Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective - Is The NBA Better With Dynasties Or Parity?

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN's Tim Bontemps and Tim MacMahon to react to Bontemps’ article on this era of parity in NBA champions. The guys discuss if dynasties will be possible moving forward and if dynasties are good or bad for the league. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Hello and welcome the Hoop Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing in a pre-recorded situation because it's August and not everybody's in position. So we appreciate your understanding.

All right, joining us from somewhere in Northern California. He can't be disclosed where he's at in case somebody may come try to get him. It's Timbontems. Hello, everybody. And join us from Dallas, Texas. Is Ban McMahon. The partners, thanks for the closing, disclosing where I am. And I say, come and get me.

All right. So, Bontems, you have a story that came out early this week. I believe it was over the weekend about parity in the NBA and whether or not it is going to remain the way it has been or whether the current rules are going to continue to have us have a new champion every year. And the reason I liked this story is because there are two interviews contained in here that took place in the wake of the championship and while the transactions were going on,

you know, while the draft was happening and free agency was happening and everything. And I don't know if everybody, you know, who was paying attention to the NBA at the time was paying attention to the things that Sam Presti, the president of the champion thunder, and what Adam Silver said in his board of governor's meeting in Las Vegas at Summer League,

about where the NBA is headed in this regard. And this is sort of the basis of what you built this story around. So with the point here being that we've had, was it seven consecutive different champions? Yeah. The only slight clarification I'll make to that is Adam talk to me. But he also said similar things about it at the Board of Governors meeting. Much apologized.

No, it's just so, just for clarification's sake. Not only did the commissioner speak to Bontims, but they are on first name basis. They are on first name basis. I mean, I would say the commission is on the first name basis of everybody on the pod. That's true. But yeah, so there's been for the first, only the second time in the history of the league, I guess first time ever, there's been seven consecutive champions. And the last six years in a row, the defending champions,

champion has not gotten out of the second round, let alone won the title. And there's been 11 different participants in the finals out of 14 possible over the last seven years, which is also a record. And the only other period in the history of the league that's even comparable to that is the late 70s, from 1975 to 1980. And the one through line through both of those is that there was a black swan event, both of them. The late 70s was when the ABA and NBA merged. So you had a bunch of talent come into the league. and obviously the last several years have been impacted by the COVID pandemic and all of the various things that that had you know that impacted the leave from the sour cap being flattened to three seasons being compressed into two years and everything else and there was huge and just keep in mind before that um i think between 2007 and 2020

LeBron or Kobe Bryant were in what all but one NBA finals, either one or the other. And I think- From 2008 to 20, from 2008 to 18, they were in all of them. In 2008 to 20, they were in all but 2019. Right. And then before that, you had this run of Shaquille and Neil or Tim Duncan being in the finals. They weren't always in the same conference. Obviously, in some years, they played each other in the playoffs.

But there was this long run of one or the other of them. And then you go back even before that, and you, you know, you look at the overlap of, you know, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. And so there have been these, and, you know, even, you know, obviously Jordan, the history of the league has been, the through line has been, you know, maybe not, you would necessarily say, dynasties at all times, but where we've seen the same teams, or at least the same players,

repeatedly getting their teams to the championship round, at least, or highly incompatitive. It's been sort of the nature of the league. And then you can even go farther back. It was not necessarily as comparable to the, you know, the 60s and 70s when there were so many fewer teams. But obviously you had the Celtics, you know, Bill Russell, you know, winning 11 out of 13 years and things like this.

