Byron Scott isn’t buying the idea that talent alone is enough to carry a loaded roster to a title.
On a recent episode of his podcast, “Fast Break,” recorded with Olden Polynice, the former Lakers guard and three-time NBA champion pointed to the Philadelphia 76ers and the buzz around LeBron James and Jaylen Brown as a reminder that a stacked lineup on paper still has to function like a real team.
Scott reached back to the 2004 Lakers as his warning sign. That group, he said, had plenty of star power, but it still fell apart when it mattered most.
“I mean, we can go all the way back to the early parts in the 2000s. You got Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Kobe Bryant, Shaq, and you still got D-Fish, you know, you still got an unbelievable starting lineup. And on paper, everybody said, ‘Oh, they’re going to win a championship,'” said Scott.
But the matchup with Detroit told a different story.
“What happened? They played the Detroit Pistons, who were a much better team, a much better cohesive group of guys who wanted nothing more than to win. And you had friction on that Laker team with Gary Payton and some of the other guys.”
“And then you had the Peacemaker Karl Malone. And then Karl got hurt, which really killed their chances of winning the championship, and Detroit went through them four games to one.
Right?” Scott added.
That’s the lesson Scott wants applied to Philadelphia: talent is only the starting point.
“So talent on paper doesn’t mean a whole lot. It means you got talent.
That’s about all it means. It doesn’t mean or guarantee that you’re going to win the championship.”
He also argued that if the 76ers want any chance of making this kind of star-heavy setup work, they need to make LeBron the clear focal point, the same way Miami did when the Heat sorted out their hierarchy in 2010.
“When they lost the first year, y’all remember they came out the next year and Dwyane Wade said, ‘Hey Bron, this your team.’ … Bron coming there, Chris Bosh coming there-that’s Dwyane’s city.
This his town. This his organization.
So they didn’t want to step on his toes.”
“When he finally came out and said, ‘Listen, LeBron, you the best player in the world. This your team, dog.’
They went on fire. It’s gotta be the same attitude in Philly.”
Scott then turned to one of the long-running debates around LeBron: his willingness to make the right pass in crunch time, even when that choice has sometimes turned into criticism.
“He’s been criticized in his career because he’s got two guys on him to hit the open guy who ends up missing the game-winner, and they blame it on LeBron for not taking game-winning shots.”
“You’re the alpha; you’re the man; you’re supposed to take those shots no matter what. Kobe, he shot it with three people on him; that’s that alpha mentality he had. LeBron’s not like that; he’s going to hit the open guy,” Scott concluded.
Scott’s view lines up with concerns Magic Johnson has raised before, and his message is the same one that hangs over every superteam discussion: the pieces have to fit, the pecking order has to be clear, and somebody has to be willing to give something up.
For the 76ers, that means egos may need to take a back seat if this is going to work.
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