What Was The Best Basketball Thing Of The Decade?

The decade is on the verge of coming to an end. As of this writing, we’re a mere hours away from saying goodbye to the 2010s and entering the roaring 2020s on the east coast. If the new year always presents an opportunity for reflection, then the new decade means that all of us can take a moment and look back on the things that have happened over the last 10 years of our collective existence.

For basketball fans, that means we’re provided the opportunity to look back on the moments we’ll never forget in the last decade of the NBA. To close the decade, our staff decided to do this by answering a simple question: What was the best basketball thing from the 2010s? Anything and everything was on the table: The silly moments that helped shape NBA Twitter, the games and players who made lasting impressions on all of us, whatever it might be.

Robby Kalland: Superteams

This decade in the NBA was all about superteams. It started with LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade forming the Big Three in Miami and becoming the biggest story the NBA had seen in years. They had the infamous “Not five, not six, not seven” press conference, ultimately won two titles, lost two in thrilling fashion to Dallas and San Antonio, and then broke up in stunning fashion with LeBron returning home to Cleveland.

As soon as the superteam era came, it seemed to end in 2014, until the Warriors did to LeBron what he had done to the rest of the league. Golden State emerged as the best team in the NBA, added Kevin Durant to its three home-grown All-Stars and became a juggernaut, only to also break up so soon after it started with an Achilles injury to Durant and a loss to the Toronto Raptors to end their run.

All in all, the decade was defined by the collectives of greatness that dominated the league, and for how much people lamented the existence of both of those teams, they were nonetheless fascinating to watch. I’m not sure a team had been rooted against as hard as the Heat since the Bad Boy Pistons (maybe the Kobe-Shaq Lakers). That 2010-11 season was full of hatred and vitriol, capped off by a nation of fans reveling in the schaudenfreude of watching the Big Three falter in the Finals. Somehow, the Warriors managed to top that, albeit the 73-9 season that ended in LeBron’s finest moment (this time playing the 2011 Dirk role) coming pre-Durant.

As we’ve learned, there may be no more galvanizing force in sports than a team for everyone to hate. Despised as they were, they were undeniably great and both at their peaks were unbelievable to watch. They created moments we will never forget and the moments they faltered made for spectacular theater.

Martin Rickman: Lil Kev

So this probably should be The Shot by Kyrie, or The Block by LeBron, or even The Stop by Kevin Love, but none of those embody the spirit or humanity that Lil Kev does. For a brief period of time, where Snapchat still mattered, and the Cleveland Cavaliers liked each other, Lil Kev was born.

Richard Jefferson found a Tommy Bahama ad on a plane that kind of looked like Kevin Love, and, well, all kinds of weird stuff happened.

And after the Cavs won the title against the first-ever unanimous MVP and a Warriors team that won a record 73 games but blew a 3-1 lead in the Finals, Lil Kev was still part of the action. He was even there when Timofey Mozgov signed his unforgettable $64-million deal.

God bless Lil Kev, and God bless us everyone.

Bill DiFilippo: LeBron James in Game 6 against the Celtics in 2012

This is absolutely influenced by the fact that Kevin Garnett has be talking about this during the press rounds for Uncut Gems, but good lord, have you gone back and watched what he did during this game recently? Here, watch.

It is easy for YouTube comps to have hyperbolic titles in the never-ending quest for views that translate to ads that translate to money, but in the career of the player I consider the best to ever play the game, this was the best game LeBron has ever played. I vividly remember where I was as I watched this, largely because before the game tipped off, LeBron got this look in this eyes that made every basketball fan go, “oh god, he’s gonna do something tonight, isn’t he?”

He ended up exceeding that expectation. Miami LeBron was the best version of LeBron — it was when he best mixed his god-given physical gifts with the kind of ruthlessness that comes from being around Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra and Dwyane Wade all the time — and this was him at his absolute best. The Celtics, in what ended up being a last stand for some members of the squad in front of the TD Garden faithful, were rendered helpless, which is not something you really expect out of a team as tough and prideful of the Boston squads at the start of the decade.

LeBron was able to do damn near anything he wanted to do. By the time the final buzzer blared, the Heat won, 98-79, to force a deciding Game 7 in Miami (which they went on to win). In 45 destructive minutes, James went 19-for-26 from the field and 2-for-4 from three, scoring 45 points, ripping down 15 rebounds, and doling out five assists.

Given the stakes — namely the way that this game had the potential to forever shape LeBron’s legacy, and instead of going down as the guy who couldn’t get it done in big games, he dismantled the Celtics in Boston en route to a ring — it was the single-most spellbinding performance of the decade. It was the best basketball thing I saw in the 2010s, with the runner-up being this JaVale McGee tweet, and a special shoutout going to the league getting rid of Donald Sterling.