So it has been, what's going on right now is the antithesis of the way the league is operated for the last 40, 50 years. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, I believe, I believe I just did so quick math in my head. I think from when the Celtics started winning titles and Lakers started winning titles in the 80s through, uh, 2018 when LeBron won, I'm pretty sure that one of, uh, Larry Bird, Johnson, Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, Akeem Elijah won, Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kobe Brian Chiquelanio and Tim Duncan won, something like 37 of 39 titles. And the only two that were different were when the Garnett Pierce Allen Celtics won one. And when you were in the building for when Dirk won, won. Well, and then both Lowe's, in one case, they beat Kobe, in another case, they beat LeBron. So you're talking about just a handful of people over

two generations that basically dominated the title landscape, to your point. Obviously, we've had five different finals MVPs over the last five years, as five different guys have five different teams of one. Before that, we had six different people win the MVP over the previous 12 years. Right. Because you get Kobe racking him up, LeBron racking him up, even Duran had two, Kauai had two. You'll need to. You'll need to, two breaks in there. Coby had two. Only two breaks in there were the sort of the one-off

Igwadala one, which is still one of the more amazing ones. And Dirk. So, you know, not only were you seeing the same guys, the same guys were winning the finals MVP over and over and over. And that same truth goes back for the history of the order. Okay, sorry, McMahon. Go ahead.

So basically what we're asking here in terms of like this, this trend of parity continuing is, is Shea Gildes Alexander, you know, one of those guys, is he one, you know, is he a Kobe, is he a Jordan, is he a LeBron, is he a Steph? You know, is he in that level of historical company? And can the Thunder continue putting a championship caliber supporting cast around him? My answer would be yes on both counts. I mean, certainly the season that he just had, stacks up with, you know, the best of the best in terms of history. You know, we've talked a lot about the challenges of the CBA with the Thunder,

but again, they're going to have their top three guys. A lot of their role players are locked up on very reasonable contracts that descend. They've got a ton of picks to backfill. I like their odds. Now, I'm not saying the Thunder are going to rip off, you know, five of the next seven or anything like that. But I would certainly bet on the Thunder winning multiple championships. They've already got one winning multiple championships over a seven-year span. And then you talk about their challengers.

I think you have to look at Luca and the Lakers. Not necessarily right now this season. But that type of talent with the Lakers having an opportunity to build around over the medium to long term, I like the odds. And I think you've got to go down to San Antonio and look at the Spurs chances to build around Wimby. All right. So, what did Presti and Silver say about this exact topic before you go on?

I think the question here is even a little bit broader and more fundamental than our dynasties coming back to the league or not. All that is 100%. Well, you said, McMahon, 100% accurate. I think the most important thing that the NBA has hinted at over the past 10 years, and Adam said directly in this article is this. Quote, I believe that parity of opportunity is good for the league. When more teams have a genuine chance of winning a championship, the competition on the court is more compelling,

and fans and more markets are engaged. We didn't set out to have the goal, we didn't set out with the goal to have a different champion every year, but I'm not against dynasties so long as they are built within a fair system. I say that because this current era of parity we are in is smack in the middle of this current CBA, which we will talk about plenty on the pod and the things it has done to, you know, disrupt some of the ways teams do business. This CBA runs through the rest of this decade.

When the new CBA is enacted at the end of this decade, it will almost certainly run through the end of this current new television contract, right? the thing that is driving the entire league. It's the reason why guys by the end of it are going to be making $100 million a year and is the engine the whole league is built on, particularly with the RSNs and the local TV market stuff collapsing the way it has been. So I would say the question of the next five years and the question going into the CBA negotiations,

which will start a couple of years from now, is going to be about that point that Silver made. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. and the thing that the NBA has been pushing towards under his leadership under the last couple of negotiations of these CBAs. Is it better for the NBA that dynasties exist or is it better for the NBA that the Larry O'Brien Trophy is moving around and there's a different team winning it every year? And it seems like the league is much more open from a championship level standpoint than it's ever been in the past. because we're coming off a decade where Steph and LeBron were in the finals every single year

and the ratings were very high at certain points, especially with the Warriors and Cavs stuff, right? And the ratings are not as high in this era. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I'm not saying one is necessarily better than the other. But when you're talking about the business of the league, I think that question is going to become a central part of these upcoming negotiations if we still have teams rotating around or if the thunder go on

