6 NBA Superstars with the Most on the Line Entering 2015-16
If you're an NBA superstar, or even on the fringes of that category, you've already proved plenty.
But the demands and pressures that come with that status increase in kind. So ranking among the biggest names usually means answering the toughest questions and facing the heaviest responsibilities.
There's less riding on the performance of the last man on the bench. He's not going to alter the course of a team or potentially redefine how the entire league plays.
The guys on this list are different.
They face massive opportunities and career turning points. They have the clout to effect real change—whether it be to their own reputations or the success of their teams.
These are the guys with the most on the line this season.
Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers
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Last year at this time, Kobe Bryant had something different on the line.
The challenge then was to prove he could play at the superstar level he'd shown for the better part of 20 years in the NBA. That didn't happen. Instead, Bryant played 35 games of woefully inefficient offense and nonexistent defense before a shoulder injury ended his season.
Though he's still a superstar in every other sense of the term, it is no longer reasonable to think Bryant can be a star-quality player. That's the reality.
But the thing Bryant can prove, and the thing that will be so much more fitting at this late stage of his career, is that his maniacal confidence and defiant nature will never accept that reality.
Maybe it's sadistic, but we should all be rooting for Bryant to keep raging (futilely) against age, health, shot-selection norms and anything else he should be bowing to at this stage of his career. We should want him to play his 20th season with the mindset that he's as much of an alpha as he was in his 10th.
That way, whenever Bryant's career is finally done, he will at least have completed it on his terms.
It'll be awesome in some parts, a tragicomic mess in others. But it'll be the most Kobe thing Kobe can do.
Bryant's time in the NBA has been defined by his refusal to compromise. In a backward, obviously counterproductive sort of way, let's hope he sticks to his guns.
Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors
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One season of MVP-winning, championship-securing, trail-blazing brilliance from Stephen Curry prompted the entire league to reconsider how it should play on both ends of the floor.
A second such year would force a revolution.
Curry is a talent without precedent—one whose combination of ball-handling, shooting range and passing skills make him a threat from absolutely everywhere. During last year's NBA Finals, Golden State Warriors executive Jerry West told NBA TV (h/t NBA.com on Twitter) that Curry is "the most unique player" he's ever seen.
Citing Curry's limitless range and ability to hit while moving in any direction off the dribble, two-time MVP Steve Nash told Bleacher Report's Ric Bucher that Curry is the "greatest (shooter) there's ever been."
Defenses cannot play Curry normally. They can't switch big men onto him in the screen-roll game, and they can't send guards under the pick, even if it's set 35 feet from the basket. Putting a single defender on him is a non-starter. He's too dangerous and quick with his release.
The defensive scheme that neutralizes Curry hasn't been invented yet, though 29 NBA teams are working to discover it. And the perennial increase in three-point attempts across the league suggests everybody wants a little more Curry in their offense.
So if Curry manages to duplicate his 2014-15 season despite league-wide efforts to stop him on one end and emulate him on the other, he'll belong in the rarefied air of players like Wilt Chamberlain—guys whose skills and physical talents made it impossible for opponents to counter them with conventional measures.
This sounds hyperbolic, but there was no one like Curry last season. If he's in a class by himself again, the very foundations of how NBA basketball is played will have to shift.
So, what's Curry got on the line this year? Just the future of how NBA basketball is played. No biggie.
LaMarcus Aldridge, San Antonio Spurs
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It's safe to say there's something on the line if your mere presence on a team threatens the harmony of a two-decade dynasty.
So while LaMarcus Aldridge's job is to take the San Antonio Spurs to another level in one sense, in another, it's basically to not screw everything up.
Chances are everything will be fine. Aldridge isn't the kind of ball-stopper who could really stagnate the Spurs' liquid offense. He took 45.1 percent of his shots last season without dribbling, and just over 50 percent of his attempts came within two seconds of touching the ball, per NBA.com.
Still, Aldridge is a star built elsewhere, not a homegrown cog shaped over many years in the fires of Gregg Popovich's forge. He's something new to San Antonio, and there's at least some small chance that he'll eventually bristle at the lack of touches an equal-opportunity offense generates—that he'll be a bad fit.
