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1. Dishonoring a champion
With precious few exceptions, great teams have a life cycle. They gain experience, win a lot, age, and get bad. There are ways to mitigate the pain, but almost never to skip it. Sometimes one lopsided trade gives a great team rare access to a top pick -- the chance to find a bridge superstar. The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers of the 1980s acquired extra top-five picks they respectively used on Len Bias and Charles Barkley. The San Antonio Spurs' acquisition of Kawhi Leonard -- with the 15th pick, not even all that high! -- had a chance to stand as the all-time archetype of this sort of deal.
Other Finals-level teams get enough in return for aging stars -- or make enough savvy trades and draft picks during peak years -- to muddle around in mediocrity. Some muddle long enough to leverage one big move -- the post-Barkley Phoenix Suns jumping on Jason Kidd, the Seattle SuperSonics turning Gary Payton into Ray Allen -- into an interesting season or two. Most such success stories top out with good teams, not great ones. Almost always, real pain comes.
(The Portland Trail Blazers did even better pivoting from one early-1990s Finals core centered around Clyde Drexler to another that barely missed the Finals in 2000 with Rasheed Wallace, Scottie Pippen, Steve Smith, and Arvydas Sabonis. They won at least 44 games -- excluding a 35-15 campaign in the lockout-shortened 1999 season -- until 2003-04.)
Even the post-Showtime Los Angeles Lakers dipped to 39 and then 33 wins before slapping together two good (and really fun) teams in 1994-95 and 1995-96 built around Cedric Ceballos, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, and Vlade Divac. They knew those teams would end up in the good-but-not-great bucket, and put all their chips in the middle to acquire Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in the summer of 1996.
It must be tempting to cut bait on a championship-level core early in its descent instead of waiting until it's obvious it can no longer contend. It is an opportunity to look smart any technocrat GM would relish on some level. But the chances of nailing that transitional rebuild are too small to justify ripping apart a champion with any nontrivial chance to win again. Doing so dishonors that champion. The management of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls -- beginning and ending with Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner -- dishonored that team.
The stubbornness of several main characters contributed to Chicago's breakup, but it's always on owners to use their hiring and firing authority -- and their money -- to solve those problems.
I have seen the argument that Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the rest are better off for having their dynasty prematurely dismantled. They stay frozen in time as invincible.
I don't buy it. The 1998-99 Bulls might have won a fourth straight title, setting themselves apart from every team since the 1960s Celtics. (Jordan's cigar-cutting injury complicates this alternate history, but let's assume he might have taken more care had he been planning to play.)
But even if they had fallen short, there is a certain dignity in an old lion battling until the end. There is honor in losing -- in Kevin McHale dragging a broken foot up and down the floor in 1987, in Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Byron Scott tapping into every bit of guile to make one last run in 1991. There was even a perverted sort of honor in the Detroit Pistons walking off the court in 1991. Losing hurt so much, they could not bear to watch the aftermath.
There is a visceral thrill watching an aging champion rely on the advantages time has provided -- toughness, shared experience, chemistry -- to fight against time itself.
In cold terms, bailing out early is probably "smart." There is downside in clinging too long. The Celtics risked that when they re-signed 36-year-old Kevin Garnett to a three-year, $34 million deal after an improbable conference finals run in 2012. They sunk into mediocrity the next season; only a once-in-a-generation confluence of factors unlocked the NBA's version of the Herschel Walker trade with the Brooklyn Nets.
But every Boston fan accepted whatever downside in exchange for watching Garnett and Paul Pierce rage against the dying of the light. I bet Chicago fans would have swallowed the risk of a long-term mega-deal for Pippen if it meant bringing the band back once more.
Sports is nothing without emotion, even emotion that runs against icy rationality. Champions deserve to play until they lose.
_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
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