some run the next several years and they become the next you know warriors or calves or spurs or one of these teams that everybody gets locked in on. Well, and is it better if dynasties exist? I would say that depends. Where's the dynasty? Who's leading the dynasty? You know, the the showtime Lakers dynasty was great for the league because it was a major market with one of the most dynamic personalities in the history of the league. The Bulls dynasty was great for the league. You know, I don't know that the Spurs dynasty was great for NBA business, a small market

and very, you know, kind of vanilla personalities, very business-like personalities. The thunder would be more in that vein. But it's also, it's not necessary. Hey, what's best for the league? you know, what the CBA kind of is designed to do, it might not matter. The Thunder might be so well set up that it doesn't matter. Yep. Well, best for the league is a relative term.

I'm making quote-finger. Yeah. Because this is one thing that I think is fundamental but can easily be missed. Best for a league business or best for the league's owners. A lot of times is synonymous, but not always. So here's just the truth of the matter. Why, for example, why are there max contracts in the NBA? There are max contracts ultimately in the NBA

because the players union agreed to it. If it was up to the owners, there would be a hard salary cap or whatever. Why do the players usually agree to it? They agreed to it because there's more middle tier players than there are superstars. And everybody's vote counts the same. So, you know, if you got a 14-man team, and you go, hey guys, let's have a vote.

Should we give our best player 95% of the cap and the rest of us split 5%? Or should he only get 35% and the rest of us split 65%? Who's going to vote? Obviously, the middle class has the bigger vote. So that's what's essentially happened. Can we have that vote on this podcast? Go on.

Listen, I think our compensation is all aligned for this podcast. All right. So the same situation applies to the owners. When it comes to making the decisions on what's got priority in the CBA, would the Lakers and the Knicks and the Bulls vote that the rules favor the big markets being able to build dynasties and hold them together? You're darn right they would. But they got three votes.

They're three votes and you throw in the clippers and you want to throw in any other, you know, the warriors. You want to throw in the nets, you know, whoever, you know, the Celtics. however you want to say it, the big markets are less than a third of the league. They are more than offset if Memphis, New Orleans, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, you know, Salt Lake, all can get together and just simply outvote them. Now, for years, it didn't really matter because there were certain forces that they couldn't control. But now it does, and the reason that it does is because the TV money,

the TV deal is so strong that they had the, that they knew that they were going to get this. money, so the money is assured. If they were fighting for survival, if they were facing TV money coming, being halved, instead of being two and a half, or tripled, there would be a completely different discussion here. You know, you couldn't assemble a coalition if you were a small market. You couldn't get, you know, 10 similar size, small and mid-sized markets together and sort of have a voting block. It would be like, listen, we got to do it whatever we got to do to get, more money. And, you know, I can't see the future. Maybe in a decade, that will be the case. Maybe that there will be a problem with that. And they'll be like, listen, we got to make sure that

the Lakers and the Knicks have star players. But that is not the way we're going. Because the next 11 years are locked in, I think Bontem's, maybe there's an opt out after nine years or something like that. Yeah, it's through 2036. But that's why, to me, it's about where the league is sitting going into these negotiations at the end of this decade. Because that's, but we're not talking about the end of the decade. We're talking about more like this up the next couple years because that stuff, the CBA ain't changing. The television rights deals are just beginning. Right. This is sort of the new normal. Well, I mean, the next couple of years are going to lead into those negotiations, which are going to lead into all of that. It's just that this is all central to that. And to your

point, I thought there was a, there was a pretty telling quote I thought down in the story about exactly what you said. I was talking to somebody in the league about, you know, is this good or not? And they said, if you mean it's good for the 30 owners who are Adam's bosses, then yes, because they all have a chance and every team gets a chance to win. But are you asking, is it good for league revenues? I imagine it's better when there's a singularly great player leading, a fantastic team, whether it's Bird, Magic, Kobe, Shaq, LeBron, Steph. I would imagine that's better for business.

