Super, but not much fun to watch

Don’t blame LeBron James for this idea of creating super teams to chase championships.

He’s not the only one responsible for it.

But that’s just what you can expect when it comes to professional sports anymore.

WHILE IT might be fun to blame James — he has advanced to the NBA Finals in seven straight seasons — this idea of creating all-star rosters to chase a title started long before he bolted to Miami in 2010 with Chris Bosh.

In the 2003-04 season, the Los Angeles Lakers brought in Karl Malone and former Supersonic Gary Payton to play alongside Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant to chase another title.

It didn’t work out for them, losing in five games to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.

Los Angeles lost in the Western Conference playoffs to San Antonio in 2003, resulting in the team going for broke with Malone and Payton.

If that sounds familiar, just look at the current champions of the NBA.

After losing in seven games to Cleveland in the 2016 Finals, the Golden State Warriors acquired Kevin Durant to chase the Cavs off the top of the NBA mountain, and did just that. Golden State nearly finished the postseason perfect, losing only once on the way to a second championship in three years.

It doesn’t appear the Warriors are done yet, as Durant intends to re-sign with the team this summer.

And who knows, if Draymond Green avoids suspension in the middle of last year’s championship round, maybe Durant opts to play somewhere else, or sticks around in Oklahoma City.

PUTTING TOGETHER all-star teams in the NFL hasn’t worked out really well in the NFL either.

In 2011, after signing Michael Vick, Evan Mathis, Jason Babin, Nnamdi Asomugha and Ronnie Brown, the Philadelphia Eagles appeared to be going all in on a Super Bowl appearance, only to finish 8-8.

And in a span of Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll’s eight years with the team, his team beat the Eagles in Seattle — and that was the lone season the Seahawks failed to reach the playoffs.

Some of those teams in the 90s didn’t have to rely on free agency to create those super teams, they just were built that way.

Just imagine if Emmitt Smith decided to jump from Dallas to San Francisco to chase another championship.

Does it make things a little less competitive, with one team dominating a certain league? Maybe.

But that group still has to go out and play, share the ball and find a way to win games.

You can see that on an area baseball field where locals start putting together all-star teams to compete in Little League here in a few weeks.

The only difference is that they’re doing it to keep having fun playing a sport they enjoy playing.

Not that it’s a bad thing though.

They’re just doing it for the love of the game.

Something that seems lost watching a professional team stack the deck in their favor.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.