The Rise and Fall of Hero Ball

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the phrase “hero ball” in the past week as part of the sports commentariat’s NBA coverage…

Monday night, the Golden State Warriors completed a mildly historic comeback, from 3 games to 1 down to the Oklahoma City Thunder, to capture the Western Conference Finals. There have been a few other occasions where teams have come back from similar deficits, but what was truly unprecedented was the Thunder collapse in Game 6 (on their home court) and the ability of Curry and Thompson to shoot their way back into these games, and ultimately the series.

From Game 6 onward, all we heard about was how the Thunder had succumbed to the horrible temptation of “hero ball,” the willingness of Durant and Westbrook to ignore their teammates and to try and take the game over themselves — trying to be the heroes.

I’m not an NBA expert, but I’ve been a fan for most of my adult life, and around long enough to see at least a couple of major shifts in the way the game works. I think that this movement against so-called hero ball marks one such shift, towards a different model of play and of what it means to assemble a successful franchise.

Largely unobserved, at least in the channels I frequent, is the fact that many of those who are crushing Durant and Westbrook were, not so long ago, telling us that LeBron James would never meet expectations because he lacked a killer instinct and a willingness to take games over. In other words, it wasn’t so long ago that they were measuring NBA superstars according to how willing they were to play hero ball. (In other words, they were still basically measuring everyone against Michael Jordan.)

In the interim, though, the vestiges of the Jordan era were slowly playing themselves out. There were undoubtedly other examples, but the idea of a Big 3 was epitomized by the Jordan-Pippen-Rodman era of the Bulls, and you can see plenty of squads since then (the Celtics’ Pierce-Garnett-Allen, the Spurs’ Duncan-Parker-Ginobli, the Heat’s James-Wade-Bosh, etc.) presented in those terms. We still talk about the Cavaliers (with James-Love-Irving) that way. The commentariat still struggles to talk about teams that don’t adhere to that model, and sometimes they try to cram more versatile squads into that frame, but with the Warriors’ success, I wonder if the hero ball/Big 3 approach to success isn’t starting to show its age.

Of course, there’s only one squad out there with a backcourt like Thompson and Curry, so it’s not really a configuration that others can strictly imitate. But the idea of organizing a squad for flexibility, playing to strength, and stretching the idea of what can be done with point guards and centers? They’re all in play, I suspect, as the league moves forward. And it can’t be a bad thing for team play and the idea of skills (like shooting and defense) receiving the attention that was once reserved for selfishness and physical domination.

Here’s hoping that the commentators catch up in their thinking, too.