NBA teams
J.A. Adande, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

Culture clash: Warriors vs. Hawks

NBA, Atlanta Hawks, Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs

Warriors vs. Hawks isn't just a meeting of the two best teams in the league, it's a clash of ideologies. The Warriors follow the star-based setup the NBA has seemingly always been about, while the Hawks are the equitable team the NBA would like to become.

These teams don't need to be on the same court to wage this culture war. It can play out from thousands of miles away, as it did Wednesday, when the NBA named the entire Hawks starting five as the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for January ... and later that night Stephen Curry dropped 51 points to lead the Warriors past the Dallas Mavericks. Curry is one of the top 10 scorers in the league. The Hawks don't have anyone in the top 30.

It's not as if the Warriors don't play team ball themselves. Golden State, not Atlanta, leads the NBA in assists per game. But the Warriors have players (Klay Thompson has shown he belongs in this category, too) who can go supernova.

Two ways of winning, both working equally well. For now. The playoffs are the ultimate arbiter of NBA success, and the playoffs have dictated for decades that championships are the province of the superstars. Twenty-nine of the past 32 champs have had a player with a regular-season MVP trophy on the roster. So 90 percent of the champions since 1982 had at least one of these players: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James. It's like the menu at In-N-Out Burger: limited selections, great results.

The Hawks are Five Guys. Literally. They're a cohesive unit, each individual action designed to put a teammate in a better position. More options available. And, for some, a preferred taste.

Don't you think the NBA wants to see some team break the superstar stranglehold, to be able to sell true championship hopes along with the season-ticket packages in cities that don't have one of the handful of transcendent players? You don't think the analytics set doesn't want to see a team figure out a way to overcome talent deficiencies with strategy and see efficiency trump superiority?

Obviously, it would be good for business, and there are people hard at work in practice gyms and front offices around the league trying to make that breakthrough. What I don't understand is why those without a vested or rooting interest still feel the need to see the star system toppled. People have chances to overcome obstacles and succeed in their own lives; they don't need someone to do it by proxy. The appeal of the NBA has always been about the extraordinary individuals elevating their teams.

Sports Illustrated named San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner the 2014 Sportsman of the Year because he pitched a third of his team's innings in the World Series. Why shouldn't we celebrate if an NBA player scores a third of his team's points in the NBA Finals?

Some saw the Spurs' thrashing of LeBron and the Heat in the 2014 Finals as the beginning of a new era, and view the Hawks' success as the logical progression. The Hawks are built by the Spurs' blueprint, coached by longtime Gregg Popovich assistant Mike Budenholzer.

Except the Spurs are star-based in the most classical sense of the term. As in, a solar system, with planets circling a main celestial object. Pop, R.C. Buford, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili ... they've all been orbiting Duncan for more than a decade. And when it was crunch time in last year's Western Conference finals, with a return trip to the NBA Finals on the line, it was Duncan who scored seven points in a span of two and a half minutes to push the Spurs past the Oklahoma City Thunder in the decisive game.

And quietly (is there any other adverb that applies when we're discussing Kawhi Leonard?) the Spurs have become as dependent on a single player as anyone in the league. Over the past season and a half they've been the definition of average without Leonard, the 2014 Finals MVP. Including the playoffs, they are 92-28 (.767) when he plays and 17-17 (.500) when he doesn't play.

Leonard is a superstar. He just doesn't put up typical superstar stats or come packaged with snappy commercial taglines.

Maybe that's the revolution. Or maybe it's Curry, who is checking all of the superstar boxes -- top 10 in scoring and assists, leading All-Star vote-getter, signature shoe, national ad campaigns -- but is taking a new path to get there. Last year, Kevin Durant become only the third player to win an MVP award while finishing among the top 10 players in 3-point attempts. Magic Johnson was fifth in 1989-90, and Larry Bird finished among the top 10 in each of his MVP three-peat seasons from 1983-84 to 1985-86. Durant took 225 more 3-pointers last season than Magic did in 1989-90. Curry is on pace to shoot more 3s this season than Bird did in all three of those MVP years combined. If Curry wins the MVP this season, he will have done so while taking more 3-pointers than any other previous winner. The same would hold true if James Harden wins the MVP.

So the style of superstar is changing. That's a shift. If a team like the Hawks wins the championship, that would represent a fundamental change.

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