Who Deserves "It"?

Amid all the controversy about the Great Miami Team-up of 2010, a lingering feeling of "this is unfair" remains. At first, I thought it was because this was players not management calling the shots. Perhaps it was a 20th century gut reaction, I thought. This is a new era. Free agency means that players have freedom and now they can create their own teams. It had never happened before. Usually teams would have space for one, maybe two players and those players never made it seem like they'd colluded to join forces. When the Magic signed Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, it wasn't because those two had been dying to be teammates for years. Those were the two free agents that the Magic were able to convince to switch teams (and, yes, money was a factor).

To that end, it got me thinking that this was the first time in NBA history that an organization was not going for a title but rather a collection of players. When management builds a team--like Oklahoma City is doing and like the Spurs did--everything they get has been earned. But when a team is filled with mercenaries and front-runners, like the 2010 and 2006 Heat, it doesn't feel like a championship is the culmination of years of hard work, research, sweat and tears. Instead, it feels like a manufactured championship; unearned, undeserved. The players "deserve" it in the sense that they won the actual games, but what did the organization do? Collect some top talent and mercenaries that wanted to play by the beach? Have insider knowledge that Wade and Bosh and LeBron and Mike Miller wanted to ball together and were willing to take slight paycuts to do it? This wasn't an organizational coup, this was a players' coup.

They dictated the terms and made it happen. I don't think Pat Riley did much convincing. This is what they wanted to do. He just happened to be the only one to know.

So how do you root for a team or an organization that just happened to be the place where 4 good friends decided to join forces and win a crapload of games? It'll make for exciting basketball, but how can you be a loyal fan of a TEAM in such a league? You can't. You just have to wait for your team to orchestrate something similar--which 90% of the teams cannot do. Only squads with desirable destinations--L.A., Orlando, NY, Chicago--will be in the mix for such a strategy.

These places will be more like "landing spots" than teams. You can't say that you developed LeBron or Bosh if you're Miami. You can't say that you gathered assets and then traded for them. I don't know if you can even say that you successfully wooed them with a business pitch. All you can say is that you suffered a middling season or two, cut a lot of players (who then miraculously decided to return--Haslem, Jones, Joel Anthony, Arroyo), and "cleared cap space" so that you could be a landing spot for top free agents who wanted to play together.

Oklahoma City and San Antonio have "earned it" through the draft and developing players. Boston "earned it" somewhat by gathering guys like Al Jefferson to put together for trades. The Lakers "earned it" by developing Kobe, retaining Phil, and (much less so) by stealing Gasol.

But the Heat only "earned it" by getting rid of everyone on their team and then "lucking" into 3 stars who wanted to play together. The thing is, it was no luck. Prokhorov knew that Wade and Bosh were going together to Miami all along. I'm guessing that LeBron was leaning that way all along too. If Wade knew he had Bosh, then maybe LeBron just had a better pokerface. These guys planned it along. Not an organization. It's like a create-a-team in a video game. You might as well call them the Powder Mill Creekwater. So do they deserve a championship? The organization certainly doesn't.