Warriors, Lakers, Celtics among five NBA teams with most to be thankful for

It’s Thanksgiving time, and there are a lot of teams in the NBA that have a lot to be thankful for (the Nets are not one of them, which is saying a lot for a team that has Kevin Durant). But we’re going to split some hairs here. Every team that has a superstar is thankful for that superstar, but I’ve attempted to narrow it down to the five teams that have the most to be thankful for, and what, exactly, they are thankful for. Here it goes. 

When five teams passed on Curry in the 2009 draft, including the Timberwolves twice, the Warriors had no idea what they were getting. Curry has transformed Golden State’s franchise in ways that would’ve been unimaginable even a decade ago when Curry first became an All-Star. Four championships. Six Finals appearances. An NBA record 73-win season. Literally billions in franchise value. None of it happens without Curry, whose combination of ability and humility comes along maybe once in a generation as the face of a franchise, if that. 

I would argue there isn’t a single other player in the world, for various reasons, who would’ve led last year’s Warriors to a title, and yet again this season, Curry is the reason an aging and flawed Warriors team is still considered a legitimate contender. If you have Curry, you have a chance, and the Warriors are awfully thankful they have him. 

If the Lakers were, say, still in Minneapolis, or Memphis, or Salt Lake City, or pretty much anywhere other than L.A., with the way they are running things at the moment, they’d be a laughingstock. You might argue they are anyway. But because they occupy prime NBA real estate, their margin for error is so great that they can essentially mess everything up and still have a pretty direct path out of the darkness and into the light of title contention. 

You might say the Lakers are most thankful that they have LeBron James, but the only reason they have LeBron in the first place is that they’re in L.A. The only reason they have Anthony Davis is that they have LeBron. And the only reason they have a title within the last decade is that they have both of those guys. 

Since that title (bubble title, I should say), this franchise has done basically nothing to make itself attractive to players with options.  Other than location and that iconic name across their chest, they have made one disastrous decision after another — empowering Rob Pelinka to run around in a…