The Super Team has become more popular than ever before. Do the Miami Heat need one in order to compete?
The Miami Heat find themselves in an interesting predicament, where they are really close to competing for the Eastern Conference crown, but may still be a good distance from legitimately competing for a championship. Many people look to the Golden State Warriors and see a super team that won’t be defeated for a while.
But what is a super team really? If you had to define it with a team, who would it be? Is it the Warriors, where talent and style of play reign supreme? Is it the Cavaliers, where one transcendent talent makes everyone better? Both answers are yes, and there’s no reason to believe that the Heat could achieve the same.
As people scramble to define what constitutes a super team, the question is asked: do the Miami Heat need to form one in order to dethrone the Warriors? In a word, no.
In an interview with the Miami Herald, Josh Richardson spoke candidly about the super team and what matters most:
"“I feel like you just have to have a team that plays the right way.”"
There’s a good amount of truth in that statement. Teams that play well together are generally more successful than teams that just load up on the best talent. Richardson continued to lay out the truth:
"“Star power definitely is a huge help. But that star has to know how to fit in with his teammates, know how to make guys around them better, how to bring guys up.”"
Another great statement from Richardson, as the key to a superstar talent becoming transcendent, is about being able to raise the level of play of his other teammates, while being one of the guys. Most star talents can’t do that, but the ones who are capable of achieving that, go on to be champions.
In assessing why people believe that a super team is necessary, you have to understand the landscape of the league. In the macro view or league-wide picture, the Golden State Warriors may be arguably the best collection of talent the league has ever seen. But they also play an unselfish brand of basketball that makes them even more unstoppable.
In the micro view or just the Eastern Conference, LeBron James has had a vice grip on the conference for seven years now. It’s understandable to question whether a super team would be needed to knock James off the perch of the conference. However, at the root of competitive nature is the belief that any team can be beaten with the right pieces, super team or not.
To answer the question posed, it is not necessary for the Heat to form a super team in order to compete. A team like the current Spurs should serve as a great example to support that belief. A cohesive team, rooted in precision and execution, has the tools to be dominant against anyone.
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The Heat culture prides itself on those foundational principles, so it is extremely believable that forming a super team is unnecessary for the Heat to battle for supremacy in the Eastern Conference once again.