would be a far more credible title threat had they ended up with him from the Rockets in 2012 instead of Jeremy Lamb, which isn’t even considering how they would be substantially better on both sides of the floor with Green, or if the Warriors weren’t too tax conscious to trade Klay Thompson for Harden.

It has never been more difficult for a transcendent player to win a title. Durant and Westbrook get to play together and beyond playing more consistent defense and perhaps a subtle uptick in how they create for others, they really can’t be better players. Durant and Westbrook are a Hall of Fame pairing for the ages in that conversation with Jordan and Pippen, Shaq and Kobe, Russell and Cousy, and Magic and Kareem. If they end up becoming their generation’s Malone and Stockton, it won’t be because of LeBron as it was for the Jazz with Jordan, but because they couldn’t get past the galaxies of the Warriors and Spurs.

If this were the 70s, 80s, 90s or even most of last decade, LeBron and Durant/Westbrook would probably take turns in some way winning Finals. In order for them win their next/their first, they will need to find their own souped-up galaxy to play in.