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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Not all supergroups worked out too great. Think of Blind Faith, Asia and Power Station.Then again, Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young) and Emerson, Lake and Palmer had some serious staying power.
Now, the Miami Heat have created a superteam with Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh. But it's not a totally new NBA concept.
Think back to 2003-04, when the Lakers added stars Karl Malone and Gary Payton to put alongside stars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. Granted, Malone and Payton were past their primes but the Lakers still were favored to easily take the title.
But it didn't happen. The Lakers did get off to an 18-3 start. But Malone soon suffered a knee injury in what would be his last NBA season. He never fully recovered, and the Lakers ended up losing 4-1 to Detroit in the Finals.
"You've still got to play the game,'' said Malone in an interview with FanHouse hours before his Friday night scheduled induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. "When we played (in 2003-04), everybody you played it was like their championship. But you're an injury away and your teammates have got to accept you. There's a lot that goes into it.''
With that in mind, Malone isn't picking the Heat to win this season's NBA crown.
"I'll take the Lakers until somebody beats them,'' said Malone, who also will be inducted Friday into the Hall as a member of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. "I'll take the Lakers this year. Miami has got a hell of a team. But everything has got to go right for them to win.''
Malone joined Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley in becoming in the latest member of the Dream Team to say he wouldn't have rounded up top opponents from his heyday to form a superteam in the manner that was done in Miami. While Malone and Payton did join forces to create that Lakers superteam, he remarked they were much older.
"That's them,'' Malone said of Wade, James and Bosh. "Back in the day, we wouldn't have done it. But things have changed. It's just part of life. I'm still going to watch them.''
But Malone isn't expecting to watch them hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Chris Tomasson can be reached at tomasson@fanhouse.com or on Twitter@christomasson
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