The Spurs haven't made many big mistakes over the years, so you've got to give them the benefit of the doubt on the Aldridge decision. But it'll ultimately be up to San Antonio's newest star to prove he can find the right niche.
There's some pressure there, and for a player whose entire career has featured teams bending around him, Aldridge might find some of the necessary contortions uncomfortable.
More than anything, he doesn't want to be the guy who becomes synonymous with the end of the Spurs' dynasty.
DeAndre Jordan, Los Angeles Clippers
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Doc Rivers thinks so.
Observers who view uncontested rebounds and highlight-quality, get-that-out-of-here rejections as important metrics think so.
At least one other NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, thought so.
But this needs to be the year DeAndre Jordan convinces the rest of us that he's actually a star.
At 27, loaded up with a new max contract, coming off the second straight year in which he led the league in total rebounds and third straight in field-goal percentage, Jordan needs to prove to skeptics that he was worth all the hassle he caused last summer—that he's the kind of player his basic numbers suggest he is.
Put simply, there's good reason to question the Jordan-as-star campaign. Rivers championed his big man last year, telling anyone who'd listen that Jordan was the league's best defender. He tossed out a Bill Russell comparison, for crying out loud.
Yet the Clips finished 15th in the league in defensive efficiency, according to NBA.com.
Blake Griffin and Chris Paul are no-questions-asked superstars. Many would have us believe Jordan belongs in their company. This is his year to prove it.
Kevin Love, Cleveland Cavaliers
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With Kyrie Irving set to miss plenty of time recovering from knee surgery, Iman Shumpert out with a wrist injury and LeBron James spending his in-game breaks flat on his back, the Cleveland Cavaliers need someone to step into that superstar void—if only until all hands (and knees and backs and wrists) are back on deck.
Kevin Love needs to be that someone.
What we see from Love this season should provide a far better answer to the question that has plagued him since he became a stat-stuffing monster with the Minnesota Timberwolves: Can he play like a star on a team whose games actually matter?
He didn't get a chance to prove that last season because of a diminished role in the offense and the mostly healthy presences of Irving and James. This time around, there's more talk of Love expanding his role and far less certainty about the health of the other key pieces on the team.
After Love led the offensive charge in Cleveland's second game of the season, James told Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal, "Kevin is going to be our main focus. He’s going to have a hell of a season. He’s going to get back to that All-Star status."
There was talk like that a year ago, but it turned out to be mostly empty as Love posted his lowest scoring average since 2009-10 and lowest rebounding average since 2008-09. His usage rate of 21.7 percent was lower than it'd been since his rookie season, per Basketball-Reference.com.
Cleveland may not have needed Love to be a star last year—even if he was, on balance, still really good. That's different now, as the Cavs' main goal must be to stay afloat until everyone's healthy enough to make a title run.
It'll be up to Love to prove he can be more than a third wheel or a big-numbers, bad-team player.
Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City Thunder
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This is kind of a big year for Kevin Durant, what with his status as the league's best player, the fate of an entire franchise, a title shot, the future of a new head coach and fear of a devastating re-injury all factoring in as concerns.
It's all on the line for KD this season.
He has to snatch back the MVP Curry won last year. He has to lead the kind of successful Finals run the Oklahoma City Thunder have been trying to make for the past half-decade. He has to get through the entire season healthy after three foot surgeries in eight months last season...and then he has to decide where he'll play out the rest of his prime as an unrestricted free agent.
Whatever happens this year, Durant's decision after the season will shape the balance of power league-wide.
He'll have to do it all without a blueprint, according to Bleacher Report's Howard Beck: "There is no template for this, no precedent for a reigning Most Valuable Player undergoing multiple surgeries, losing nearly a full season and immediately reclaiming his dominance. Durant, who just turned 27, is in uncharted territory."
Hopes, stakes and degree of difficulty are all high ahead of what will likely be The Year of Kevin Durant.
Nobody has more on the line than he does.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com.
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