And to your point, McMahon, the question with the thunder will be they rip off the next two or three in a row. And Shea becomes, you know, one of the one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the, one of kind of guys, what does that, where does that leave Oklahoma City? And it go all the way back to your question, Brian, about what did Sam Presti have to say in his voluminous end of season press conference, which is always an interesting read. Uh, luminous. Yes. He was asked about the aprons and whether they would hinder his team or another team's ability to build a perennial championship contender under the new CBA. And he said this, quote, there's a limited amount of

experience the teams have with these new rules. We've only had a few that have been in the situation where the aprons are really impacting them. So I wouldn't be too quick to predetermine, quote, oh, this is the way things work, which I would say from, you know, the Thunder's perspective, they are looking at this, as McMahon said, they have a million draft picks into the future, they have a young roster, they have their stars all signed to contracts, and even though they're going to start going into the tax, they're not going to be a repeater team until the end of the decade. So they have an extraordinarily long runway, even if they get expensive, to still have this team in large part together before they have to make any kind of difficult

decisions about what they need to do roster-wise. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. Thunder are a fascinating thing here. So just allow me a bit of nuance. Twice in the past, big, giant, huge league things that happen. slammed the thunder in the gut. One was a collective bargaining agreement coming out of the lockout in 2012 or 2011 where famously they traded

and ended up trading James Hardin. And one of the reasons why they traded James Hardin and I've told this story before and I don't want to go over Old Ground was that the league actually changed Kevin Durant's contract. Kevin Durant had signed a contract. The Thunder thought they knew what it was.

And when they got to implementing the new rules, they realized that there was a few players who were sort of stuck in no man's land where the new rules didn't fit the current contract. And so the league had a problem with Durant's contract. He was making less money than he should have been had he just waited. And he was sort of being unfairly penalized. So the league just stepped in and gave Durant an extra,

roughly $3 million a year. Now, today, $3 million a year is less than 2% of the cap. But back then, it was like, what, Bontems? I think the cap was about $60 million. It was 5% of the cap. I would say that the second thing is the much bigger. Okay, just let me get my runway. So the hardened trade was a big thing, had a lot of thorny parts of it.

Yeah. The Thunder felt that they made a lot of mistakes. They made a mistake on the hardest state. But the Thunder felt that they were wronged to the point where they were pounding the table and that they were wronged. And later on, the league agreed with them and actually gave them the money back that they had added to Durant's contract. They said, here, here's the money back. But of course, it didn't matter because they already made a decision based on their luxury tax with Hardin. That was one.

Two. and this is again old trod and ground but I want just to determine to just give you the frame of reference of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the course of this big picture when the

when the league decides to make the new collective the new television deal back in 2015 and they get this enormous tripling of the salary cap and all of a sudden the cap was going to explode

in one year I was just going to come in out of nowhere. And they didn't have a mechanism to sort of smooth it in. And all of a sudden we have what is known as the cap spike. Adam Silver has a famous quote, well, this is going to have some unintended consequences. And you have a team like the Warriors who are a 70-win team that all of a sudden ends up with an upcap space to sign Kevin Durant

and the Thunder are knee-capped by that decision. So they exist in a world. And I mean, the league could present a case where there are other teams impacted or whatever, but the Thunder exists in a world where they believe twice they have had to have teams that they thought could win championships broken up by big giant overarching league decisions. Okay. So now, partially through good management by the Thunder and partially due to fortune. And what I say the fortune is that they were starting a rebuild at the beginning of a

CBA with a bunch of different rules. If they were in the middle of another run, it would affect them differently. But this time... I would just point out, they started the rebuild in the middle of the last CBA. I understand. But as they put this team together, they had a full understanding of what the rules were. And so they, in essence, were able to get a bit of fortune after having the karma of big over things happening. So the Thunder are the first team that has done.

built a championship team from scratch with the full understanding of what these rules are. And so while Presti is saying on the record here, let's not predetermine what's going to happen. And I do think that is sage advice that he is certainly speaking of somebody who knows how fragile things are. And the first thing you can do in the NBA to get yourself in trouble is making a summons, especially with like, oh, this team's going to be great for three months or three years. There's also not a person in the league who has studied the CBA more than Sam Presti and all of these machinations in part because of everything Brian just said before. So the Thunder, I don't know if anybody would read this book other than Oklahoma City or people like who take Bobby Mark's summer school class.

