As we approach the final chapter of the 2024-25 NBA season, we’re left with two teams vying for the championship. Two teams with nothing in common, or so it seems.
First, there is the Oklahoma City Thunder: defensive juggernaut, harassing the world’s best players into consistently off nights. Meanwhile, Indiana is led by a run-and-gun ball movement offence that no one has found a way to slow down over an entire series. Yet, despite the stylistic differences on the court, I see two teams with almost identical roster constructions.
Both teams prioritized depth over superstars, instead opting for a singular offensive engine with quality role players at their side. Nearly every champion this decade has opted for a similar roster construction.
Sound familiar, Raptor fans?
With each passing season, the elite teams of the NBA look more like the 2019 Raptors than the superteams of past generations. Gone are the days of the Mid-2010’s Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, or the Big Three-era Miami Heat and Boston Celtics.
Instead, title teams seem to be built in the image of Toronto’s lone championship team, and while I won’t be the first to declare that the superteam era is dead, the 2019 Toronto Raptors deserve more credit for shaping the future of NBA roster building.
That Raptors championship team was the first of its kind. The league was coming off a decade of “big threes” that began with the 2008 Celtics big three of Garnett/Pierce/Allen and culminated in the Durant/Curry/Klay/Draymond Warriors. Toronto had a superstar in Kawhi Leonard, but didn’t have a clear number two or three to be considered a big three.
Pascal Siakam was the secondary creator and scorer, averaging 19 points per game in the playoffs, but wasn’t considered a top-20 player by most experts, let alone a top-10 player and superstar. The third leading scorer was Kyle Lowry, who again wasn’t a superstar. Instead, offering elite defence, playmaking and tertiary scoring. Marc Gasol and Danny Green rounded out the starting five as high-quality role players, and the Raptors often used an 8-man rotation with Serge Ibaka, Fred Van Vleet and Norman Powell coming off the bench.
At the time, superteams were built around star talent in the starting lineup and hoping to find enough quality bench minutes to give the starters rest. The 2019 Philadelphia 76ers arguably had the best starting five in basketball, but were playing James Ennis and Mike Scott 38 minutes per game off the bench against the Raptors. What separated the Raptors was the fact that they had eight high-quality NBA players, all eight arguably being top-100 players in the league at the time.
Fast-forward to 2025, and our two finalists have followed the same model as the 2019 Raptors. The 2025 Thunder’s offensive engine is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, with Jalen Williams as a quality second option who isn’t a Top-15 player. Chet Holmgren fills the Kyle Lowry role as a versatile third scoring option, while Isaiah Hartenstein and Lu Dort are high-quality starters akin to Marc Gasol and Danny Green. And similar to the Raptors, the Thunder have a nine-man rotation with supercharged role players Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins.
Similarly, the Pacers have Tyrese Haliburton as a superstar offensive hub, while Pascal Siakam is playing the same role for Indiana now that he played for the Raptors in 2019. Myles Turner is this team’s Kyle Lowry, Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard are high-level starters, and Indiana, like the Raptors then, has one of the best three-man benches in the league with Bennedict Mathurin, Obi Toppin and T.J. McConnell.
Nearly every champion this decade has been built in a similar mould to the 2019 Raptors. Each team with a superstar, a secondary option, and a two-way versatile third scoring option and high-level starters alongside them. Listed out, it looks like:
Superstar and offensive engine (Kawhi Leonard):
2021 Bucks: Giannis Antetokounmpo
2022 Warriors: Stephen Curry
2023 Nuggets: Nikola Jokic
2024 Celtics: Jayson Tatum
High-level second option who isn’t a superstar (Pascal Siakam):
2021 Bucks: Khris Middleton
2022 Warriors: Klay Thompson
2023 Nuggets: Jamal Murray
2024 Celtics: Jaylen Brown^
Two-way third option (Kyle Lowry):
2021 Bucks: Jrue Holiday
2022 Warriors: Andrew Wiggins
2023 Nuggets: Aaron Gordon
2024 Celtics: Derrick White
Elite role-playing starters (Marc Gasol and Danny Green):
2021 Bucks: Brook Lopez and P.J. Tucker
2022 Warriors: Draymond Green and Kevon Looney
2023 Nuggets: Michael Porter Jr. and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
2024 Celtics: Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis (when healthy)
Starter quality bench players:
2021 Bucks: Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton
2022 Warriors: Jordan Poole, Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr.
2023 Nuggets: Bruce Brown, Jeff Green and Christian Braun
2024 Celtics: Al Horford, Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard
^ A case could be made that Jaylen Brown is a superstar player, but when comparing to past superteams, he is closer to the Pascal Siakam level of player than a 2016 Kyrie Irving or 2011-12 Dwyane Wade.
The lone championship team since the 2019 Raptors that doesn’t fit this mould is the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, who never had a clear third scoring option and Anthony Davis certainly qualifies as a second superstar. However, that team also won during the COVID bubble after a long layoff, which is the all-time anomaly occurrence that we will (hopefully) never see again.
The league has firmly transitioned away from the superteam era into the weakest link era. Depth is more important than ever, even at the expense of elite second and third options. In the moment, the 2019 Raptors were seen as the lucky beneficiaries of a Kevin Durant injury that ended the superteam Warriors; however, with each passing year, it’s clear that the Raptors were trailblazers in roster construction and have quietly become the model for championship teams.
Kurt Cobain once said that when Nirvana wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit, he was “basically trying to rip off the Pixies” and that Surfer Rosa was one of his foremost musical influences. Surfer Rosa went Gold, selling 100,000+ copies and Smells Like Teen Spirit went diamond, selling 10,000,000+ copies. Sometimes in life, being the trailblazer doesn’t pay. For the Raptors, the 2019 team may get lost to history, while the teams they influenced go down as all-time greats – such is life. Let the record show, though: the 2019 Toronto Raptors shaped the current generation of roster building in the NBA.