Alternative Team Building

Rob Mahoney at SI with a long look at Denver and their title chances. Particularly relevant as the Hornets try to build around Davis with cap space in a small market and a high draft pick in a shitty lottery.

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First and foremost is the lack of a superstar player, much less the two or three stars traditionally considered requisite for contention

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Yet most of what a superstar provides for a contender can be boiled down to an economy of function. It’s convenient to have a vast collection of those necessary skills and attributes distilled into one player, but a superstar is only as necessary as those underlying qualities afforded. Typically, chief among those traits is the capacity to create efficient offense

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He goes on to break down the system the Nuggets use and the way they have talent that fits that system. Particularly how great they are in clutch situations.

Also a nice blurb about 2 other teams without traditional superstars.

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Also implicated in the discussion of whether NBA teams need superstars are the Pacers and Grizzlies, two of the best examples of how sound a lineup can be without a single transcendent talent. Both franchises have gone about constructing more balanced lineups as a means of accounting for the lack of a dominant player, but as a result Memphis and Indiana boast the two most effective high-usage lineups this season

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