But the Thunder are in the middle of this arc of league changes and how they've had huge differences. and battle-scarred as they are from what happened, they are now positioned, which makes them somewhat a remarkable test case of what Presti is discussing. Well, and I would argue that their biggest fortune was benefiting from ripples that they didn't create to where they were positioned to trade the rights

to a reigning finals MVP without ever having Kauai Leonard on their roster. They didn't get the haul that they got from the Clippers just because they were trading Paul George, who was an all-N-B-A player, who was, I believe, third in MVP voting at the time. They got that type of haul because the delivery of Paul George sealed the deal with Kauai Leonard. And even saying all that, people thought Shea Gilgis Alexander was going to be a very good player. he was coming off a second team all-rooky campaign as a late lottery pick. Well, again, I will say, as I pointed out a couple weeks ago when they won the championship, the night that the trade happened and Kauai committed to the Clippers, in Woj's news story, Shay's name was in the fourth paragraph.

And that's not a shot at Woj, that's a shot at where he was thought of in that trade. It's not a shot at all. It's a credit to Shea and to the Thunder franchise coaching staff. etc. that this guy has gotten better and better and better to the point where he just had one of the best seasons by a guard in recent NBA history and is just entering his prime. Also, listen, when they got that picks package, it was like, oh my God, like that is a massive hall of picks. Nobody at the time anticipated that one of those picks very early in the process would be a lottery pick. And even when it landed at 12.

Nobody, you don't pick 12th, thinking you're going to get a guy who in his third season is a All-MBA wing who is a dynamic playmaker on both ends of the floor and can be the second best player on a championship team.

So they were fortunate. That's Jalen Williams, just in case he's. Right. They were fortunate with the situation. They pounced on it. They also had to draft well. I mean, yeah. And then they've been fortunate. Like they, there was some, some, some luck involved on just how awesome Shea and Jalen Williams have gotten so quickly.

But they're set up damn well for the future with those guys and all those picks to come. And you know, you got to kind of trace back. They still got a bunch of picks because they keep just pushing them back and parlaying it for higher swings it upside down the road. You always need luck to win. But the current system that the NBA has put in place is supposed to reward teams. that are managed well. And the Thunder are in the position they are in because they have one of the best general

managers in the league who has done a remarkable job going back to that trade and building this roster out. And they are now well positioned for the next several years. And that, what this whole CBA was about from the beginning was to Adam's point, having parity of opportunity across the league and for not allowing teams to be able to spend their way out of mistakes. And if you make mistakes, it's going to be costly. And that's from all the rules of the second apron stuff to not being able to add extra players,

to the draft picks being frozen to the amount of money it costs. Like we've talked a ton about having to value every dollar that you spend in negotiations and that some teams have done it very well and some teams have not. And we will see over the next few years what the ripple effects of that are. And we've already seen some of it already. Just look at the Michael Porter and Cam Johnson trade. Those are two fairly even players who were traded for each other with an unprotected first round pick because Denver needed to save a ton of money in part because of negotiations they'd made in the past where they'd spent too much on a bunch of guys. They had to pay more guys in the future.

