If it’s not obvious yet, it feels clear the NBA is moving more and more toward winning on the margins. Once you have real high-end talent, the separator becomes the infrastructure around it, extra possessions, overall rebounding, forcing turnovers, screening, cutting, all the little stuff, that doesn’t mean a team needs to equally lay into all of those, they can leave heavily into a few of them and still produce great results.
It also raises your floor. Even when the stars aren’t carrying or the shooting isn’t there, that infrastructure can still keep you competitive. The last two champs are a good example, winning the possession battle throughout the whole year.. And there are already teams building that kind of foundation now, basically waiting on the right star or second star to make everything click.