Some teams were going to talk about it; the situation was too mature. An overproduction arrived.
In the summer of 2018, Masai Ujiri kept thinking about the difference between a good team and a great team.
The president of the Toronto Raptors had built well equipment; he even won the NBA Executive of the Year award in his third season as general manager of the Denver Nuggets. He built a lot of teams with 50 wins. He built teams that won division titles. He built teams that went to the conference finals.
But Ujiri wondered: Had he ever made a great team in Toronto, that he could legitimately win it all?
As he spent days pondering what might have been the riskiest move of his career, he finally knew the answer and then executed Kawhi Leonard’s trade.
For now, the NBA has an inflated middle class. There is a large group of teams, perhaps up to a dozen, that are on the brink of dispute. They have a star or two. They have a way to get to the second round of the playoffs or even the conference finals, if all goes well. They are OK; they are not great.
This is where James Harden comes in, and why his future could shape how this NBA season unfolds.