Sports League | Berry Tramel: Great Athletes Gravitate Toward Each Other
December 10th, 2009 | 
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When the NBA superstars – OK, Bosh is a push – joined forces on the Miami Heat , it struck the American sports fan as a fundamental change in the way teams are assembled.
From no player freedom to limited player freedom to rampant player freedom, we adjusted. Learned to live with it. Learned to embrace it, even.
But we’ve always looked at free agency and player movement as franchise instigated.
When the Yankees signed CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira in winter 2008-09, no one was outraged at Sabathia or Big Tex. Some were disgusted at George Steinbrenner , but no one turned on the ballplayers.
When the 49ers remade their 1994 defense by signing Deion Sanders , Rickey Jackson and Ken Norton Jr. , no one declared Deion was leading a revolution.
But LeBron and Friends are viewed as challenging the natural order of sport.
I don’t buy it. For this reason.
Great athletes were migrating to each other long before LeBron James decided he needed some Miami sun.
This is nothing new. Players long have colluded to beef up a roster, on every level.
This is what college recruits have been doing for decades. You hear stories every year about high schoolers deciding to play together. The Fab Five tried to deliver Michigan basketball a microwave dynasty.
Not just recruits, either. High schools trophy cases are built on the backs of athletes who conspired to join fellow studs. Tulsa Union and Jenks football, Putnam City basketball, Owasso and Asher baseball. Even upstarts like Southmoore football.
More often than not, high school transfers are not the result of recruiting. They are the result of a kid or his family seeking new scenery.
So why the chill in the air over the NBA, which already is the most top-heavy sports league going? It would be virtually impossible for the NBA to have less parity.
The NBA is where the Celtics once won 12 titles in 13 seasons. The NBA is where two franchises – Boston and the Lakers – have combined for 33 of the league’s 60 championships since 1949.
And everyone is worried about Miami ?
Frankly, maybe it’s time the players grabbed the reins of roster-making. The Lakers and Celtics, with cooperation of subordinates in Milwaukee (traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ) and St. Louis (the Hawks traded the draft rights of Bill Russell ), Memphis ( Pau Gasol ) and Minnesota ( Kevin Garnett ), have been jerry-rigging championships for half a century.
It’s OK with me if LeBron James takes a swing. OK with me if Kevin Durant wants to get in the game.
Maybe that means enticing some fellow stars to join something special here in Oklahoma City , maybe that means we lose Durant some day.
But I like those odds better than waiting for the ghosts of Red Auerbach or Jerry West to send another trophy to a shelf where it won’t even be noticed.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@opubco.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/berrytramel.
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