Katie Heindl: The Banana Boat

For me, it was the banana boat. Like a banana, there are a lot of layers to peel back about it. For one, it was one of the first instances I can really remember of four of the most influential players of that time going on a carefree summer vacation together. It didn’t really happen before. It was almost this precipice of a moment where right after, at least publicly, relationships between players around the league relaxed. Yes there have always been league friendships — it’s such a small pool of colleagues with such a highly specialized skill that it’s almost necessary for sanity — but there was something about the banana boat’s celebration of friendship as just that. There was no narrative of what it meant, was it some aquatic announcement, it was just summer whimsy.

It was also right around the time players started getting into social media. For some, it was and is still in the way most of us use it, but others became much more savvy, using it as a branding tool for themselves, a new way to make their careers multidimensional. It ushered in this current era of player autonomy beyond the on-court career choices guys make, and made room for the personality driven era of players that was previously only reserved for a really famous few. Endorsement deals, off court hobbies (players into wine, food, cooking, painting, reading, paintball, dog breeding — honestly you name it) being showcased and monetized in ways that felt organic, it’s all exploded.

Finally, there was power in the banana. For LeBron James, it was a little bit like, this guy could ask anyone to do anything and they will. For Carmelo Anthony, didn’t it seem a little bit cursed, even if he was the only member of the crew not actually present on said banana? For Chris Paul, it was a kind of softening and subdued the way he vibrates intensity. For Dwyane Wade, it was representational, coasting out of his career on a big wave in the sun. For the rest of us, just watching, it became mythical. A pop culture cornerstone that has been recreated by other players with less powerful results, slapped on merchandise, and still has the power to reverberate joy through the years when you picture it, like a big, yellow, beautiful space time continuum. It’s kind of like the end of Interstellar, finding the fifth dimension but in this case of basketball. Something that reverberates forward and back, out in all directions. Thank you, banana boat.

Chris Barnewall: Ray Allen’s shot

There’s plenty of debate about what the greatest shot in NBA history is. Kyrie Irving’s go ahead basket in 2016, Michael Jordan’s final shot with the Bulls in ’98, etc. But for me, nothing will top Ray Allen’s game tying three-pointer in the 2013 NBA Finals. It’s not just that he made an incredible shot with time winding down, but what makes it stick out is his calmness amid a difficult shot in the most pressure-packed moment of his career.

Allen took a jumper off of an offensive rebound that got kicked out to him and required the legendary marksman to backpedal to the corner so he could take the shot. If he misses that shot, the Spurs win the NBA Finals, the Heat don’t repeat, and we don’t get overtime or Game 7. He changed the course of NBA history with one shot amid nothing but chaos. When I think of the last decade of basketball, I think of Allen backpedaling into a corner and quickly firing up the shot that would end up galvanizing the Heat en route to a ring.

Jamie Cooper: DeAndre Jordan’s free agency kidnapping extravaganza

In many ways, this encompassed everything that defined the decade: player empowerment, the ubiquity of social media, a subverting of unwritten gentlemanly rules, and an opportunity for the entire basketball-watching world to participate, in real-time, in the spectacle that has become the 12-month NBA calendar.

We had teammates inside the house posting images of a chair blocking the front door, the erroneous reports of Mark Cuban frantically driving around Houston looking for Jordan and trying to get him on the phone, and the greatest emoji battle in the history of the internet, which included Paul Pierce doing the most Paul Pierce thing ever.

It’s also emblematic of just how quickly things change around the league. Lob City dissolved over the next two years, and the Mavs traded away Jordan just eight months after signing him again in 2018. Still, it had everything that makes the NBA great.

Brad Rowland: The January 2015 Atlanta Hawks

In some circles, the Hawks winning a collective Player of the Month honor has become a punchline and it is easy to see why. After all, LeBron James laid waste to the city of Atlanta in the 2015 NBA Playoffs and the 60-win Hawks didn’t really feel like a title contender as a result. Still, the Hawks went 17-0 in January 2015, putting together a brand of basketball that was both unusual and fantastic.

It isn’t often that teams can win 60 games without a superstar offensive player, but the Hawks did it. Mike Budenholzer constructed a “beautiful game” offense with unselfishness, ball movement, dynamic shooting and the occasional Jeff Teague explosion. On the other end, Paul Millsap and Al Horford anchored a legitimately elite defense and, when it was clicking, the Hawks felt unstoppable.

Titles will always be the barometer of NBA success but, for 31 days in 2015, the Hawks were the toast of the league and, for a franchise that hasn’t won a championship since moving to Atlanta, it meant a lot to the city for good measure.

Jeff Siegel: Small Ball

The 2010s will be remembered for LeBron’s dominance, Steph’s rise, and all the moments in between Kobe’s 6-for-24 in 2010 and Giannis trying to cement a second consecutive MVP in 2019.

Superstars come and superstars go, but the true impact the 2010s have had on the game of basketball stretches far beyond any one individual or any one team — small ball is what made the 2010s perhaps the most unique decade in NBA history and this decade will be remembered for changing the game forever. The migration to the three-point line, most of the best players in the world being perimeter players, and the rise of 5-out offense will be the legacy of the 2010s NBA.