They ran out of money. So they had to make a move like that. That's the kind of stuff that this CBA has created. And if you're a team like the Thunder, that the goal is to be able to take advantage of that. That's why they're sitting in the position they're in now and why it's going to be fascinating to see if they can buck this trend and get back to the finals and win next year. And I will say this. If you look at the teams that are rising, so obviously the thunder have risen, you look at

the Rockets, who, by the way, the Christmas Day games became public in the last couple of days, how about the Rockets getting centerpiece Christmas Day? Hey, how about the Rockets getting the visitor's slot for Ring Night in Oklahoma City while Kevin Durant makes his debut? Right. So the Rockets get some major, some major, you know, major marquee games. And if you look at the Rockets and the Thunder, their builds are somewhat similar in that they began their rebuilds by trading away multiple star players on a previous contending team that weren't working. They both traded the same player, in fact, Russell Westbrook at different times. And they both, while they benefited from trade, you know, the Thunder obviously benefited from trading for Che Gueldos Alexander. And now the Rockets have traded for Kevin Durant.

The primary way they've been built is through the draft. And, you know, those are the teams that are at the centerpiece. And this is something else you point out. And that's, if you're looking at the Spurs, potentially. rise and the Spurs, I got some marquee games coming too. It's also similar because they're a team that obviously has drafted back-to-back rookies of the year, but traded for Deerrin Fox, a guy that they hope has the same type of impact, the big trades that the Thunder and the Rockets made. But Bontam's you point out in this story about the possibility of parity is that the dispersion

of talent that has already taken place because of the CBA is a fact. in how this could go forward. The clustering of stars has been getting pride apart already. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's forced teams to have to make decisions on their spending. And you just can't, you know, they didn't want a scenario where you could have the warriors and the clippers and some of these very big market teams just spend into oblivion and not have to have any worries about the ramifications of that. And so, you know, we've already seen.

You know, I think when you're, I think rarely, if ever going to see, is a team lose a star or superstar player because of financial stuff because those are the hardest guys to get still. But what you are going to see are the depth pieces move around. You're going to see the Michael Porter, Cam Johnson. Chris S. Porzingis. Chris S. Porzinger, it's a Jew holiday going from the leaving the Celtics because of money. Al Horford and Luke Cornett leaving the Celtics in large part because of money. Paul George. Right.

Paul George. not being resigned by the Clippers. That was obviously a bet on flexibility and optionality going forward. And Paul George is a very good player, but the Clippers do not want to be locked into that deal with him. And if you just look at that divergent pass of the Clippers and the Sixers over the past year, where the Clippers have built out a very deep, albeit older roster, with optionality going forward and a ton of cap space in 2027,

when a bunch of teams, a bunch of big-name players could be. free agents, but could be in quotes because we've seen most of those guys extend in the past. And then the Sixers, who are locked into over $100 million a year in Paul George and Joelle Bede, and it's unclear when or if they'll be able to play, that's, those are sort of the, that's sort of a perfect test case of what the league set up with this CBA. And even it seemed like the Cavs, with all the money the Cavs have, they couldn't afford to keep Ty Jerome. I know the calves are in a small market, but Dan Gilbert's one of the richest owners in the league.

He's never had any problem spending money, but they even hit a limit at some point. And that that's really what this whole thing has set up, is that you have to, again, it goes back to teams have to manage every dollar because there are hard choices that have to be made. And, you know, there are downstream impacts of that, whether you decide to go all in with the roster and deal with the ramifications of that, or you do what the Clippers did and you live to fight another day and keep your options. open for stuff down the road. And for the thunder, the hard choices are going to be Lou Dwart, Isaiah Hartenstein, you know, maybe Case and Wallace. It'll be those

kind of guys because the choices have been made on Shea, on J. Dub. I would answer what you're saying, which that's conventional wisdom in the summer of 25, but let's listen to what Sam Presti says and not predetermined that. Probably that's what's going to be the case, but

right, you know, we'll see what happens. Yeah. All right, well, it's an interesting story, especially for August reading. Thank you for breaking it down here. Thank you to Bontemps. I just thanked him. Why thank him again? I wouldn't know.

Thank you to McMahon. Thank you to Jackson, our producer. Thanks for sticking with us through the summer. And we'll talk to you later this week. Adios megos.