Jason Terry isn’t shy about making bold proclamations. Before the 2010-2011 season, he got a tattoo of the Larry O’Brien trophy on his right bicep. Fortunately for him, the Dallas Mavericks went on to defeat the Big 3 era Miami Heat, a stunning upset to one of the better assemblages of talent the league had ever seen. Maybe that’s why he isn’t so quick to inaugurate a new so-called super-team.
In a recent interview with Yardbarker in Las Vegas, Terry offered his thoughts on whether he believes the Golden State Warriors meet the criteria now that they’ve added Kevin Durant to the equation:
“You look at Durant, Curry, Thompson, and Draymond…they got super talent. You do have two MVPs. But if you look at the history of the NBA, Lew Alcindor/Oscar Robertson, Kareem and Magic, every team in the league back in the day had two or three superstars, but you weren’t calling them super-teams,” Terry says in the video. “I think it’s more about the way they play…Because they have super individuals doesn’t make them a super-team. To me, it’s more about what they’re able to accomplish. It’s yet to be seen, so I refuse to give them that label right now.”
Jet goes on to point out that his own 2011 Mavs boasted two future Hall of Famers of their own in Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki, along with an assortment of talented role players, using that as motivation to take down LeBron, Wade, and Bosh that season.
On the one hand, Terry is right. All that matters is what they accomplish, and we won’t know the answer to that until next spring. But it’s also just a question of either semantics or the criteria you want to use to define a super-team. Adding a former MVP and four-time scoring champ to a squad that already boasts three All-Stars, not to mention probably the two best shooters in league history, sure has the look of a super-team to most people.
